Linux Powers Digital Muppets

Darren Alcorn writes "Red Hat and Jim Henson have teamed up to bring you digital animatronics through the use of Red Hat Linux." I bet thats a fun system to see in operation. The article is light on technical stuff, but discusses the computerized puppeteering system a little.

Comments

Not only Linux but...

[The Iconoclast]

AMD!

How's that for underdog geekiness. When I was at SIGGRAPH last year, the AMD booth had a display booth with a dude using the the Henson "Muppet-tronics" platform running on a AMD-Powered Linux workstation. I think the control software said something like version 0.8. It was pretty neat.

Warning, Heson's company has *EVIL* Lawyers

[Zeio]

A warning to all slashdotters, Henson's company is very much into this DRM/IP anti-fair-use anti freedom of speech thing.
The other day something awful had to remove a parody of Muppet movies, with funny things like "DAS BERT" instead of "DAS BOAT," etc. Kyanaka received a letter, which is shown here.

Needless to say I was shocked to see that someone who was making no money form parodying the Muppets, which are simply carpeting glued to wood, was asked to remove parody content.

I would be very careful if I was RedHat. Its funny how companies like the Church of Scientology (The cult I mean) have more lawyers after the leader dies, in the SOC case, Hubbar croaks, and people are marauding around using racketeering and extortion on "worshippers." Such is the case, to a smaller degree obviously, with Henson. Because the magician, the creator, the worthy one is dead they assemble a cabal of lawyers to viciously and rabidly attack anyone "using" the franchise because they now are charge with protecting against something that is non-Novel, replaceable, duplicateable, old. On another note, Tolkein's son, who tries to "continue" the LOTR franchise by printing his father's notes, was against the move LOTR. JRR's grandson was for it. Its time to let go, and let more creative people take a stab at things sometimes - we are all glad that JRR's son wasn't able to stop the movie. Excerpt - I think some stories are meant to be read, not to be seen. Before seeing this Oscar-nominated movie, Tolkien's son Christopher said, "My own position is that The Lord of the Rings is peculiarly unsuitable to transformation into visual dramatic form." Filmmakers disagree. Two sequels based on Tolkien's Rings characters, filmed at the same time as The Fellowship of the Ring, are scheduled for release in 2002 and 2003. Ah, yes. The franchise cometh.


I really hate when opportunists feed on the carcasses of things. This sort of activity as displayed by the Muppets franchise is so completely wrong. Its not as if Disney was slandering Henson, or parodying and making money off the parody. This company will go so far as to harass independent site owners on the web, they have lawyers trolling to make trouble. I cant say how upset I am at the Henson franchise.

My letter to Henson:

"Henson" is a completely wrong for making www.somethingawful.com remove your "intellectual property." [http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop/muppetmov ies/index.htm]

There are those who search for medicines, cures, new technology, more fuel efficiency and try hard to make things for the betterment of humanity. There are those who comfort me, who engineer better things in life. There are those who make my life better.

Then there are those who piss and whine about intellectual property rights and wont even allow a fair use parody of their stupid stuffed animals whose creator is DEAD. You are a puppet company. C'mon, is there that much gravity to all this?

You are un-American. He wasn't making money off your "beloved" puppets, he was making fun of it without even being NASTY about Henson or Muppets.

Read up on Thomas Jefferson, Madison about "copyright" and realize the Henson's are now representing COMMUNISM.

I'll never solicit Henson garbage again. Or Disney, until these disgusting companies realize copyrights are for those who have things worth protecting, not for a puppeteer with stuffed animals or Mickey Mouse.

This is going to promote piracy, fueled by Asia, and create RESENTMENT in your potential consumers, by trying to squeeze blood from rocks. The RIAA, SSSCA, CDPTA, DMCA, BSA and all the other Gestapo Waffen SS goons for the corporate elite will be resisted, and WE THE PEOPLE will win over time. IT only takes time. Its just funny that a bunch of Asians who pirate and knock off you "intellectual" property will teach you the most American lesson of them all, if you don't do new and innovative , YOU GO AWAY, YOU LOSE MONEY, its that simple. Do something NEW and INNOVATIVE for once instead of invoking a cabal of lawyers to screw with our first amendment.

You dishonor Henson's memory. "Sam the American Eagle (C)(R)TM" should get a HAMMER AND SICKLE to CRUSH THE LIFE out of the American public.

- Extremely upset

Mna mna nah - do do doo doo. Mn my money mna ma - I'm a money grubbing goon. Mna mna nah. Sh sh shylocka a nah. I want my pound of flesh. Mnah mnah.

A little more information

[morhoj]

Here is the official press release from Newsforge. Its not actually the whole studio, just the Creature Shop. Specific use is for the HDPS product.

Says they chose Redhat due to the RHN software update feature... obviously they haven't used it recently :)

A word from the sysadmin

[witten]

Hey guys, I'm the sysadmin who runs all the Red Hat machines that this article talks about. We've got four "rigs" on wheels, each with two shock-mounted AMD machines running a customied Red Hat 7.x with an RTLinux kernel. Each side of the rigs has a flat panel LCD and a keyboard. One side let's you puppeteer a computer-generated character on-screen in realtime with custom controls. The other side is for a technician to set everything up. Right now we're transitioning to a dual-processor rig with a single machine and only one keyboard.

This stuff is really neat to see in person. Using HDPS, a trained puppeteer can create computer graphics facial animations in realtime that might take a team of animators several weeks. There are some images of our system in use available.

You can email me (dhelfman at la.creatureshop.henson.com) if you've got any questions.