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Dreamworks, Sinbad & Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

Ex-MislTech writes "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, an animated movie from DreamWorks Animation Technology that hits theaters July 2, is the first Hollywood production created entirely on Linux. More than 250 Hewlett-Packard workstations running Red Hat Linux make up the core of DreamWorks' graphics platform."

5 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Eh... by vasqzr · · Score: 5, Informative


    Look at these:

    Pixar moves to Linux from SGI

    Pixar switches from Sun to Linux

  2. Re:Eh... by 3.5+stripes · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, most of the workstations of the animators are linux.

    The animation director's is a dual 2ghz xeon running limux. He told me so. He also told me they'd be changing in a few years, but wouldn't tell me what to :(

    --


    He tried to kill me with a forklift!
  3. First time was last year by beef3k · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...that "an entire Hollywood production was created on Linux", at least according to this

    Hey, it's even the same company.

  4. Re:Linux Quality by Enry · · Score: 4, Informative

    A few years ago I replaced an SGI cluster with a Linux cluster. Due to the reduced cost of hardware and software (they even bought from VA Lin^H^H^HSoftware), they paid less to purchase the Linux cluster than the yearly lease fee of the SGI cluster.

    And the Linux cluster had at least twice (probably 3-4x) the performance.

  5. I bet any 2D textures weren't done on Linux... by EnglishTim · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work in one of Europe's largest post production houses, and we've moved most things over to Linux now. However, we still need Windows to run Adobe Photoshop, as there's still nothing suitable yet in Linux. The GIMP just doesn't cut it, and I'm sure it's the same with them.

    Sure, the modelling, animation and rendering were probably all done on Linux, but it's probably not correct to say that it was done exclusively on Linux. I bet there were a bunch of Windows or Macs with Photoshop on them being used there, and unless they did all their compositing on Shake, they'll have probably used some dedicated compositing systems.

    Linux works quite well in visual effects, largely because all those who grew up using IRIX workstations find it quite familiar. The pipelining and scripting stuff is easier than it is in NT/2000/XP. However, it's worth noting that the vast majority of the actual graphics software we use is still commercial/proprietary - there's not much in the way of Open Source stuff out there of a sufficiently high quality. The notable exception to this is 'Liquid' a maya->Renderman convertor, and to a lesser extent FilmGimp - useful because there's not much else that will edit High Dynamic Range images, but less useful because it still appears to be rather unstable...