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Dreamworks, Sinbad & Linux
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."
"The biggest problems were the women and the water."
Isn't that the problem that most men have to deal with anyway?
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Strange, being a Linux user women are my biggest problem too.
Look at these:
Pixar moves to Linux from SGI
Pixar switches from Sun to Linux
I find it highly amusing that the only place I could find clips for this new movie was on WindowsMedia.com!
"Created using Linux, advertised by Microsoft."
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!
Short answer: No.
Since when has a Linux user honestly given a cr*p what anyone else thinks?
Rock on boys!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Me thinks the Dreamworks team had a whole lot of wholesome fun while making the movie.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Totally Life!
ALL replies
That makes about as much sense as putting a screen door on a submarine.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
It's all about the cost savings - they've used Unix before, but this makes it less expensive to crank up the number of computers involved. Really, this isn't that big a story. It's well-known that Linux is becoming the platform of choice for this specific application...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
More proof that Linux users are a bunch of pirates
Karma: Chameleon (mostly affected when you come and go, you come and go)
"is the first Hollywood production created entirely on Linux. "
another thing I won't be able to watch with windows..
oh wait.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh yeah, sure, keep supporting the MPAA. And when linux won't run on DRM-mandated machines, don't come running to me!
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your gcc
version. If you think it's MPlayer's fault, please read DOCS/bugreports.html
and follow the instructions there. We can't and won't help unless you provide
this information when reporting a possible bug.
(and, yes, that was a joke, folks...)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
There are better ways to do that, man.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Each hair isn't drawn individually. What they might have termed "strands" is really a clump that gets it's own outline, and has it's own controls.
If you look at the picture, 16 seems about right for the number of "clumps" of visible hair bundles with outlines. I imagine the CG animation on these is very intricate.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
In other news:
"Making coffee proved a very difficult task for my Ford Explorer."
No wonder the film took four years to make !
Animator: Sorry love, we didn't quite capture that.. once more, but this time come closer.. we need to get an artistic feel
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
...that "an entire Hollywood production was created on Linux", at least according to this
Hey, it's even the same company.
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.
These always make me laugh. "How come the IBM Linux commercial is only on Windows Media not some open source codec that only we know about..."
It is not irony. There are two major reasons for this:
1. It is marketing. Most people still have windows and will until Linux wins out on the desktop for average users.
2. Avid or whatever they use for edting outputs in whatever the video format guy knows how to use. Most TV producers are not computer scientists and don't see the irony and/or don't care.
The article didn't mention what specific workstation tools they were using to model or develop the animation. I assume that these are home-grown tools but any chance that they will release that software?
Well, you've never been married.
Or maybe you have...no paycheck, AND no sex!
That comedian always had the zaniest things to say.
And his pants!
The article doesn't mention anything about Linux having any issue with his pants. Big, billowy pants - likely what inspired MC Hammer now that I think of it.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Perhaps he is now rejecting the following he got from films like Seven and Fight Club.
HEY! You do NOT talk about Fight Club!
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Free your mind.
DEC 25 perhaps?
Because everyone knowns that OCT 33 just doesn't make sense.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Actually, take a look at all the high profile actors that do voice-over work for animated and CG films. A lot of big name actors lend their voices to kids movies, but that doesn't mean they are moving into that realm. It's just another job (and another paycheck).
Or maybe he just likes Linux
Anyone want to take me up on a bet that he doesn't know what Linux is? For some reason I don't see actors choosing to work on this movie because they have some heart-felt connection with Linux advocates.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
I wonder if Dreamworks will ever come up with some original concepts for their animated films.
A Bug's Life/Antz (Obvious.)
The Emperor's New Groove/Road to El Dorado (These were much closer originally, but changed quite drastically after rewrites on both sides).
Monster's Inc./Shrek (This is quite a stretch, but hey, green monsters star in both, heh.)
Treasure Planet/Sinbad (Hardy har har!)
Finding Nemo/Sharkslayer (Something smells fishy here.)
Obviously these movies aren't all complete ripoffs by any stretch of the imagination, but it is quite interesting that Dreamworks/PDI movies that closely follow the release of Disney/Pixar ones have similiar basic ideas behind them.
Most TV producers are not computer scientists and don't see the irony and/or don't care.
Can you imagine how awful TV would be if it WERE produced by computer scientists?
Channel 45: The Slashdot channel! Geeks rant and rave about Microsoft, SCO, and RIAA! Then they geek out over Linux, *BSD (which they always seem to point is dying), and Mac OS X!!!
Channel 52: The Microsoft Channel! Bill Gates discusses his plans for world domination!
Channel 54: The Linux channel! Kernel hacker Alan Cox takes you line-by-line through the Linux source code!
Channel 58: The Apple Channel! Steve Jobs demonsrates his famous "Reality Distortion Field" and exaggerates a lot about Apple's latest G5 computers!
Channel 62: The FSF Channel! RMS talks about how Channel 54 should be called the GNU/Linux channel!
Channel 69: The SCO Channel! *** programming unavailable ***
My journal has hot
It surprises me that no animator (that I know of) has started some kind of distributed rendering effort with people on the Internet (eg. distributed.net). Not only could it be faster and cheaper, but you immediately have a huge number of people who feel that they have a stake in the movie, this might also increase audiences.
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
In this slashdot article it claims that Spirit was the first movie to be created in a 100% linux environment (in April 2002). How can this Sinbad movie be the first one if Spirit was... Over a year ago. Am I missing something here or is this just another PR attempt?
...if you didn't see it on the Apple Quicktime trailerssite. They're often the first place the trailer shows up.
What does a multi-million dollar installation in the entertainment industry do to help Linux?
It means another customer for content production applications on Linux, to help ensure that these applications will continue to be produced
It means another support contract for Red Hat or whoever is going to be supporting the render farm
It means another job for a Linux sysadmin
It means more customers making sure that whatever hardware/software they buy works on Linux
It means more publicity for your favorite OS
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
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...
Or more exactly, the support for good GFX cards. Does HP provide special drivers etc for certain applications or what?
Just thinking of the benefit for the avarage Linux user.
It was created using various applications. Those applications could have been running on FreeBSD, OS X...it doesn't really matter all that much. In fact all of these applications can already be recompiled to run on OS X or whatever. That the name of the kernel providing virtual memory, process switching, device drivers, and some low-level services is "Linux" in this case, well, that's something that really only matters if you're a hardcore geek.
I don't mean this as a flame at all. It's just that this story is misguided advocacy. Generic putdowns of "Windows" are equally as meaningless. People don't use an operating system. People use applications. Being fixated on operating systems is like being fixated on tires instead of cars.
1) Spirit wasn't done on Linux. That was marketing bull puckey. It wasn't rendered on Linux, either. There were some portions of the 2D animation that were done in linux, namely the Toon Shooter program and coloring the 2D animation.
2) Backgrounds and some other minor stuff for Sinbad was done in Photoshop, on Macintosh G4. So this movie isn't 100% linux, either. Although now DW is using Photoshop 7 in Crossover on Linux, and (gasp) Windows 2000.
3) 3D modeling and animation were done in A|W's Maya. Dreamworks contributed to both Maya and RH Linux by beta testing and reporting bugs, and making feature requests to both, that were rolled back into the public releases. Also they contributed to Crossover with Disney/Pixar to get Photoshop working on Linux. So they have contributed, a little.
4) A friend of mine at DW got me a pass to see Sinbad last saturday morning. It's pretty good, actually, certainly not as bad as the previews make it out to be - but DW's marketing department pretty much sucks hiney, so I doubt that anyone will ever know that. The animation's not that great, though.
"The first movie created entirely with Linux"
So funny how everyone praises the technology. I'm sure they used at least one or two pencils to make that movie...
Sinbad was traditionally animated, which means a lot of people hunched over light tables, exactly the same way they did it in the 1920-30's. The ink and paint department may be gone, and the effects are a little bit better, but an animator from that time would still fit right in...
Really, what diffrence does it make what kernel ran their graphics software? I mean, this is a good victory for OSS, but it dosn't really help anyone of us.
And notice that the article dosn't mention what software the actual animators used. Sure, I suppose they could have drawn each character on cells and scanned them, but I find that doubtfull.
No, it'll be big news when a movie is produced entirely with Open Source (or at least cheap) software like the movie gimp and other tools.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's nice seeing on slashdot's frontpage stories like Bill Gates' interview about Linux going nowhere and this story about Linux going everywhere.
I swear, Bill Gates must be the worst technologist/visionary/prophet if he only sees Linux as a passing fad.
Channel 54: The Linux channel! Kernel hacker Alan Cox takes you line-by-line through the Linux source code!
:)
Hot Damn! I would LOVE to see that
Finkployd
Well, Pixar president Ed Catmull said at WWDC last week that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac was the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan.
In addition, Final Cut Pro only runs on Mac, Apple sells Shake for $5000 on Mac OS X and $10000 on Linux and other platforms, 25% Maya sales go to Mac OS X. It looks that Mac OS X on G5 is a far better 3D and video solution than Linux, particularly now that the dual G5 Power Mac is cheaper than the dual Xeon Dell.
Actually those sound like a major improvement.. I might bother getting cable if they had channels like that. The only channels I really like are like Discovery, TLC, and stuff like that.. though I admit I also watch MTV/VH1 and The Cartoon Network.
:)
Actually though I think geeks could make really good television. A lot of us are real movie/tv buffs and are actually pretty funny. I've actually thought about making a tv series of my life.. something like a combination Jerry Springer, Seinfield, and Freaks & Geeks. I think it'd be pretty popular.. especially with my fellow geeks.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.