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Linux at Industrial Light and Magic
Nicholas DePetrillo writes "Linux Journal has a big story about how LINUX is being used in hollywood, specificly at Industrial Light and Magic with some GREAT screenshots
and a very descriptive article with configuration details." Word has it that their rendering farms have gotten even bigger since this article was published.
Not very nice comments in there about SGI. They are true enough though. The O2 is a *great* multimedia desktop machine. Lots of features, small package. Just like the Indy before it.
Compute performance is a real problem though for all but the high end SGI machines. The O2 went EOL this year for all but OEM (Medical and Video apps).
What I find interesting is that the studios are building their own tech to suit their needs. They started this process on SGI machines in order to leverage the rich toolset found in IRIX. Now they are able to build on the open tools found under Linux.
Alias Wavefront (owned by SGI) used to package and sell critical technology to the Studios along with a number of services delivered under NDA. They still do this, but their days are numbered.
Open Source is enabling a new trend toward in-house technology development. Given the high cost of A|W and SGI toolsets plus the added services and consulting required to make them work in creative ways, I am not surprised to find the studios able to just build what they want cheaper. They also are able to create the features that make their workflow better.
Seems like the studios want nothing to do with any sort of lock in with any vendor. Talk about lowering TCO!
Not only does their in-house development allow them to make the most of their time and creative energy, but they get to take advantage of new platforms in the future --without having to re-purchase tools.
They are smart enough to develop common tools that they (and us) can all use while keeping those things that make them special in-house. Too bad more of the mainstream businesses are not able to see this yet. When they do --look out!
So SGI moves back into their niche with IRIX, high end visualization, and parallel computing and serving. What of Alias Wavefront?
They look doomed to me. Maya now is cheap and runs on Linux. Its users develop their own tools with it so A|W maybe gets consulting, but little else. On the Industrial Design side, their Studio Tools package really only appeals to the high end Automotive styling group. Everyone else can use either MCAD tools, or tools like Rhino to get their work done.
This was a great article that does a lot to illuminate just how computing can change under an open platform.
Blogging because I can...
ILM is comfortable with multiple platforms. Its 1,400 employees use a variety of operating systems. The art department has Macs, with the rotoscopers and painters transitioning to OS X. Hendrickson sees OS X as a possible player. ``What attracts us is the BSD-like Darwin core and network compatibility.'' ILM has few Windows boxes, besides those on business side. ``There's no advantage to a Windows conversion for us'', says Hendrickson. ``We're a UNIX shop and probably always will be.''
Nice to see ILM is keeping with the times. When Phantom Menace came out, SGI had promotional info up about SGI [origin?] servers and EP I. Fast forward three years and we have come upon another case of Linux and [relativel] commodity hardware changing the heart of a big Iron SGI all-star. ILM did have a JEDI Pact with SGI not too long ago, but as was inferred in the article, its really hard to compete with free (as in beer) in the shrinking-margin world of SFX.
FWIW, On the Ep I DVD Making of Documentary, OS 9 was visible durinag a photoshopping session, Windows (or a GUI clone) for Motion capture and unix (presumably IRIX) for the rest.