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Disney Switches To Linux For Animation
EEEthan writes: "It looks like Linux is really the next big thing for movie graphics houses. The New York Times is reporting that Disney has switched over to Linux-based HP workstations for animation. Although Disney has historically been known for their hand-drawn animation, this is a big move to Linux for what might be the world's most famous producer of animated films."
If the operating system *mattered* for animation, this would be a big deal... but it doesn't. They're using Linux because it's cheaper, and because any (half-decent) operating system would function just as well for this sort of task.
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uh, i think they're switching to linux to render the animation, not actually produce it. big difference
Wrong. Read the article next time.
In animation, Linux made its first inroads a few years ago on the clusters of server computers used in "rendering farms," which require huge amounts of processing to render a finished image of a creature or character as it appears on movie screens.
More recently, Linux has also been used on the workstations used by animators for drawing and modeling their creations, as the leading producers of animation software have tailored their applications to run on Linux. Alias-Wavefront tweaked its Maya program to run on Linux in March 2001
So the renderfarms were converted to Linux years ago for the most part. The real news is that the content creation is actually being done on Linux workstations now.
-- Adam
Which software do they use? Obviously Gimp covers my needs way better than some Photoshop, but I doubt that they could use it.
This probably means some new commercial pro package for linux, and I wonder which.
According to the article, they are using a software package called Maya, recently ported to Linux from SGI/IRIX.
-- Adam
Huh?
Naming issues only arise if the two are in the same market and could be confused. Which is why I can't go out and call a restaurant "McDonalds", but open a shoe store called "McDonalds". There is a valid reason for the real McD to think consumers will be confused by the two McD restaurants, but confusing a restaurant and a shoe store is more of a stretch (comments about food quality and shoe leather notwithstanding).
Given that "Lilo" in "Lilo and Stitch" are cartoon characters, and "LILO" is a program, I don't think there will be many problems.
Dreamworks are also using HP hardware and Linux for their animation - HP released this a few days ago.. Info on it Here
If you're using Avid Symphony, Avid|DS, Avid|DS HD, or Avid|DS HD Editor, you are most certainly uisng a Windows box as you can't run any of this on any other system. If you are running 3D StudioMAX, once again, you are running Windows because this is all it runs on. Should I go on?
You may feel differently, but I cannot conceive of a plausible justification. Except that liberty isn't important to you.
Maybe I don't have quite so fucked-up of an idea of "liberty"? Maybe I've not been spending quite so much time smoking weed and reading the GNU Manifesto?
Tell me, do you ever use Shell Oil? Unocal? Chevron? They've done far worse than Disney could ever dream of. Just because free software is important to you, doesn't make your issues with Disney more important than all the problems of millions around the world who face real loss of liberty due to corporate evil.