Slashdot Mirror
Film Gimp Chalks Up Another Studio
Robin Rowe of the Film Gimp project has a piece running on NewsForge (also part of OSDN) that says "Film Gimp has recently been adopted by ComputerCafe, the fourth motion picture studio to use it in making feature films." Check out this recent post about Film Gimp to see some great screenshots of behind-the-scenes use. (And Rowe is also hoping you can get to the Linux Movies Track at Creative Cow West 2003, starting Tuesday in Los Angeles.) Update: 02/17 04:04 GMT by T : Brain rebooted, so I added the missing link.
Keep reading...
Film Gimp is based on GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Film Gimp is an independent project, separate from GIMP and GNU.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
In many respects, IRIX is the better choice. IRIX is loaded with features that make it great for film work. But in the end, the high price of hardware and software loses out to linuxes strengths.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Historically, custom-written solutions on propietary hardware has been the norm in the VFX industry.
However, Hollywood has always been focused on the bottom line. VFX studios are always looking for cheaper solutions for creation of visual effects.
Companies that have locked themselves into SGI, for example, have found themselves having to cut prices to compete with other botiques using cheaper solutions on commodity hardware.
Embracing the linux/open-source movement has gained remarkable popularity in recent years. A few small studios each contributing a small amount to a project such as film-gimp have produced a product superior to Adobe Photoshop for film work.
(PS does not properly support 16-bit color, a neccessity in modern pipelines.)
This trend has advanced to the point where the VFX community is afraid of even Apple asorbing shake and cutting its price in half. Would you spend 250k on shake licenses for linux x86 if you cannot get a firm answer on whether or not the program will be supported in 2005? Or, would you dump 100k into supporting the development of Cinelerra?
It's important to remember that the VFX companies are a totally different aspect of Hollywood than Jack Valenti and his minions.
At the end of the day, a computer is a tool. If a 10k program can help a 150k/year VFX artist work even 10% faster, it is worth its cost.
If a free program cannot produce such a speed-up, it will not penetrate the upper echelon of VFX work.
However, if a free program can help a 2-3 man studio compete with the big boys, it's easy to understand why Film-GIMP has taken off in a big way. PS is now the second place runner, a position it has not had to be in in a long time.
Competition will continue with only better results (hopefully on the silver screen) as the result.
-Brett
FilmGimp started as a hacked up version of Gimp to solve a particular problem that had no solution. Instead of making that a propriatary product R&H went open source. FilmGimp is more specialized buy very handy for some extgreme image processing. very cool
It may just be the only OSS tool in the motion picture industry.
I know sweep, an opensource sound editor is used widely, and in fact was partly funded by Pixar.
Your comparing people who make movies with those who's business is to invest, finance, and eventually profit from them. The people using this software only care about quality and creating spectacular effects, and use the best tool for the job be it OSS or not.
(PS does not properly support 16-bit color, a neccessity in modern pipelines.)
I'm going to stamp out the idiots right now and say that Film Gimp does not support 16-bit per pixel color (aka high-color). Rather, it supports 16-bit per channel color, or 48-bits (64 with an alpha channel) per pixel.
It also supports 32-bit floating point per channel, for things like HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging.