LOTR Special Effects at OSCON

gnat writes "The IT Director for Weta Digital, Peter Jackson's company doing the digital effects for the Lord of the Rings movies, is keynoting at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. They use a ton of Linux and Perl." FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too, but I'm much more interested in seeing this LotR thing.

Comments

LotR Graphics

[ClimberTech]

This is cool.... It's awesome that a big company like that is using linux for the graphics, especially because I thought the CGI in LotR was exceptional. Even the Cave Troll, which at least I expected to look really fake, seemed to fit in.

heh, this is also funny because around the time when the movie came out, my friend was making lots of his own character designs using the GIMP, so maybe the real graphic designers were doin the same thing :P

Re:LotR Graphics

[intermodal]

Actually, IIRC, even Titanic used a lot of Linux boxes in special effects...

Re:LotR Graphics

[Sabalon]

From what I remember, they were used to render the ocean and water.

Oh God, we're doomed

[Saint Aardvark]

You just wait...CmdrTaco and Hemos will persuade Peter Jackson to put them into the DVD Director's "SlashCut" as orcs that quickly get killed, pasted in digitally.

I'm taking applications now to form The Campaign for Real Movie History. Who's in?

Translation for non geeks

[sllort]

FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too

FWIW is an abbrevation for "For What It's Worth" - just a little code-talk word that geeks use to communicate with each other. I looked it up on AOL. Hope this helps out all the normal people reading.

Re:Translation for non geeks

[kriebz]

I would hope someone who's going to Slashdot and has read down the page this far knows this. It's one of the biggest abbreviations begind BRB, IMO, and LOL. These are more of IRC type things than "coder" things anyway. "Looked it up on AOL? Well, they certainly know all the wrong times to use these there.

Don't hurt me.

Re:Translation for non geeks

[SirSlud]

If your conspiracy theories are true, then I think your FAQ addenum is dead on. I can't tell if its sarcasm, but I very literally agree with it's content.

Re:Translation for non geeks

[Grape Shasta]

I didn't know that one, so I guessed and ended up reading it Elmer Fudd style: "Fwom what I Wemember" :) Cwazy Taco...

Re:Purchase as much LNUX as you want to make?

[ClimberTech]

right... because we all know that "Linux" can own things...

isn't buying stock in "linux" like buying stock in "drawing" or "running"?

Perl?

[Fastball]

use LOTR::Ringwraith

Get that module to CPAN stat! I want it! ;)

Re:Perl?

[56ker]

Could someone explain this joke for someone who just doesn't get it?

Re:Perl?

[rendler]

From perldoc -q use:

Imports some semantics into the current package
from the named module, generally by aliasing cer-
tain subroutine or variable names into your package.

I guess that may even be more confusing :(

Re:Perl?

[56ker]

Yeah it is - got any idea how to stop a person who has a troll account from using all their five mod points (when they get them) to deliberately mod all your recent posts down?

Re:Perl?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love you man, you are so predictable, but here is the icing; in a few
days my third account is getting mod points, and you will be down like
the crackwhore you really are.

Truely yours, EJM.

I'm glad Taco & Hemos have made up...

[schwatoo]

But I didn't realise they weren't speaking.

Linux and PERL?

[ObviousGuy]

That must be why the plot moved so fucking slowly. For chrissakes, it's like the ending was purposefully left undone so that they can set the audience up for a sequel.

Worse than Star Wars Episode 1, LOTR was. Well, maybe not. There was no Jar Jar Binks, so we have to give it points for not stooping that low.

Re:Linux and PERL?

[Edgewize]

The marketing didn't make it clear, and calling it a trilogy doesn't help, but LotR is not a movie. It's Part 1 of a three-part movie. You might say 'Well why is it so farking long, and why did I pay full price?' Well, basically you got the shaft because they played it up like it was a standalone movie. Blame the marketing department.

Re:Linux and PERL?

[Anonymous Coward]

and by "LotR", I meant "FotR". Which stands for "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Never-ending Title". But that's a totally different gripe.

Re:Linux and PERL?

[ceejayoz]

Hmm... ignorant or just a troll? LotR is based closely on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, that's why the abrupt ending - go directly to the next movie, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Re:Linux and PERL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. They should have written the entire thing in C with inline assembly in the tight spots. Imagine the possiblities!

Speeding up the action would have allowed for more character development. We could have seen Frodo go from being such a complete wuss to das Überhobbitte. He could be like, "You best gimme that ring, or I'm gonna kick your ass with my big-ass fuzzy feet! Whoa! I know Jiu-jitsu!"

They would have had more time for the TRULY interesting parts that they had to cut out. You know Aragorn got it on with Galadriel. Pisses me off that they cut that out. If you speed up the plot, you could include some hot inter-racial elf-human lovin'. And the way that elf girl went all totalitarian-matriarchical nuts when Frodo offered her the ring - you know she'd be into that freaky BDSM. Strider may be a bad-ass, but that elf-bitch scared the bejeezus out of me.

There might be some problems with doing it in C - for instance, you'd have this "intermission" with the words "3y3 0verf10vved joor BuFF3r! Fr33 Mitnick!@!!" pasted onto the screen for a few minutes. Although this would be slightly annoying, it would well worth seeing a badass Frodo and some hot elf lovin'.

Re:Linux and PERL?

[PhilHibbs]

Why should it be cheaper? They spent about as much on it as three movies, it's over 3 hours long, and it's not as if the theaters are easier to clean up after. And (nearly) everyone went in knowing the plot, it's holes, shortcomings, and excessive rambling.

Gandolf did look a bit like RMS

[JeffGB]

I always thought that Gandolf looked a bit like Richard Stallman.
Maybe it was just the beard.
Lord of the Token Ring

Re:Gandolf did look a bit like RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Gandolf please.

Re:Gandolf did look a bit like RMS

[Speare]

I always thought that Gandolf looked a bit like Richard Stallman.

GNU/Gandolf, please.

Oh, the horrors. That one little misspelling, and now all of Tolkien's works will be forgotten. (It's Gandalf.)

How are you gentlemen?

[Smelly Jeffrey]

All your LOTR Graphics are belong to OSCON. Enough said.

Movie magic

[ObviousGuy]

The zenith of movie special effects was reached several years ago by Dan Piponi and his crew. What's happened in the interim? Well, Titanic won the Oscar for special effects. That's got to tell you something about the sad state of affairs in movies today.

Re:Movie magic

[Permission Denied]

I don't follow anything Hollywood, so I had to hit google to find out just who this megastar "Dan Piponi" was (and you didn't mention any of his films, as if I'm supposed to read the ending credits). Anyway, here is a very interesting message - this is Dan Piponi on the freebsd-chat mailing list explaining how they did The Matrix. This message is cool because (1) you can meet all sorts of interesting people on the Internet, (2) it shows that FreeBSD's mailing lists are excellent (even if they're a bit too high-volume to follow continuously) and (3) it shows how excellent FreeBSD's Linux binary compat is. I've never run accross a Linux binary that FreeBSD couldn't handle.

Re:Movie magic

[Anonymous Coward]

Manex won the Oscar for their work that year. And it's of course been done to death since then.

Re:Movie magic

[donglekey]

That was certainly not the Zenith of visual effects.

John Gaeta was the visual effects supervisor for the Matrix, if that is what you are talking about. So it was his crew, the artists and the developers. Dan Piponi is head of R&D. It is a simbiotic relationship, don't pretend that one doesn't need the other.

Manex won the Oscar for visual effects for the Matrix.

That wasn't the same year (Obviously) as Titanic. Titanic was before that, not in the inerim. In fact Manex won back to back Oscars for What Dreams May Come and The Matrix, so Titanic was actually in 1997.

Star Wars Episode I should have won for visual effects, but it didn't because the movie was shit.

And finally, it tells us nothing about the sad state of affais in movies today.

Re:Movie magic

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like something struck a nerve. What's your connection to all this?

Re:Movie magic

[Anonymous Coward]

"Manex" never won an Academy Award. People who worked on the Matrix at Manex won a visual effects oscar for that work.

People who worked at Manex won the Academy Award for work on "What Dreams May Come" while they were employed by Mass Illusion.

None of these people work for what's left of Manex.

Re:Movie magic

[MisterBlister]

The special effects in The Matrix were pretty run of the mill. SW: TPM had much better visual effects (orders of magnitude more original and technically sophisticated). Sadly, since nobody likes George Lucas, ILM got screwed.

O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[Sanity]

$1024 for a conference pass - that is absolutely rediculous given than many of the people who make Open Source happen don't have the backing of a company that could cover this cost.

Even the 65% off that students get leaves the student with a hefty price-tag, I know that during my student days every pound (went to uni in the UK) was valuable and there was no way I could justify spending over $300 to get into a conference just for the privilige of speaking to others who have also had to fork out (I find the people I meet at conferences are often much more interesting than those speaking at them).

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[ObviousGuy]

The problem is that there aren't enough companies who are interested in Open Source who are also interested in backing a conference like this. If you ever get the chance to go to a conference like Software Development, you'll get to see a very well run conference with sponsors with deep pockets. It all leads to lower fees all around.

But that's the price you pay when you base your business around Free Software.

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[spaten-optimator]

Well, it was either charge $1024, or $512. Like true computer geeks, they can only think in powers of two. Methinks the organizers have read Snow Crash one too many times.

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[butternipples wee]

can we say c a p a t i l s i m with an attitude

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[butternipples wee]

jesus, someone shoot me

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

What was on the invoice? $2^10?

Re:O'Reilly conferences are laughably expensive

[morgajel]

that's why I'll be standing out in the parking lot talking to anyone who walks out the doors. Last year I spent 2 hours talking to some guy that I thought was RMS....turns out he was just a janitor.

despite what he said

[Anonymous Coward]

There IS a car in the background in one of the LOTR scenes

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak on the benefits of Open Source, or fork over more $ to the MPAA? Which would be a better use of our editors' time?

And from the Finnish judges... a 7.3

[Wee]

For all the supposed, self-described "trolls" one sees here (the people who think a "troll" is a little man under a bridge are especially amusing, and the simpletons who repetitively paste in inane garbage are boorishly amusing at times, but the fishing references are really the best), yours was quite a good one.

The UID isn't quite high enough to really fool people but it's close enough given the +1 posting karmic bonus, which shows a sense of patience and forbearance. However, the AOL reference almost spoiled it as too obvious, and the post could have been longer. A link to a page at http://*.aol.com/* which explains "netiquette" would have been especially helpful in mitigating the obvious AOL reference and certainly would have set you apart from the -1 riff-raff. Using quotes or other HTML 0.9 markup to denote the quoted material would have also increased your overall score slightly as well. In the end, the clincher was the replies you received, which are part and parcel to any good troll.

I give it a 7.3 out of 10 post-Siegel & Canter points. Well done, sir!

-B

old news

[Orthox]

I just wanted to be annoying and point out the fact that this is old news. that is all!

Check this out.

[dingo]

I came across this the other day and thought it was really funny, make sure you read it in order though.

Question to ask Peter, Hemo & CmdrTaco?

[stefanlasiewski]

Finally! Peter Jackson, Hemos & CmdrTaco all in one room.

Which is the best way to destroy a troll? Sunlight or (Score:-1, Troll)?

Interesting but who realy cares?

[way_out_on_the_dark_]

I am happy that LOTR is a great movie and I love the books but I must say. Who gives a damn if this guy is talking at anything? So he used linux and perl, whoopdy-do, I use it every day for heavy duty imaging work. It's nothing new and nothing different, damn, just have Richard Stallman talk, he loves to hear himself think.

get in to the O'Reilly conf for free

[uberstool]

In the back of O'Reilly books tear out those postcards. Write your name in big letters on the back then laminate. This is the secret to getting in for free.

Hey!! Any Swede going to OSCON?

[Dri]

Is there any Swedish people more then me going to OSCON? I'd really like some travel company. =) Contact me at the above adress.

Ha det gött!

Perl? What for?

[prockcore]

I wonder what they were using Perl for.

Then it hit me, they must be using this to replay dvd versions of production tests under linux :)

Thanks for the warning..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey...CT...thanks for telling us. This way we can avoid the 'on-the-scene' blurbs and posts that usually amount to something like this:

"We're here and it's great and I'll say more as soon as I get a chance but it's great and I'll have more to say soon..when I get a chance. It's great!..."

Try to give us another alert approx. 12 hours before you start slamming the lame dialog, thanks. I'll make a point to tune in some hockey.

In Latin...

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW is:

Fortunada Winum Inipsum Woolarium

Which means...

"Investing in Microsoft is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace"

made up

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they had the decency to warn us ahead of time that they will be posting drivel, direct from the scene, here at a time and date we can all avoid...

High end Linux use?

[rgriff59]

They use a ton of Linux and Perl.

Is this the same linux that isn't worth a Quicktime player? I thought that was just for those bottom-feeding free-as-in-beer types who never spend any money. Please pardon my seething sarcasm. Maybe more coffee will help. Sigh.

Re:Perl? What for?

[Joff_NZ]

At Weta, they use a variety of different boxen.. Linux (mostly), but also Mac, Irix, and a bunch of other stuff...

and after personally talking with one of the IT dept managers at Weta, I found they use a lot of perl for the same thing that most of us use perl for... writing cgi scripts which drive their intranet.. because intranets are cross-platform.

If taco is speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

it must be a pretty shit event

RT*B*M

[MickLinux]

Did you by any chance happen to read the Tolkein trilogy? If you had, you would know that the trilogy doesn't end at the first book.

[ listen closely -- you'll hear millions of slashdotters saying ...duh...]

So the movie pretty much follows the first book of the trilogy.

I suggest you read the books. But start at The Hobbit. It makes a wonderful prequel to the series.

The Hobbit (prequel to LOTR)
The Fellowhip of the Rings (LOTR I)
The Two Towers (LOTR II)
The Return of the King (LOTR III)
Silmarillon (History, trivia of Tolkein's midworld. As fun as reading an encyclopedia upsidedown and backwards word by word, in my opinion, but if you *really* want to learn to read Elfin runecharacters, and know the history...)

Re:RT*B*M

[jared_earle]

>The Hobbit (prequel to LOTR)
>The Fellowhip of the Rings (LOTR I)
>The Two Towers (LOTR II)
>The Return of the King (LOTR III)
>Silmarillon (History, trivia of Tolkein's midworld.[snip]

etc. etc.

Hobbit: Kids book, but fun.
LotR Trilogy: The meat
Silmarillion: Never intended for publication yawn-fest. Don't read it, it'll put you off Tolkein.

What it's worth?

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too...

It's worth about...hmmmm...nothing--well, to anyone else that is. It sure serves to inflate taco's ego some more though.

LNUX at $0.83 per share.

Re:What it's worth?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does that mean that Raymod isn't rich anymore?

I loved it when his pompous fat ass started talking about how the money wouldn't go to his head. I knew then that it was going to drop drastically before his 6 months were up.

But 83 cents a share? That is too wonderful.

Re:100 shares?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you have $5 to spend on VA stock, cool :-)

Knowing Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Your discussion will be scheduled in the small room. You know, the one that is the farthest away from where this guy is speaking, and at exactly the same time.

So not only will you not get to see the address, no one will be at your discussion either.

Not sure?

[mbbac]

FWIW I believe Hemos and I are speaking too, but I'm much more interested in seeing this LotR thing.

You believe you're speaking? You're not even sure if you're speaking or not? Damn, I'd hate to have to sit in on that speech if you do end up speaking.

"Yea, and, ummmm... (come on, think technology you idiot) So, this one time Hemos and I met Asia Carrera. That was cool."

Hemos & Cmdrtaco on special effects

[heroine]

Somehow the image of the handheld device and consumer electronics celebrities lecturing on workstations and computation farms doesn't seem to fit.

A ton of Linux and Perl?

[sharkey]

They measure them by weight? I always thought they were measured by lines of code.

Perl Regexps are Too Complex

[juanco]

Perl is trying to do too much with regular expressions. Why not just take the thing one notch up and allow for LL(kN) grammars?

That's the approach ANTLR (htp://www.antlr.org) uses for its lexical analizers.

Too complex? Just look at the examples in Wall's article and decide by yourselves.

Juanco
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