DreamWorks Switches to Linux

tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux. Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers. Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.

Comments

Re:Adobe!

[bcrowell]

This is backwards reasoning. What would really be a good thing would be if the open-source community could produce an app as good as Photoshop. Otherwise it's an admission of failure -- we have to depend forever on Adobe adobe to treat us graciously.

If open source is going to succeed on the desktop, there have to be open-source apps. The average user couldn't care less about the OS, and may not even know what an OS is. The way to impress non-geeks with open source is to show them some applications.

When the SSSCA turns into a reality...

[Karpe]

and Linux becomes illegal (you can't have efective copy prevention with source code), what will the movie studios (the same who pushed the SSSCA in the first place) use then?

Re:What are they thinking?

[Chris Pimlott]

I want to know, why on earth would Dreamworks want to switch to Linux.

Yeah, too bad there's not some sort of article about it to explain why they switched.

Adobe Lost Me at Hello

[idonotexist]

After the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product. So, if Adobe is finally convinced it can make a few more bucks by porting its apps to Linux, perhaps Adobe needs to correct its public relations fiasco and not with a mere press release, but something more sublime; maybe a contribution to EFF? Until such an event, no way, no how, Adobe --- not on this Linux box. I will not just forget Adobe's mistake and I hope others will not.

SW-patents problem

[villoks]

Well.

Unfortunately there's too many patents in the field. It is impossible to create a software which doesn't violate at least some of them. For example color management is highly protected area. From this background it's pretty simple why there isn't any commercially viable open source options available...

Ville

Re:SW-patents problem

[foobar104]

From this background it's pretty simple why there isn't any commercially viable open source options available...

I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees, here. The reason there's no sufficient open-source Photoshop-alike is the same reason there's no sufficient open-source ERP system. For that matter, it's the same reason there's no all-volunteer space program, or an all-volunteer hospital.

Writing software that's a functional and of as high quality as Photoshop is hard. Unbelievably hard. As hard as open-heart surgery, or sending a person into orbit. Writing an image editor that's as complete and as good as Photoshop would require a tightly coordinated and managed team of hundreds working full-time on the project for years. That's something that the open-source community has simply been unable to provide. Compared to Photoshop, Apache (arguably one of the strongest open-source efforts out there, and some excellent software) is child's play, both in overall complexity and in the sheer number of function points.

Gimp? Don't even talk to me about Gimp. I have Photoshop 3.0.1 on my iBook, which I run in Classic mode. I also have Gimp on my Windows 2000 system, because I don't have Photoshop for Windows. I use Gimp when I can't use Photoshop, which is moderately often. Across the board, without exception, I find Photoshop 3.0.1-- vintage 1991 software!-- running under Classic mode on my Mac to be superior to Gimp under Windows. Lots of time and effort went into making Photoshop a well-thought-out, high-quality piece of software, and it shows. Gimp is worked on by a loosely coupled group of part-timers, and that also shows.

I don't mean to be insulting, but Gimp is kind of like the old saying about the dog that sings. It's not that the dog sings well, because it doesn't. It's impressive simply that the dog sings at all. That's fine for singing dogs and amateurs. Professional artists will hold us-- the community, I mean-- to a higher standard.

So..

[realdpk]

We're pro-MPAA today? I thought that was Tuesdays.

I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[NanoGator]

"fter the Dmitry and DMCA flop by Adobe, I will never purchase an Adobe product and I swear to gawd I will save my friends and co-workers from thinking about purchasing an Adobe product..."

I sympathize with your view, but the reason that Adobe is so popular is because it makes a totally kick as series of products. If I lose Photoshop or After Effects, I don't have a whole lot of good choices to replace them with, especially for the money. You wouldn't be 'saving me' from Adobe, you'd be hurting me if you convinced me to switch.

I really don't like what they did with Dmitry, but I need a solution to express my disgruntlement with them that doesn't involve crippling my productivity.

I have the same issue with Blizzard. I've been asked to boycott Blizzard over using the DMCA to shut down BnetD. The problem I have with that is a healthy game industry = better job market for me. Blizzard consistently makes kick ass games. Not buying Blizzard 3 would do more to work against me than help prevent them from further DMCA abuse. On top of that, I think Warcarft III will be lots of fun, and I'd hate to miss out on that too.

So what do we do? I'm open to suggestions as to how to let these companies know what they're doing is unacceptable without creating ripples in the good work that they're doing. One idea is to make their email address available so people can write in their complaints. Another would be to have Slashdot carry a banner encouraging people to read about what happened and, again, give them an email address they can send complaints to.

Personally, I think this would be far more effective than saying "I won't buy your product even tho I need it."

Re:I need a better solution than boycotting Adobe.

[testadicazzo]

I agree with you on a number of points. Primarily I think boycotts are poorly organized, and only effective when they are vastly accepted. I have a suggestion (which is admittedly of limited relevance in this case) on how to make them more efffective.

I currently boycott Nike because of their labor policies. As an active sports enthusiast, I wish I could in good concience buy nike products, as often they have the best or most available products. But I find alternatives. Then I save the receipts, and mail them to nike with a letter explaining why I bought the competitors products.

So my suggestion for an active partial boycott is this: Buy alternatives whenever possible. Send the receipt and notification of why you did this to the company. If they get enough they'll realize their bottom line is being affected far more quickly and immediately than through a normal boycott.

I have to get off my arse and make a web page propounding this idea.

I see I wasted my $$$ on the EFF

[r_j_prahad]

Six months ago, Adobe was evil incarnate here on Slashdot. Today there's an unsubstantiated rumor that they might port their proprietary DMCA-protected crap to Linux and suddenly they're an Angelic mom-and-pop operation that can do no wrong.

When this lame movie comes out on DVDCCA region-encoded SSSCA copy-protected discs you'll all be like kids in a toy store, and the hell with Dmitry Sklyarov or Ed Felten or Eric Corley and what they suffered through because of companies like Adobe.

You people are the best supporters Eisner and Hollings could ever ask for.

Re:I see I wasted my $$$ on the EFF

[gad_zuki!]

Simply put Linux is hurting for apps. Maybe not in the server department, but certainly in other areas. Not so long ago open source types were busy condemning Netscape to hell until they released NS for linux. Suddenly going against standards was A-OK.

I'm not going to simple-mindedly yell hypocrites from the highest mountain, but there is a criticism to be had. Until Linux is in a better position software-wise this will continue to happen. In fact this may never change, if a company can end honest criticism by releasing a version of its software for Linux, well why not? In the windows world many people use software from companies they don't like. The same will be true if Linux invades the desktop market. Microsoft could easily clean some of its image by releasing office/IE for Linux. Users and software companies make for odd bedfellows.

A little surprised they switched Workstations too.

[NanoGator]

I'm a little surprised they also switched the workstations to Linux as well. In the short term I can imagine that being a real headache, but in the long term...I dunno.. that could be a really good thing.

When you do 3D animation (or digital art of any kind, really...) you don't just have one or two programs that do all the work. You have to constantly come up with new and creative solutions to animation problems. When this happens, the artists really get close to their machines. I'll give you an example: I'm a Lightwave animator running on Windows 2000. Lightwave's scene files are text based, which means I can modify a scene without necessarily having to do it through Lightwave itself.

I had a problem once where I wanted to animate realistic eye movement. Doing it by hand would be incredibly time consuming (Not to mention repetitive...) So I came up with an inventive solution. I parented the camera in Lightwave to the 'neck' of the person, and rendered a wide-angle avi from that person's perspective. Then I wrote a quick VB-App that used MS's Media Player ActiveX control to play back the .AVI, and then track my mouse movements over the movie. While it played back, I moved the mouse around the items of interest and saved that information into a text file. Then I converted the text file into a Lightwave motion file and loaded it into the eyes.

The effect was surprising! Within 6 hours or so of programming, I had written a primitive mo-cap (Mouse capture?) program that would be useful for a lot of things, not just eye movement. All this was possible because I understood VB, Windows 2000, and Lightwave. This happened to be so valuable that I bought a Windows 2000 laptop so I could experiment more with this technique in my free time.

The reason I'm surprised at the workstations switch (I should say 'initially surprised...') is that familiarity with your computer/OS is key to coming up with inventive solutions to problems. Since Linux is fairly new to the animation scene (on the creation side, not the rendering side...), it's hard to imagine those entering the animators job market would already be experienced with that OS. They'd have to re-learn how to use their computers. That may or may not be a problem, but it's a concern I have.

My point of view on this topic is starting to change after I started to write this post. It is starting to make more sense now. It is a lot easier to get my hands on a personal copy of Linux than it is to get Windows 2000 or OSX. At that point, the brand of processor becomes the least of my concerns, just the speed of it. It'll take some getting used to, but when all the dust settles, I think Dream Works will be in for a nice boost in productivity.

What I did with VB sounds like it'd be far easier on Linux. I can imagine 3D Animators eventually having more and more programming/scripting capabilities at their disposal. With these skills comes a more robust solution for any problems that arise. Hmm... maybe I should build a Linux box now.

Photoshop on Linux

[stubear]

This is a quote from one of the Adobe Photoshop programmers concerning Photoshop on Linux:

"Adobe is keeping an open mind. And we're keeping an eye on Linux.

But right now, most Linux users aren't willing to pay for commercial software.

And the lack of a viable window manager (X-Windows does NOT count), printing solution, font solution, color management solution, etc. make Linux a WHOLE lot less attractive.

OSX and Linux only have command line utilities and a few concepts in the kernel in common. That's less than 1% of what's needed for application compatibility."

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Photoshop on Linux because not a lot has happened in the UI front since this comment was written.

Re:Then what is Disney using nowadays?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Personally I hope Disney continue to piss their money away buying the most overpriced and useless machine SGI sells. I also hope the movies produced thereby fail horribly at the box office. Finally, I hope Disney then goes out of business.

What is it about slashdot, where disease corporations like Disney and other MPAA members are alternately booed and cheered?