Big Blue to take on Pixar?

spareacct1 writes "USAToday is reporting that IBM is set to announce a strategic partnership with Threshold Digital Research Labs of Santa Monica, CA. TDRL now hopes it has the deep pockets and computing power to take on Pixar as the undisputed leader in CG animated films. TDRL's spartan website is showing off digital stills. Interesting sidebar at the end of the story, both Pixar and TDRL recently dumped Sun and MS, respectively, in favor of Linux."

Comments

Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixar's movies are good because of their people, not their computers. They've got good artists, good directors, and amazing writers. Without those, you end up with movies like Final Fantasy: technically adept, but ultimately empty and pointless.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[glib909]

But aren't most of the writers actually from Disney?

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and also they have a monkey.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Most of Pixar's success can be attributed to John Lasseter, the idea guy behind (and director of) the Toy Story movies and A Bug's Life.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[capt.Hij]

They've got good artists, good directors, and amazing writers.

How come nobody ever says that about pr0n? That industry seems to be doing okay. Then again they rely on a different kind of hardware.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

I think John Lassester is an ass for putting himself at the beginning of the spirited away and castle in the sky dvds(and possible other miyazaki dvds)...'You are in for a real treat with this movie and my close friend, hayao miyazaki..blah blah blah'

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[SIGFPE]

You think they have good writers. Finding Nemo had Yet Another Sucky Disney Story Like All The Others. Tedious crap.

But they have amazing artists. Finding Nemo was an awesome feast for the eyes. It raised the bar (that's the in phrase right now) in visuals and everything was simply a joy to look at. And yet when you see Pixar people interviewed they always repeat the "Story is King" line and say how animation is nothing without story. I disagree. Beautiful visuals can carry a movie with a lame script. Film is a visual art form. Whether you're an old bastard like me or a 5 year old, pretty images can keep you looking.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

horses have talent...

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[timeOday]

Businesses get talent exactly the same way they get computer hardware. They buy it.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[ReallyQuietGuy]

putting himself at the beginning of the spirited away

I have to agree - I thought Miyazaki looked distinctly uncomfortable...

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[2nd Post!]

Yet you can point as Final Fantasy: Spirits Within as beautiful visuals with a lame script; arguably it did not carry the movie.

Finding Nemo isn't *revolutionary*. Like most classic revered Disney films, it's a fable with a moral and message. It does not strive to to challenge the viewer. You don't come out of a Pixar movie and spend several hours with friends arguing the significance and meaning of certain symbols or events. Everything in a pixar film is clear and concrete: The ending is already determined by the conflict in the first 10 minutes, and all the character growth is predictable.

For you it's tedious. For the many people who have not yet achieved certain milestones, Pixar movies (and Disney movies) reinforce certain norms and belief systems through analogy and example.

There are certainly movies that force growth by expanding your consciousness and awareness, but Pixar movies are not those kind of films.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful visuals can carry a movie with a lame script

So what about Star wars II?
That was likie watching a computer game at times. Beautiful to look at but no plotline.
Its the dim beautiful Bimbo of the series.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah!

Duplicating Kasparov at a single game, with a strict rule-set, doesn't get you the ability to make a Deep Blue version of Lasseter!

The whole staff of animators there are gret. Natural actors, with a great sense of timing and physical comedy...

Those pictures posted on the "spartan" site need alot more than speedy rendering!

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Woops!

dropped a /i !

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[diersing]

I agree with everything you said, but I don't believe the parent was trying to say Pixar/Disney movies are trying to compete with the type of film you describe.

Pixar/Disney are about box office and merchandise, which they do very well at. I like their movies because when my 4 year old drags me into a theatre, I get some entertainment out of it as well. They do a great job of adding enough for the adults which many animated features (big screen or small) don't do.

I'm not the movie buff I'm betting you are, but I'd love to hear what movies for you sparked a debate amongst you and your friends. Of course I have my own list, but I think many are because of the place in my life I was in and the events of the world around me at that time.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[corbettw]

"...pretty images can keep you looking."

Hey, that's the thing that keeps Larry Flynt in business.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[2nd Post!]

It's mostly books, for me :)

Dune series by Frank Herbert
Ender's series by Orson Scott Card
Robot series by Isaac Asimov

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Goalie_Ca]

This is why i think the new Star Wars films suck. Too much attention has been focused on the effects and everything. You need a nice balence between plot and character development and the visual and audio effects.

It seems today that a-list actors and visual effects with high-budget action scenes are all that are needed for a film and that the script is there merely to get the two together. Basically, a script serves the same purpose as it does in a porno!

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, here:

www.playboy.com/

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Point. A lot of people in the computer industry seem to miss out on this all the time. Speaking as a musician first and a computer geek second, I've seen a lot of really bad "musicians" sink a lot of money into the latest gear only to pump out crap. Meanwhile a true artist with an acoustic guitar and a great voice can bring a hush on the noisiest bar. The same can be said for computer gear. I, myself, have been using an Ensoniq Mirage on most of my new age albums since I was 16. I've had that thing for half of my life! Even though I only use it as a keyboard controller these days, it still goes to show you that low tech isn't necessarily bad.

Now, in response to any trolls out there, I just have to post this. Make of it what you will:

I was actually thinking you could have a forehead. This would be the additional head that extends from above your brow underneath the skin. It would be it's own entity with the ability to control your movements. And then you can also have an afthead. This would be nearly identical to the forehead (underneath the skin for the most part, only it would always want to go in a different direction than the forehead would.
But it wouldn't have control of your movements, so the only thing it can do is sit back there and gripe about it. Occasionally, he gets incensed enough that he tries to reach around and
punch the forehead. But both of them have arms that are too short to
reach. Meanwhile the forehead just taunts the afthead. The forehead and afthead have no hair at all, but are fairly wrinkly with only their eyes, ears nose and arms exposed. Everything else is underneath your skin. Both have internal feet to kick your head with when they get angry with you.

This is actually a true story.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[danila]

May be that means that IBM should concentrate on doing VR porn using their super-fast computers? Then in a few years the technology could be deployed in games that would run on a standard desktop computer...

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[diersing]

I agree again, books have the power and I think my impression, translation, and interpretation is what is ultimatly responsible for that. No camera can create the the images as well as my imagination. But I digress, in cinema, there have been movies that have provoked thought, debate, and elightenment in my life. But after seeing movieX, they all faded away. To this day, the movie that has prompted the most self reflection and changing in myself has been Schindler's List

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[aastanna]

Pixar movies are for children. I can't think of any movies meant for children that had me debating the meaning of symbols or events.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[UnknowingFool]

But aren't most of the writers actually from Disney?

No, Disney and Pixar are vertical partners. Disney is Pixar's distribution and marketing partner. Pixar makes all the films from storyboards to rendering the last frame. Disney has final approval on what they decide to release with Pixar, but they do not have any control over Pixar's creative process. Once the film is complete and meets Disney's approval, Disney handles all the distribution (theater release, DVD, etc) and marketing (promotions, commercials, licensing). Disney and Pixar split proceeds 50/50.

That is until now. The Disney/Pixar deal only lasted 5 films and is now over: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo. In the future, Pixar can stay with Disney or go with another company like Dreamworks SKG. Disney is not in the best shape in the animation dept. Not counting the Pixar films, their last series of animations have been duds. I think their last hit was Mulan in 1998. So Disney needs Pixar more than Pixar needs Disney, but it will be interesting to see what Pixar does next animation wise and business wise

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[2nd Post!]

Why are you telling me this?

Anyway, it's a bit dismissive to say that isn't it? As if children were somehow lower class citizens or something?

I watch and enjoy Pixar movies fine, as well as Disney, your standard sci-fi, thriller, drama, etc. All of it is entertainment; I guess I take issue because it's like saying 'Game are for kids' or 'Comics are for kids' or ' is for kids'.

Pixar movies are for everyone, and that makes sense financially; by targetting the largest possible market, it ensures the largest possible income.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[AvitarX]

I heard an interview with one hof the big guys at Pixar on NPR. He said that what they can do with the currecnt tech is a factor taken when they do a film.

Toys are plastic, ALL early CG looked plastic, thus Toy Story.

He also said that when they felt they could do fur they did monsters inc. Because they wanted to use the fur.

From the interview it sounded like every part got equal share of the attention, (the directing, the casting, the story, the graphics). All of the Pixar films have been solid childrens movies that would have worked weather CG or animated (most would have been incredibly hokey live action though).

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[tandr]

and all the character growth is predictable

Comeon... First 1 min of Shrek was completely unpredictable (with this famous "yeah, right"). Ending was defined not in 20 mins at all...

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[tandr]

oh crap... that was DreamWorks (checked www.shrek.com)!

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[vlad lorenzo]

Do you really belive that technology isn't a key factor in their success (not only pixar's but cartoony cg movies in general)?

Imagine if pixar's moview were done in traditional hand-drawn technique, wouldn't we still have more of the same ol' disney moralistic fables?

Lately while traditional animated U.S. films have been declining (financially) cg movies that are basically at the same "artistic" level (..if this is art then I'm missing a term for the works of tolstoy, raphael, etc. but that's another story) and targetting the same audience have been noted for their success. I belive technology and it's novelty factor make the difference.

This is not to say that a good story is not important, but I fear that success is being equaled to quality and thus taking pixar's movies as some kind of artistic acomplishment and by deeming technique irrelevant (and studios prefering the statistically successful) missing the posibility of having some of the memorable and artistically relevant work that a unique medium like animation can offer.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ask me, the new Star Wars visual effects really aren't "all that"! (Well, at least attack of the clones. I didn't even go see the first one!) I'm thinking of stuff like the "factory" scene - it was down right cartoon like / not realistic at all! (Spielberg did a better job in Minority Report - at least things moved around believably in that one.) And the unnatural motion of the whole city chase scene sucked ass too.

I will admit, however, that I did like the asteroid chase scene between Kenobi and Jango Fett. But one good scene couldn't possible save the film from sucking overall ;) And, I think I am more a "sound" person, so maybe it was just the cool sound effect they used for those explosive charge thingies Jango was tossing out the back door.

Anyway, the only reason I went was to see digital projection in action. And, I have mixed feeling about this too: moving scenes weren't too bad, the image was plenty bright, and it seems like the color was good - though, perhaps, over saturated. BUT with relatively still imagery and particularly with text (like the opening/closing credits) the pixelization was extremely obvious. I also caught some digital garbage in a corner of the screen at one point - as if there was dropout in the data stream or something. I guess you trade one artifact (scratches in the film) for another (pixels and digital dropouts).

Hopefully the movie industry doesn't sell out to Microsoft WMV digital film initiative - then we will have the privilege of looking at compression artifacts in addition to not quite good enough projector resolution. (I mean WMA sounds as good as MP3 at half the bitrate - if your completely tone deaf and can stomach all the high frequency artifacts. Why should WMV for film be any different? ;)

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[vanyel]

Yup: Pixar's biggest asset is John Lasseter, who knows how to tell a great story.

Re: Talent, not clock cycles

[gidds]

It's true, and not just in the animation world too.

I was listening to the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker commentary to their film Top Secret!, on why they felt that film was less successful than their previous one, Airplane!, despite probably having more jokes. The reason: Airplane! was well-plotted, with a strong classical structure; Top Secret!'s plot was more of an excuse to get from scene to scene.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[am 2k]

I'd love to hear what movies for you sparked a debate amongst you and your friends.

I'm not the original poster, but I'd say Matrix - Reloaded is definitely in this category.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Mathness]

Basically, a script serves the same purpose as it does in a porno!

Screwing people and getting paid for it?

It certainly fit a lot of the "blockbuster" movies pouring out of Hollywood (to name one). All flash and fluffy but no substance in the long run.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like most classic revered Disney films, it's a fable with a moral and message."

Sure it's got a message. It's tells children that animals have personalities and should be treated with respect.

Being a Vegan I can relate.

Unfortunately McDonalds and Disney have partnered together for most children's movies that Disney produces. This can lead to some serious questions the next time you are at your local McDonalds and your child is enjoying their Happy Meal (with the latest "Nemo" toy in it) and you've ordered a "Nemo" sandwich (a.k.a. Fillet o' Fish).

While I am not a parent, I believe children shouldn't be mislead.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Just Some Guy]

Finding Nemo had Yet Another Sucky Disney Story Like All The Others. Tedious crap.

I disagree. I took my 3.5- and 2.5-year olds to see it last night (their first trip to a theater) and they were mesmerized the entire time. My wife and I laughed hysterically at parts (a 12-step program for sharks who don't want to eat fish? Complete with "denial" and interventions?), but the kids absolutely loved it.

On the other hand, they just didn't grasp the subtleties of "A Clockwork Orange".

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[babbage]

For [animated] movies that are perhaps more morally challenging than Pixar's films, how about Hayao Miyazaki's movies? I'm no particular fan of anime, but I thought "Spirited Away" was wonderful, and after seeing it I went back to see "Princess Mononoke", which was also pretty good. I'm told that Miyazaki's other movies are also good ("Kiki's Messenger Service", "Castle in the Sky").

"Spirited Away" & "Princess Mononoke" both had an interesting, shifting, relativistic sense of morality that seemed more nuanced than most standard Western children's movies I can think of. In Miyazaki's movies, it is as if all the characters are essentially good on some level, but they have different motivations that drive them to behave in ways that might or might not seem "good" or "evil": the scary woman that runs the spa is just trying to maintain her successful business, the demon that eats half the staff is just thriving on people's greed, etc.

I'd also be interested in a wider list of more challenging children's movies. While the Pixar film may be about as one-dimensional as the average Disney film, they still tend to be impeccably well done. I'd like to see that kind of talent applied to more nuanced storytelling, but where is it? (And nevermind books for now, we all know books are better than movies... :-)

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Raffaello]

Educated adults are dismissive of children's culture because educated adults know much more than children, and understand the world much better than children.

So, an educated adult (as opposed to an overgrown child) will rightly be dismissive of mass culture targeted at children. Such culture is almost always very superficial, and devoid of deeper, symbolic meaning such as one routinely finds in the culture of educated adults.

This is one reason that the earlier Disney films were so successful - they were *not* merely mass kid culture, but were based on myths/fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White) that are actually deeper symbolic tales that are kept alive by re-telling them to children each generation; or based on books that were only *seemingly* children's stories (The Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland) but are actually very adult tales disguised as works for children.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Taos]

There's a small difference in this industry (which I am happy to say I work in). There's a definate "king" to the industry, Pixar, and everybody is always shooting for that goal. "One day I will work at Pixar." is heard frequently by those just starting out (I think I've said it myself). But it takes years of experience and an enormous amount of talent to make it there, even in the less artistic sides like programming (which is what I do).

The problem that other companies have in trying to compete with the talent of Pixar, is that they just can't go out and buy it. Pixar could offer a competitive offer against Threshold for a prospective employee of a nice stack of shiny pennies and most artists would take Pixar. I would. They're the best of the best, and they attract the best of the best.

But other posters have it right. You compete by having a great story. Right now, I'm working at a company on another project while they're doing the storyboards for their next feature. It's an interesting process to watch. The production crew doesn't even get to look at the movie for many more months (partially due to budget constraints), but they're hammering out this animatic every minute detail they can possibly think of. And the idea is that it can stand on it's own as a movie, it will just LOOK like crap. That's where/when we come in.

Great talent is a hard thing to come by in this industry. Just running out and buying a few animators and a couple hackers won't get it done.

Taos

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[2nd Post!]

Yes, but an educated adult also knows that you cannot assume that someone online is an educated adult.

An educated adult should never be dismissive of children's culture because the culture of children is the basic framework upon which the culture of adults is formed; games and play are just training for future adult situations (Cowboy and Indians, playing house or playing doctor, dress up, playing with dolls and action figures, cops and robbers, etc, etc, extrapolate to include modern games too).

You can be dismissive of kid's culture, but I won't, having only been totally enmeshed in it just a few years ago. I can't rightly say I'm an educated adult yet; sometimes I still feel like a kid pretending to be an adult. So until I can totally understand adults *and* kids, I'll admit that I'm probably more kid than adult.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[cosmo7]

Pixar movies are for children. I can't think of any movies meant for children that had me debating the meaning of symbols or events.

Pace animaniacs.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[enkidu]

I'd like to add to the interesting discussion. The suggestion of Hayao Miyazaki's films is a good one. I think in general that Mr. Miyazaki's films have more emotional depth and character depth than Pixar's. He, however, rarely attempts to ponder deeper more open-ended philosophical/societal issues. Some animated films which to try to do this are:

Ghost in the Shell a kick ass action with an open ended look some serious philosophical problems posed by cyborgs and real AI entities.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade amazing emotional animation of a parable about duty, strength, weakness and power.

Can't think of any more off the top of my head right now. EnkiduEOT

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[SIGFPE]

What about Episode II? It was like little characters jumping from matte painting to matte painting. There were no interesting visuals. Good visuals is more than just oversaturated color. The Nemo visuals were expressive.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[SIGFPE]

Er...kids that age, in my experience, want the same thing over and over again. Hell, Tellytubbies did the smart thing of repeating the entire program twice within one episode because kids love the anticipation of something they've already seen. Disney understand that better than most and so produce the same story over and over again. But Pixar can draw the adult crowd too as they can ooh! and aah! at the amazing visuals.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[SIGFPE]

Yet you can point as Final Fantasy: Spirits Within as beautiful visuals with a lame script; arguably it did not carry the movie

Well I agree that it didn't carry the movie.

Firstly. That story was worse than lame. Finding Nemo at least had the standard formulaic story that carries you along. FF had nothing - just a bunch of events that you cared nothing about.

Secondly: while FF was technically awesome the visuals weren't that interesting. Look, animation is an art form. With animation you can express emotions, surprise, tease and simply provide candy like with other art forms. Nemo did all this. The animation in FF was amazing, but also hollow and humourless.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Enonu]

IMHO, one of the best science-fiction movies of all time is Gattaca. It focuses on humanity's potential problem with genetics determining our future rather than our accomplishments or choices we make in life. However, Gattaca does not incorporate all the whiz-bang effects like you see today in typical hollywood cinema. Instead, we're presented with an inspirational story where a man becomes more than he was destined to be. What's more, the directing and cinemetography were also memorable in their own right, futher adding to the film's professionalism. I'd pay $15, perhaps $20 to see another movie of its callibre in the theatres. I'm simply tired of t&a, explosions, and sfx beinf the forumale for movies today.

To further add to your comment, I've heard that this Summer's movie-going crowds were not as high as they were during previous years. Perhaps people are finally getting tired of watching movies that functionaly equivalent to pornography. Another statistic that caught my ear is that only 40% of all movies nowadays turn a profit. Doesn't it seem flatout stupid and ignorant to simply throw money at a film and hope that it sells? Hopefully these morons will wake up soon, and return to traditional film values.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[sharkey]

Then again they rely on a different kind of hardware.

And, umm, *cough*, "software."

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. They could at least put it in the extras section, so I wouldn't have to see that idiot Lasseter each time. At least it was skippable...

Re: Talent, not clock cycles

[richie2000]

Top Secret!'s plot was more of an excuse to get from scene to scene.

Yes, but oh what scenes! From skeet-surfing to throwing darts at the RAF roundel, it's hilarious. The large phone. The East German National Anthem. "Let me know if his condition changes. He's dead." "It took the doctors two hours to get the smile off his face." The fatal car crash in the Ford Pinto. The cow. Deja-vu: "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?". The narrative. The unholy hand grenade. Playing tic-tac-toe. The map in the sand. The...

Damn, I'll have to go watch it again...

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[mink]

I chipped my DVD player, and it jumps to the start of the movie now instead of playing all that intro crap.
Even on Spirited Away.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you get the story/message of Nemo?
I picked it up, it was aimed at parents.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[mink]

Try reading the Nausicaa comic book instead of seeing the film, much deeper and longer story.

Re:Talent, not clock cycles

[mink]

Either you havent seen Nemo, or you failed to get the message. It was squarely pointed at parents and adults.

Have they already done some work?

[The Great Wakka]

This looks eeirly familiar. Is that from the Mortal Kombat movie?

Re:Have they already done some work?

[phaln]

Why yes, it is... If you look through more you'll find Scorpion also.

Re:Have they already done some work?

[heli0]

Yes, they did the effects for MK as well as Scary Movie, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob, The Afterlife, The Faculty and soon Foodfight.

Re:Have they already done some work?

[Comsn]

http://www.threshold-digital.com/visual-fx/fx20.ph p3 is that wing commander?

Re:Have they already done some work?

[thdexter]

Wow. All of those had terrible effects, and Foodfight is little more than a huge ol' advertisement with bad graphics (from what I last saw.) Seriously, it's evil.

Re:Have they already done some work?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the movie "Imposter"

Skill & Creativity

[GNUman]

You don't just need big computing power, you need design & drawing skills, besides lots of creativity and imagination.

I could have all the computing power and still not be able to do something worth watching.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

"artists" are a dime a dozen.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Prof.Phreak]

It's similar to new programmers "needing" the latest & fastest computers to write code.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[NanoGator]

"I could have all the computing power and still not be able to do something worth watching."

That's basically what it boils down to. Dr. Who didn't drastically improve when its movie budget a few years ago.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never done any programming on a computer over 200MHz.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[afidel]

But by the same token you could be a great computer animator and be handicapped by the abilities of your computer. Raytracing takes a LOT of computer time at film resolutions, and the textures can be hundreds of megs per object in a scene. Right now animators often have to layout a scene at lower resolution and with more limited effects during the day and batch it out to the farm at night, if each animator had their own render farm and could get the batch back during the same day then they could tweak things if something looks wrong in the final render.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[G-funk]

No, it went down the toilet with a lame story, no good old characters (no matter what they say, eric roberts is _not_ the master), and a tardis that looked like a hotel lobby.

I'm sorry i every saw that movie. It was worse than the phantom.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

so are idiots

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. I sometimes think that that should be encouraged, so programmers would get their software running RIGHT on their own machines, and wouldn't use "computers are fast enough" as an excuse to write shitty code or use poor design.

Re:Skill & Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh so you're the guy responsible for Final Fantasy...

The OS isn't what matters...

[perimorph]

It doesn't matter if IBM is providing your Linux tech support, and it doesn't matter how pretty the pixels are.. What's important is that the movie is good, and I've never even heard of this company before.

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[Anonymous Coward]

what cave have you been living in ?
finding nemo, monster inc, shrek...
good stuff bro...

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[GNUman]

I don't think he was talking about Pixar...

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[llamaboy487]

uhh... Dreamworks did Shrek. Idiot.

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[Wing_Zero]

uhh... Dreamworks did Shrek. Idiot.

where did dreamworks come in? the article was about pixar and tdrl

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[rolocroz]

Your post's grandparent said Shrek was Pixar, which it's not.

Re:The OS isn't what matters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever dude...
I'm drunk

Define "take on"

[jstockdale]

After looking at the article and TDRL's website, the more interesting side of the story seems to come from the USA Today article, specifically IBM's new goal to make computing power a utility such that on demand computing can be purchased just like the power/water/gas utilities of today. The animation stills from TDRL are ok, but nothing spectacular. I've seen more realistic stills come out of a skilled single artist with Maya (see here). The incredible results that Pixar has been able to achieve through their research into rendering technology (ie. RenderMan) combined with artistic prowess have brought them success, and I fail to see how the Terminator 2 producer merely acquiring processor power brings TDRL into a position to challenge the best in the field.

Re:Define "take on"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be picky, but Ryan (Digital Blasphemy) doesn't use Maya. He uses Lightwave, Vue d'Esprit, World Builder; occasionally some other stuff (like something called XFrog, etc).

But I certainly agree with you, the artist is a very big factor.

Re:Define "take on"

[Jmstuckman]

For an example of what On Demand Computing is all about, see IBM and Akamai's proof-of-concept site. IBM Research is developing technologies that would upload your J2EE applications onto a network of servers distributed around the world. The number of servers in use for an application will actually grow and shrink depending on demand! Server capacity can be rented from other sources during times of high demand. No more Slashdotting!!!

Re:Define "take on"

[Anonymous Coward]

The person behind Digital Blasphemy doesn't use Maya. He uses Lightwave, and Worldbuilder.

we'll see..

[snillfisk]

well, believe it or not, but PIXARs success isn't really because of their rendering power -- true enough, the realism and rendering techniques used in their latest productions has contributed to making images better, but they've always had the edge when it comes down to the thing that matters: storytelling and keeping the audience interested. Look at their older shorts and their more recent feature films, the story is the main driving force.

While Final Fantasy looked quite amazing, the story and the movie just didn't fit in like most of the PIXAR movies. PIXAR makes movies for the whole family which people enjoy on different levels (best example, toy story 2) -- Shrek was a very welcome break from the PIXAR dominance, but not because it wasn't made by pixar, more because of a great story supported by a nice screenplay and good animation (it's more about how you use the tools, not that the end result has been raytraced with molecular precision)..

If they're able to produce films that would be entertaining even if they were hand drawn by a five year old, then the rendering power comes to good use; not the other way around.

Re:we'll see..

[Art Tatum]

Yep. I looked at their site, and most of their stills had a look that I can only described as "over-produced". It looks like a lot of those dark Enlightenment themes and a lot of the desktop pixmaps floating around on Linux theme sites. It seems as if their goal is to cram as much "cool stuff" as they can into every frame, without regard to the single most important things in art: balance and proportion.

Furthermore, Michael's assertion that their site is 'spartan' has me very confused. I can only think that he must have been saying that tongue-in-cheek. After about 7 seconds, I felt like jabbing my eyeballs out with a screwdriver just to make it all go away. I see the death of the blink tag hasn't discouraged some people from finding new ways to assault visitors.

Re:we'll see..

[Daengbo]

While Final Fantasy looked quite amazing, the story and the movie just didn't fit in like most of the PIXAR movies
Which brings up a rule I have: any movie made from a video game will suck. I haven't found an exception yet.

Re:we'll see..

[mink]

The first Mortal Kombat film was not bad, compared to Street Fighter, or wing commander.
Even the FF movie was pretty good, just like the video games it had little to do with other things besides it being "Final Fantasy" and a few character names.

Re:we'll see..

[Daengbo]

In what universe Mortal Kombat counts as not bad I have no idea.

Sensationalized for the press

[bmetz]

So IBM's supplying hardware as a showcase of their new initiative. It's hardly 'taking on Pixar'. I bet IBM would love to do business with Pixar, too. Do people say that IBM's "taking on the XBox" by supplying the processor in the Gamecube?

Re:Sensationalized for the press

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet IBM would love to do business with Pixar, too.

IBM currently does business with Pixar -- nearly all of the Linux workstations there run on IBM Intellistations. So when IBM announced they wanted to "take on Pixar," you can imagine it ruffled a few feathers.

Movie Suggestion

[Robawesome]

I say IBM makes a movie about a bunch of geeks....who turned the world upsid-down trough their crazy madcap antics....and then started a their own country....called "The United States of Stallmania". Then we'd get to see: is "The United States of America" trademarked? And if so, how can we blame it on the RIAA?

Re:Movie Suggestion

[msgmonkey]

I assume it became the United States of Stallmania after one of the two states namely GNU insisted that the other be called GNU/Linux instead of plain Linux resulting in a long protracted civil war. It is also known that GNU state reserves the right to seperate it's Hurd part should it ever become a popular area in the future..

Hollywood Steve Jobs and Pixar

[zymano]

I think competition is good. I can't even think of any other companies that make computer generated movies.

Who is the grandstanding IBM spokesman that will be at every hollywood premiere and grandstand like Steve Jobs ? God does that guy have an ego or what.

power+money =/= successfull...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry to say, but it takes more that just CPU cycles and money to bring a good movie together. I mean, there are people that need to animate the whole thing, to work on it, to light it, to make it "work". if they have 100000 different caracters, but they are all moving the same choppy way, who cares... It'll need to get some REAL GOOD people being this infracture. and there are the tools. As far as i know Pixar is using a lot of tools that has been developed by pixar, for pixar, and noone else has that.

now, that said, I wish them luck...

Scary Movie 2

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, they did the bullet time in scary movie.

Your point being?

[Atario]

they dumped the OS they had to pay for in favor of the one they don't.

So what? Still makes good press. And it would make good marketing (if there were such a thing as a Linux Marketing Department). "Wow, you mean I can use the exact same stuff the fancy movie people do? And it's free?? Well goll-l-lly!"

Re:Hollywood Steve Jobs and Pixar

[Anonymous Coward]

He basically singlehandledly changed the computing world on four separate occasions. I think he's earned whatever ego he wants to haul around with him.

Clue for IBM

[tealover]

Hire some talented writers and storytellers. Contrary to popular opinion, Pixar's success had much less to do with the CGI than with traditional old storytelling skill. Pumping money into the technology side at the expense of people will result in a big financial loss.

Just ask Sony.

Re:Clue for IBM

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Agreed. Take a look at the extras in Monsters Inc, as well as those for Toy Story 1 & 2. They say this same thing, they reiterate that story is king and I think they don't even touch the computers until after they are happy with the story they wrote. Also, Pixar hired a good share of their staff with talented artists and trained them to the 3D modeling and animation techniques, not just computer people that can operate the software.

Re:Clue for IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought IBM's involvment was limited to having cpu cycles available on demand? Instead of purchasing more computers for a complex scene they wanted to add, they just farm the work off to a remote cluster.

Re:Clue for IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixar's last few films were pure garbage. Monsters Inc. was horrible and the sequal to Toy Story was a huge disappointment. They really need to bring back great movies like the original Toy Story instead of simply rehashing.

Business Makes Strange Bedfellows

[Wyatt Earp]

Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the company he co-founded which just entered an alliance with IBM for microprocessors.

Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the company he bought from ILM which just entered a battle with IBM for computer procduced films.

Reality is stranger than fiction.

Re:Business Makes Strange Bedfellows

[sarahbau]

The Apple/IBM alliance is over 10 years old. It's nothing new. Apple, IBM, and Motorola jointly produced the original PPC processor in 1993, and IBM has been making the processors used in Macs since then, along with Motorola. It wasn't until the G4 that Motorola took over all the PPC production for Apple. All the G3s still used in the iBook are made by IBM. I don't know why so many people are making such a big deal about the G5 being made by IBM.

Re:Business Makes Strange Bedfellows

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand, the "G5" is as different from the G4, as the PPC was different from m68k. It's a completely different arch...based of IBM's POWER4. This is what took place 10 years ago with the design of the ppc. Altivec seems to be the only thing the two chips have in common. (other then their IBM lineage) So to sum it up, Apple has gone back to their IBM roots. A good thing indeed. Now if only they'd go back to ATI, and add a second mouse button to their laptops...

Re:Business Makes Strange Bedfellows

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called co-opetition and IBM is the past master at it.

Indeed they don't have a choice - I don't believe that there is a single reasonable sized technology company which either compete with and co-operate with IBM, and a large number of them do both.

Re:Business Makes Strange Bedfellows

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? The G4 and G5 are both implementations of the PowerPC instruction set architecture. Yes, they naturally do have different microarchitectures, as they were designed by different teams at different firms.

hehehe....

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck...you...

Are you Steve jobs?

[zymano]

can i borrow a dollar ? At least Apple is not outsourcing.

linux

[minus_273]

this is really what linux should used for not desktops. Linux is at its best as a stable relibale fast platform to perform specific tasks. On the desktop, OSX is king among the unixes

Re:linux

[Anonymous Coward]

dude.

are you on crack? the artists, technical directors, modelers, and animators SIT DOWN TO LINUX WORKSTATIONS.

you idiot...THAT INCLUDES A LINUX DESKTOP BY DEFAULT.

those guys on top of their specific job duties, are listening to mp3s, checking their email, bashing out scripts, looking at their bank accounts online, scheduling dentist appointments, looking for a good auto repair man...etc etc etc.

all FROM THEIR LINUX DESKTOP.

sheesh.

some people never get it.

i'm a mac os x user.

but i have to say your fucking dense.

You forgot the PIXAR software.

[zymano]

Wasn't used in the second Matrix movie. That was some German firms software. But it's still up there.

Re:ARG!

[Vann_v2]

I don't see why their motive matters, nor where one was implied in either the introduction or the article. If people switch to Linux because it is a more attractive market, then that just makes it an even more attractive market. Regardless of the motives Linux gets what it needs to gain momentum: mind-share.

In other news...

[realmolo]

Hewlett-Packard has announced that they will be writing children's novels in attempt to compete with JK Rowling- "With our experience in building and designing excellent printers, as well as photo-grade papers and color inks, we see no reason we shouldn't be able to write great books." Currently HP is working on it's first book, "Harry Plotter and the Unholy Army of Third-party Ink-cartridge Refurbishers". USB cable not included.

Uhh..

[Anonvmous Coward]

http://www.threshold-digital.com/visual-fx/fx2.php 3 -- Is that Jon Stewart? WTF movie was that?

Re:Uhh..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Faculty with Elijah Wood.

Re:Uhh..

[MeatMan]

Yup, that's Jon Stewart. It's a still from a movie called "The Faculty". It's a little bit like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" , in a loose sort of way. He has a bit part as a high school science teacher who gets snatched.
http://www.jonstewart.net/bio/film/faculty.html

Re:Uhh..

[NanoGator]

Thank you! :)

Processing power

[shplorb]

Sure, processing power is a crucial part of it, but it's only necessary for advancing the state-of-the-art in computer graphics.

In each movie that Pixar takes, it takes about 8 hours to render each frame (or so I've read in numerous locations) and you can see that with the increasingly "less-computery" look of their movies as processing power has increased for each one.

This brings me to the point that I'm intending on making: the realism of the graphics is not what makes a great movie, it's the quality of the story and all that. I saw Toy Story again the other week and it looks so dated now compared to say Monsters Inc. It was still a thoroughly entertaining movie though because it was a good story.

I love CG films, but I admit that the main reason I love seeing them is to see what new effects and advancements have been made, which is why Pixar films are so great to me.. they're always advancing the state-of-the-art.

Damnit, now I've just contradicted the original point I was trying to make! Hrmm... BRING ON THE CG FILMS!

Re:Processing power

[Anonymous Coward]

"In each movie that Pixar takes, it takes about 8 hours to render each frame (or so I've read in numerous locations)"

A friend of mine is an animator at Pixar. He says it's about 45 minutes per frame nowadays. :)

Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[ikewillis]

Pixar is porting RenderMan to MacOS X and having run tests on G5 systems they now claim:

"After running our RenderMan benchmarks, we can now say that the G5 is the fastest desktop in the world"

This according to Pixar president Ed Catmull, who is an early booster of the Power Mac G5. An introduction video for the Power Mac G5 posted to Apple's own Web site features Catmull explaining that the G5 allows Pixar animators to show frames at full resolution.

This comes amid speculation of a Rendezvous-enabled (G5) Xserve rendering cluster, which would allow 3D shops to set up a plug-and-play rendering cluster which works in conjunction with RenderMan. Couple this with the availability of other 3D applications like Maya, and of course the sheer number of other production and DV applications like Photoshop, AfterEffects, Final Cut Pro, and Shake and the Mac seems to become an ideal platform for 3D production.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[seanadams.com]

"After running our RenderMan benchmarks, we can now say that the G5 is the fastest desktop in the world"

Regardless of whether the G5 is the fastest CPU for RenderMan, it is not per-CPU performance that matters. If you're setting up a rendering farm, you're buying n computers to render m frames per hour. At the end of the day, what matters is minimising $$$$$$ per m, not n, and I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar. Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.

Finally, for what it's worth, I'm a Mac user and a big OSX fan. But I know what my dollars are paying for and it ain't CPU cycles.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[alienw]

The only reason Pixar is going to Mac OS is because one of their execs is Steve Jobs. I doubt the move would make sense for any other reason.

Mac hardware is so overpriced that I doubt you could set up a G5 cluster with even half the performance of a Linux/Intel/AMD cluster of the same price. And performance is what matters here, not pretty translucent cases or lickable interfaces that Apple always excelled at. Can you set up a cluster of, say, 1000 XServe machines and administer them as easily as Linux boxes?

Actually, it seems like you are very misinformed if you think consumer-grade stuff like Final Cut Pro or Photoshop is used by movie professionals. Making movies takes much more than a simple video editing app. That's what high-end stuff like Maya is for, and that has always run better on IRIX and, more recently, Linux. Apart from Pixar, most shops (like ILM) have standardized on Linux as the OS, both for rendering AND for production work.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[autopr0n]

Regardless of whether the G5 is the fastest CPU for RenderMan, it is not per-CPU performance that matters. If you're setting up a rendering farm, you're buying n computers to render m frames per hour. At the end of the day, what matters is minimising $$$$$$ per m, not n, and I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar. Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.

Not if apple gives them to you below cost as a 'marketing expense'

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[2nd Post!]

But m is directly correlated to n, is it not?

rendered frames per dollar have *two* variables: Cost of computing (including power and maintenance, and number of rendered frames per second. If you buy more computers, cost goes up and frames go up. If you change architectures, number of rendered frames changes as well.

So why do you suppose that commodity P4s, Athlons, or Opterons will whip a G5 Mac? Because P4s are designed to scale up in clock faster? That's only useful if you've got fast/short purchase and upgrade cycles. Because the AMDs are cheaper? Have you considered that a G5 might suck up less power, and thus have lower maintenance costs? Or that a G5, with it's Altivec units, might actually render more efficiently, and thus increase the value m?

I mean, it's all speculation, but I'm not willing to bet against the G5 because Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.

If Apple can design a solution that meets Pixar's needs, it's also likely that the same solution is applicable to many other sectors. Think of it like Honda's racing division; money invested into design and construction of racecars trickle down into everything else, so if Honda can design things that get the Honda Racing Team to win big, then it'll benefit their consumer products. Likewise if Apple can design something that gives Pixar an edge, why wouldn't Apple do so, and why wouldn't Pixar use it?

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[curtlewis]

Pixar hasn't used Macs every for primary work to my knowledge and Steve Jobs has been CEO there for YEARS. He's smart enough to let them pick the best horsepower to do the job.

Steve's been back at Apple since 1997 (nearly 6 years), and hasn't mandated a switch to Macs. If he did, you'd have heard an anonymous outpouring of complaints. But what you hear is, the G5 smokes and that they're migrating to Macs. This looks like the people doing the work made the decision.

Now, that isn't to say that in a year or 2 they don't switch to Itanium 2s or Opterons. I'm sure Pixar will continue to choose the most powerful machines for their type of work as they have done so in the past (SGI, Sun, Linux, Apple, etc)...

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[dfj225]

Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.

Free G5s, anyone?

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[afidel]

They might use macs running OSX for the workstations and use IBM 4X PPC970 rackmount servers for the renderman farms, why pay for expensive things you don't need in a computer node like graphics cards? And of course rendering is one of those applications where more than 4GB of contiguous ram IS very usefull.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[sergeantmudd]

First, Pixar and Apple do share Steve Jobs' time, and without a doubt Jobs knew about the G5 when he built Pixar's render farm a year ago out of Dual Pentium4 1U rackmounts. So Intel is almost surely cheaper than a G5 render farm would be. Second, the XServes would be far easier to maintain. Apple doesn't excel at only pretty translucent cases and lickable interfaces, they really excel at ease of use. And this applies to the render farm as well. Alot of apps, like XCode, use Rendezvous for distributed computing. Just plug a punch of XServes running an app together and you got yourself a render farm. Far easier than anything linux can do. Third, Final Cut Pro and Photoshop are serious professional apps. Other Apple apps, like Shake and Logic are THE apps in their respective markets. Fourth, Linux isn't dominating left and right. It is dominating the render farm because it is cheap and runs on cheap hardware. The workstation market is still anyone's market. Apple is in the perfect position to take over all those SGI and Sun boxes with OS X.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[sydsavage]

If you truly believe that Final Cut Pro and Photoshop are consumer-grade, then it is likely you who is misinformed. Here's a clue: FCP is a non-linear digital editing package. Photoshop is a image editing tool. Maya is a 3D animation and rendering tool. Any serious professional is likely using all three for their respective purposes in filmmaking. Perhaps you were thinking of the free iMovie application, not the $1k editing suite. Not sure what you were thinking saying Photoshop is consumer-grade, though.

And yes, it's likely setting up a huge cluster of Xserves is easier than with other OSes, considering Rendezvous, otherwise known as ZeroConfig. As in Zero Configuration.

Maybe you should just go back to swinging your mop handle around in the school A/V lab, Jedi Master.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[paradesign]

Linux isnt a machine, its a kernal. But i still get your point.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

Best. Insult. Ever. I nearly spit out my drink.
Well written reply, as well.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[rogue555]

While PIXAR uses macs for light use (i.e. the person working the front desk uses an iMac) the computers used for higher load applications (not to say that solitare is not high load :) ) have always been suited to the job. When SGI was king at graphics rendering, that was what they used, but Linux is cheaper and can muscle through it. I doubt they would switch over to G5's now as they just finished switching out the renderfarm for new boxes.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, it's likely setting up a huge cluster of Xserves is easier than with other OSes, considering Rendezvous, otherwise known as ZeroConfig. As in Zero Configuration.
Yes, Linux has it as well. That handles allocateing an IP, and does some notification of services. Linux can be made to do the same.
I will say though, that Jobs is desperate to have Apple make some inroad somewhere which explains the buying spree in the graphics arena. There is no doubt in my mind that Jobs will force pixar to use Macs and will try to sell these to other CG shops. I doubt it will succeed, but you never know. I doubt that other shops will go along with Macs due not only to the costs but the real possibility of Jobs doing to them what Gates does to others.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[dvdeug]

But [the total cost] is directly correlated to [the number of computers], is it not?

So long as everything else is held constant.

So why do you suppose that commodity P4s, Athlons, or Opterons will whip a G5 Mac?

Because every mega-computing project I've ever heard about used Intel processors? Because of that word commodity usually meaning that the people selling the hardware are shaving profits as tightly as possible to reduce prices, since that's a large buying factor? Because Apple is geared up to build workstations, whereas there are companies who build primarily x86 computers for situations where your goal is to pack as many of them in as little space as possible?

if Apple can design something that gives Pixar an edge, why wouldn't Apple do so,

Apple primarily wants to sell workstations, and as secondary goal, wants to sell servers, and uses as distinctive UI and optimized user experiance as the main selling points. The time and effort need for Apple to design rack mount systems optimized for max CPU per dollar isn't going help Apple with its primary markets.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

*Every* "mega-computing" project? Say, for example, the Earth Simulator in Japan? (The fastest "mega-computing" engine in the world that happens to NOT run on commodity Intel chips?) Or how about some of the other high end parallel computer systems that run the IBM Power4 processor? (You know, the GPUL/PPC 970/G5 is actually a very close relative of the Power4!)

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixar doesn't pass the Mac dog food test. Renderman on various flavors of Mac's have been available for years.

Steven Job's wants them to switch (Job's mentioned this more than a year ago at a exclusive meeting with CG studio heads and the head of Pixar's software group squirmed and made a face) to Mac but so far it hasn't happened.

Even if they hire a single person to help with OS X migration it would actually take their whole software development staff upwards of a year to move all of the proprietary Pixar tools to OS X. A render farm would be less work since it would only be a port of the latest version of Renderman.

This is what it took IL+M to move from SGI/Irix to Linux (see previous slashdot posts). These two platforms are arguably closer than going from Linux to OS X.

ILM actually has more Mac's in active production but they were looking at getting rid of them as a cost savings measure.

With studios its all about money and not wishful Mac advocacy.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

If you change architectures, number of rendered frames changes as well.

My, you catch on quick.

Suppose just for the sake of argument that a G5 is the fastest renderman machine in the world and can render two frames per hour. Suppose a pentium can manage a paltry 1 frame per hour. Furthermore, suppose that super-efficient G5 costs only $5/month in electricity whereas the Pentium costs $10/month.

Dual 2Ghz G5: $3000 (suppose you lease it for $90/mo)
Dual 2Ghz Pentium: $1000 (lease for $30/mo)

G5 cost per frame:
(90+5) /30 /24 /2 = $0.0660

Pentium:
(30+10) /30 /24 /1 = $0.0556

Now in reality, the G5 is not that fast, the dual pentium machine is probably cheaper than that, and the electricty is cheaper. But you can see what a disparity there is in raw performance per dollar even with made-up numbers that heavily favor the g5.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[afantee]

>> I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar.

Don't ever bet without doing your homework. A dual 2 GHz 64-bit G5 Power Mac costs $2999 and is more powerful and $1000 cheaper than a $4000 dual 3 GHz 32-bit Xeon Dell.

>> Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.

By your stupid logic, RenderMan should have been ported to G3 and G4 long time ago. Don't forget that Pixar is in the business of making best movies and lots of profits, not to subsidize Apple, so they choose the best tool for the job. Steve Jobs makes most of his money from Pixar, and only gets $1 per year from Apple.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[afantee]

>> Now, that isn't to say that in a year or 2 they don't switch to Itanium 2s or Opterons.

I am pretty sure they won't. Itanium 2 is very expensive ($3000 just for the chip) and inefficient in enery consumption (130 W at 1.5 GHz vs 40 W at 1.8 GHz G5), and has very few native apps (about 450 according to Intel and HP). In contrast, there are 50000 native OS X apps, including all the best pro digital tools such as Final Cut Pro, Maya, Shake, Logic Platinum, After Effects, PhotoShop, Flash, Director, and so on.

People are not buying Itanium servers. In 2002, Apple sold more G4 Xserve boxes in 6 months than all the Itanium servers sold in 12 months. For the last 3 months, IBM has managed to sell 0 and Dell 14!

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Raffaello]

Since Pixar is running Linux x86 now, they could switch to Linux PPC running on G5s, and all their "proprietary Pixar tools," for which they have the source, could be ported with a simple recompile.

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[cosmo7]

Is Ed Catmull the Catmull in Catmull-Rom splines?

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't really help Apple if the code is not ported to OS X.

In that case why bother to use expensive Mac hardware at all?

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[valdis]

"Because every mega-computing project I've ever heard about used Intel processors?"

*BZZT*. But thank you for playing. Trot over to www.top500.org, and out of the top 20, we have:

Number 1 is based on a custom chipset. Numbers 2, 9, 10 and 20 are Alphas. Numbers 3, 6, 11, 17, and 19 are Xeons. 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18 are IBM Power series. 7 is a Fujitsu, and 8 is Itanium. Oh, and of 21-30, 6 more are Power chipsets....

In fact, out of the top 500, there's 127 HP SPP boxes, 102 IBM Powers, 99 Intel Pentiums, 48 SGIs,
21 Alphas, and assorted odd stuff (an Intel Paragon for instance.. ;) So yeah, *all* the high end stuff is Intel...

Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop

[rendermaniac]

yes. Also look up stocaistic sampling and you'll find his name mentioned several times.

PIXAR's Secret

[David Wong]

...is their Story Generating software, which uses a 3rd generation Character Attachment/Sympathy Building scheme, along with a cutting-edge Story Arc generator and a powerful Linux Universal Resonant Story Theme workstation.

Seriously, their technology is two generations away from a Best Picture Oscar.

How many reading this cried during Finding Nemo?

Me, too.

Re:PIXAR's Secret

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the salient question now is if watching an emotion-manipulating movie is the only way you can elicit tears of emotion.

Hope not...

Pixar is more than that...

[tarvo]

Unless you're going to replicate the entire Pixar team, company X (Dreamworks, TDRL, anyone...) is never going to be Pixar.

As if the bleedingly obvious has to be stated here, but Pixar have a long history of digital animation, and their films have never been about the technology, it's always about telling a great story.

The technology simply provides a platform from which to elevate their incredibly rich narratives and ideas to another level. Should Pixar ever reach the boundaries of their current technolgies (software and/or hardware) I'm guessin' they will find something else, or some other alliance that will provide them with a powerful platform which will support their creativity.

There is no doubt that they do this already. RenderMan, provides them with the flexibility to (re)develop their own software when requirements upon it change.

I wouldn't bind my creativity to anything - would you?

Keep dreaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

The g5, even if it is on top which I doubt, won't stay on top long. Apple simply can't keep up. That's just how it is. Even if Pixar converts their entire operation to g5's, they'll be glad they have the linux option in a few months when the next big x86 processor comes along and destroys it and Apple doesn't have a competing system in sight. The G5 is a fluke. They lucked out. It might happen again in another 5 years if they last that long.

Re:Keep dreaming...

[mholt108]

No, i dont think the G5 is a fluke. They have linked their technology to IBM who is BIGGER than intel or MS and has huge resouces and a vested interest in kepping up/ahead of intel. I think from here on in only nitpickers will be able to seperate performance of APPLE/Wintel. Just like the competition between AMD/Intel at the moment. Once IBM really has the info about how they compare to intel, they will just match the pace of intels change. Although if Itanium ever really gets going IBM might struggle.

Re:Keep dreaming...

[CryBaby]

Were you molested by a 512K Fat Mac as a child?

Re:Keep dreaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's tired of the fact that every generation of Mac hardware has more fucking trademarks masquerading as technical terms than any other vendor.

What the hell is 'Altivec' but a fucking trademark. What is PowerPC? Why do they call it G5 when IBM has perfectly good part numbers for the processor part?

Apple is the vendor of trumped up marketing hype. They also sell proprietary computers.

And many people who hate the Mac remember Steve Jobs and his 'hacker proof' speech, from back at the launch of the Mac. It was meant to be a fucking toaster for people who use computers like copying machines or typewriters.

Re:Keep dreaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you're just scared of the fact that G5s _are_ faster than x86 compatibles; scared of the fact that, unlike Linux boxes and windows boxes, Macs just work; scared of the fact that nobody want's to, or expects to have to "hack" their refrigerator to get it to work properly; scared of the fact that one day soon, the same will inevitably be true of computers; scared of the fact that when this day comes, your 1337 h4x0r 5k1LL2 will be worth jack.

Computers power does not, a good scipt, make

[mholt108]

Pixar make very warm, funny, intelligent movies. These movies would be good no matter what the format, CG, Puppet or Animated. The combination of Script, Talent, and Production is what does it.
No amount of computer generated wizardry will help if the story is incomplete. Who needs 10,000 charachters on screen when good dialogue between 2 charachters can be far more engaging.

Not quite undisputed...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a myth that Pixar are uncontested when it comes to digital features (as it states in the article). For example:

(1) Blue Sky Studios made a little movie called Ice Age.

(2) Pacific Data Images made a little movie called Shrek, and also released the 2nd ever computer generated feature, Antz (the official site, Antz.com seems dead).

Here's another myth:

While Pixar's rendering techniques are *good*, they aren't necessarily cutting edge when it comes to technology. Blue Sky uses raytracing for their images. This gives them features like caustics, global illumination and efficient curved surfaces. Curves in particular had a huge advantage through memory efficiency for their render farm - meanwhile Pixar's render nodes were crashing because of scene complexity simulating curves through polygons. Sure, Pixar's movies are impressive, but I can't help but think they'd do better without clinging to some legacy baggage that comes with Renderman.

Anyway - the technology is overhyped. It's just a better pencil. Story, story, story is what counts. Disney can probably afford to take longer developing scripts. This is why you can have something as gorgeous as the Final Fantasy movie and have it completely suck at the box office; and Disney flicks don't look so great, but sell well.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Disney really deserve any of the script development credit for Pixar's movies? I thought all they really provided was distribution and the cachet of the Disney name.

The stuff that comes from Disney itself seems to consist mainly of recycled TV shows, and recycled Disney movies. And their recent animated features have been lame and formulaic.

Yawn.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "mindshare", and it lets lots of companies sell loads of crap because they once in the past sold some good stuff.

See also Schwinn or Sunbeam or low-end HP boxen.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[hondo77]

While Pixar's rendering techniques are *good*, they aren't necessarily cutting edge when it comes to technology. Blue Sky uses raytracing for their images.

Yeah and Ice Age looked like crap, proving, once again, that's it's not about the technology.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[flabbergast]

If I remember my Animation class correctly, all the Pixar movies were done in house: three years for plot/character development, then three years to render (or something like that).

John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar, is credited as the writer of Luxo Jr, Red's Dream, Tin Toy, Knick Knick, Toy Story, a Bug's Life, and Toy Story 2 according to imdb If anyone should receive credit for Pixar's success, it should be Mr. Lasseter.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly, it's about the user behind the workstation.

ice age was great. their talent would have come through regardless of the medium they were using.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[rogue555]

Disney can probably afford to take longer developing scripts.

Just so you know, Disney has extremley little to do with making the movie. They are the distribution and marketing, little else.

Re:Not quite undisputed...

[MtViewGuy]

I think the reason why Shrek did so well was 1) there was pretty much no competition during the 2001 summer box office and 2) the movie is a major satire of everything Disney (if you think of the movie that way it becomes nothing short of brilliant =) ). Many people on /. may quibble, but I thought the storytelling was quite good, too.

In short, it all comes down to this: you need decent writers to make an animated feature good. Why have Pixar's films been so well-liked? It's because they have excellent storytelling, thanks to people like John Lasseter (sp?). The same applies to Disney's 2002 hit Lilo & Stitch, which not only had excellent 2-D animation but also a great writing team in Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois that made the movie great.

Synergizing the Business Potential

[yintercept]

Yeah, well you might live in a fantasy land where talent and creativity are the prime components of a good film...

But IBM is better placed to synergize the business potential of the graphics medium. Personally, I can't wait to see what will happen with the structural dynamics of Rational Rose hits the big screen in an animated short.

Re:Synergizing the Business Potential

[WinDoze]

synergize the business potential of the graphics medium

I'm sorry, this is Slashdot. You must be looking for Marketroid.com.

Artists, not geeks.

[CyberDave]

Like many of the Slashdot crowd, I absolutely love Pixar's movies (and shorts). Not only for the visuals (which are always stunning) but also the great stories.

I recall seeing somewhere, many many months ago, a comment from someone at Pixar saying that part of the key to their success is that they take artists and teach them how to use computers, instead of taking computer people and teaching them how to be artists. Many of Pixar's best people are alums or the California Institute of Arts (including John Lasseter). [There are many in-jokes through Pixar's movies that are refernces to Cal Arts).

Can't wait for "Cars" or "The Incredibles" to hit theaters.

CyberDave

bah

[nomadic]

Will you people stop saying "It's the story, not the graphics"? Yes, we know. We knew before you told us. Even if we hadn't known, reading it 3 million times on the posts here would have clued us in. Your 3 million and 1st wasn't necessary.

That said, if IBM hires good writers then they can make good movies too. Pixar's stories are good. They're very good. They're not, however, the greatest stories ever written, and people don't collapse to their knees at the end of the film, weeping copiously in gratitude for being permitted to see such movies.

Their website

[autopr0n]

May show some 'rendering skills' but it shows zero artistic merit. The page seriously has the esthetic merit of some Geocities page who's proprietor just learned about the 'lenses flair' function in Photoshop...

Just about everyone in every industry says stuff like "We are going to be the next [industry leader". It hardly ever happens. If these guys actually want to take on Pixar, they are going to need some real artists.

Btw, has anyone noticed how much poorly done cg is out there in the movies now? I mean, when CG was all new and novel it was always so well done, Jurassic park looked real to me, but the CG in League of Exceptional Gentlemen (not a movie that I had really planned on seeing) was horrible. Even the CG in spider-man was pretty hokey (but there the movie was rescued by a good plot)

Re:Their website

[Erick the Red]

If you want to see hokey CG, watch Episode 1. Actually, don't.

Damn you George Lucas!

Re:Their website

[Anonymous Coward]

spider-man [...] was rescued by a good plot

Huh? Something about good plot? Were you born yesterday or something?

Re:Their website

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually surprised at how much better the amateur CG is than the pro stuff. Just look at some of the various message boards out there dedicated to 3D artwork. People are showing off ultra-realistic models of people, done in a week on their own time! So why is the stuff in movies so shitty? Are they really being that heavily pressured by schedules?

Well hey!

[autopr0n]

They've shown they can rip off the matrix so, I mean, what can't they do!?

Re:Well hey!

[NanoGator]

"They've shown they can rip off the matrix so, I mean, what can't they do!? "

For the record, that was a parody and not a rip-off.

Carry on. ;)

their homepage

[circletimessquare]

shows a still from mortal kombat anhilation

uggh

this summer is teaching hollywood a lesson: go ahead and waste $$$$$$$$$$$ on special effects, it's the storyline that matters, and that is all

a film student who racks up $7,000 on a credit card and films in 2 weeks time can offer a more compelling and moving story than centimillions spent on the most dazzling special effects ever seen... so what

does the story move me? or am i left in a narcotic haze of cgi bullshit that i promptly forget about 10 minutes out of the theatre?

great, bring on more mortal kombat annhilation

ugggh

Re:their homepage

[NanoGator]

" film student who racks up $7,000 on a credit card and films in 2 weeks time can offer a more compelling and moving story than centimillions spent on the most dazzling special effects ever seen... so what"

The reason for that is a film student would have very strict limitations to work within. I think filmmakers have forgotten that part of the appeal of visual FX is to see something on screen that cannot easily be explained. CG is pertty much watering that down. I mean, who saw previews for Minority Report and thought "Whoah... I wonder how they did that?"

Indie Filmmakers now have that arena to play in. That's why TROOPS was so impressive. Heh.

IBM's first movie will be

[Anonymous Coward]

How we destroyed SCO and used SMP Machines to make this move.

Visual quality != photorealism

[autopr0n]

After all, it's easy to take ugly photos. All the images I saw for Ice Age just looked ugly, too much white, and bland colors. I also remember Antz photo image quality wasn't as good as Bug's Life. Shrek OTOH seemed to visualy as good as the pixar stuff.

Actually...

[curtlewis]

Pixar is migrating to OS X, primarily because of the G5. Pixar's OS/machine of choice seems to vary with the wind, whatever is the most powerful at the time. It seems that they believe the G5 is where it's at in the near future.

They're posting jobs for techs to assist in a migration to OS X.

Re:Actually...

[Billly Gates]

Have an url to back this up?

I am not a mac user so I may be ignorant on this but I was under the impression no real 3d cards are available on the mac. I mean real as in professional. Geforce's are fast but they are not accurate and can misrender information that a wildcat or a quadro can not. Quite essential for a movie.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Pixar still uses Mac's for Photoshop and texture creation. So in essence they are probably prepairing to upgrade them. Not switch to them for the renderman work.

Is their even a MacOSX port for Renderman?

The p4's are slightly faster then the g5's anyway and to top it off Pixar has a deal or maybe even a contract with HP. Most big deals require the signer to pay a fine or fee if they break the contract. HP has invested alot in helping pixar increase X performance and testing RH Linux with their kayak workstations for Pixar.

Re:Actually...

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

3D cards aren't needed for movies...it's all CPU.
Pixar will port Renderman to whatever they need to.
I'm sure Pixar's contract has a way out...all contracts do...if you know how to find it.

Re:Actually...

[curtlewis]

The job is posted here.

The job title is: Mac OS X Migration Contractor

Re:Actually...

[NanoGator]

"Pixar is migrating to OS X, primarily because of the G5. Pixar's OS/machine of choice seems to vary with the wind, whatever is the most powerful at the time. It seems that they believe the G5 is where it's at in the near future."

Not surprised. I can't speak for what Pixar uses, but Lightwave has a pipeline that's like 390 bits wide or something like that. Each pixel value is described to a ridiculous number of decimal places. The reason for this involves color precision as each step of the rendering process mutates the number. It strikes me that a 64-bit processor would have significant advantages here.

If anybody here is knowledgable about the advantages (or disadvantages) of 64-bit processing in the 3D world I'd LOVE to hear about them. Opteron may be in my not too distant future.

Re:Actually...

[Phroggy]

I was under the impression no real 3d cards are available on the mac. I mean real as in professional. Geforce's are fast but they are not accurate and can misrender information that a wildcat or a quadro can not. Quite essential for a movie.

As far as I'm aware, those types of cards aren't used for this type of work at all. Something like this might be more appropriate? But I don't work in that industry, so I have no idea.

Is their even a MacOSX port for Renderman?

Not yet, but they're thinking about it.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual advantages for 64 bit processors:

First, 64 bit processors normally have dual floating point units - this is a really big deal for digital imaging apps (3D rendering in particular) as well as engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) and scientific applications. The G5, like most good 64 bit processors, has dual floating point units. Lightwave, with its 320 bit internal floating point precision, will get along well with such a processor. (By the way, 64 bit floating point is known as "double-precision" and is handled natively by a good floating point unit. I guess 320 bits would be considered deka-precision? No CPU will run that natively just yet but the more floating point power you can throw at the problem, the better! ;)

Second, if you need to manipulate large data sets, 32 bit processors are limited to a native address space of 4GB. (Often less because of operating system limitations and mapping of IO.) A 64 bit processor has a theoretical native address space of 16.7 MILLION Terabytes! (16 Exabytes! How cool is that? How often do you get to use the SI prefix "exa" or 10^18?) Now, obviously, this is ridiculous as Exabyte sized DIMM modules are still a ways off ;) As such, the full 64 bit address space is normally not bonded out to pins on the processor package. For the G5, 42 address bits come from the CPU module - enough to address 4TB. This is further limited by the Apple U3 bridge chip, which is a 36 bit memory controller - so 64GB theoretical. The density of current DIMM modules limits you to 8GB today. Lets just say there is some breathing room available in 64 bit architecture!

One more cool thing that is in not specific to 64 bit processors - the G5 (like the G4) has a really good vector processing unit on chip. (Actually, I guess you could say that vector processor are historically part of early 64 bit machines - I am thinking specifically of Cray supercomputers. A modern day example, of course, is the Earth Simulator in Japan - an absolute monster of a parallel vector processing machine!) In the case of the G5 and digital media, vector processing can be applied to image manipulation (the stuff you might do in Photoshop) as well as things like MPEG compression and decompression or other "DSP" like tasks. This can be applied to applications like FCP where you want to see high resolution video play realtime or you want your transitions and composites to complete quickly. Also very useful for realtime manipulation of audio streams!

Re:Actually...

[NanoGator]

Interesting! Thank you for writing that! :)

Re:Actually...

[renoX]

>Lightwave has a pipeline that's like 390 bits wide

According to their website, their full precision renderer use 128bits: 32 bits for each component (RGBA).
I doubt that the integer register are used that much for processing the pixels, so for processing reason the 64-bitness is not so much important.

On the other hand, for memory adressing the 64-bitness matter: I wouldn't be surprised that a process could use more that 4 GB to do the rendering..

Re:Actually...

[NanoGator]

"According to their website, their full precision renderer use 128bits: 32 bits for each component (RGBA)."

I don't think we're reading the same # here. The 32-bit channels are for the final output so you can save HDRI imagery. What I was talking about was the pipeline, i.e. the values that go through the various transformation processes. Here's the blurb from Newtek's site:

"Over 320 bit IEEE floating point rendering pipeline? the expandable pipeline accommodates a growing list of optional buffers, such as reflection, x and y motion, geometry, shading and depth"

I was off by a few bits. Take that with a grain of salt, though, that IS a marketing document.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't Steve Jobs a founder of Pixar? I wonder if there's a connection.

Re:Actually...

[Cyno]

But I thought the reason they switched to anything was because the price/performance ratio. Does a G5 beat the price/performance ratio of a P4 or Athlon based system? It beats the performance, but in a few months we'll see how it stacks up against an AMD64 chip or maybe even the Itanium2, both of which I'd expect to perform better than a G5. But I haven't even seen a G5 yet, so who knows.

Who uses Linux for animation, anyway?

[RiffRafff]

http://www.movieeditor.com/pubs/gu4dec.rowe.monday .abridged.pdf

No SCO??

[Billly Gates]

You mean pixar does not listen to the Gartner group or biased accusations from anyone that *might* somehow hint on liability?

My heart be still.

I am shocked. What is this world coming too?

No No,

[floydman]

i didnt say PIXAR, i said SCO man , SCO, are you deaf...

ILM

[dfj225]

Its funny, they talk about how they want to be the leader in CG animated films, but most of the stills that they show on their website are taken from movies with CG/film composites. I think there are only three frames from animated movies. As far as I am concerned, ILM seems to be the leader in this field. Just look at Star Wars Ep. II or even more recent is the Pirates of the Caribbean. I would imagine that if ILM was to ever make a totally CGI movie, it would blow most others out of the water as far as effects are concerned. Also, they have years and years of experience in making movies, which is often more important than who has the fastest servers and the best pixel shaders.

Re:ILM

[afidel]

Actually they kind of already did, all the important stuff in Jurrasic Park was CG, it was so well done that you don't really notice it is CG, to me THAT is the best result you can possibly get.

Re:ILM

[mrvis]

>Also, they have years and years of experience in making movies, which is often more important than who has the fastest servers and the best pixel shaders.

I wouldn't say that ILM has any experience making movies. Lucasfilm has made a bunch of movies. ILM has done the special effects for a lot of movies. But ILM "making movies"? No.

Re:ILM

[dfj225]

Sorry, I meant years of experience making digital effects and animation for movies.

Re:ILM

[Anonymous Coward]

George Lucas just opened a new division to create fully CG films.

This was mentioned in a previous slashdot post but I am too lazy to surf it up.

The reason they opened a seperate division was that ILM is too heavily structured as a service company and previous attempts to do digital features there (Frankenstein comes to mind) all failed.

Re:ILM

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankenstien failed because the writing was *bad* and
the studio pulled the plug. ILM has no writing talent
at all. The *new* division is basically a spin off of certain
key groups/players which were in ILM. The biggest
challenge ILM faces is being "profitable". As a company
I give them another ~36 months, tops.

Re:ILM

[fpp]

You give the entire company 36 months to make a profit? First of all, ILM makes a profit. It's not a huge profit, but the computer effects industry is so competitive that not many do, and if they do, it's not much. In the area of 2% or so. Secondly, ILM operated for YEARS without profit. In fact, after every film, they came back to Lucas and said, "Look, we need another Star Wars film!" because they really needed the money. Lucas had faith in the company that it would eventually make money, and it did. In the lean years his executives begged him to shut it down, but he wouldn't. Also, Frankenstein failed for several reasons, one of which may have been the writing, but this wasn't ILM's fault. ILM wasn't writing the script. Cost overruns were the big problem.

Re:ILM

[Anonymous Coward]

ILM and Star Wars.

Bud you have it all wrong.

ILM loses money on Star Wars films they don't make money.

George sticks it to them on his own films and he can because he is the owner.

The last film, Attack of the Clones, didn't even credit 300+ ILM people who did work on it.

Re:ILM

[fpp]

George Lucas quote from Premiere magazine, May 1999, page 72: "But after every movie, ILM would come back and say, 'Make another Star Wars movie because we need the money." Draw your own conclusions.

IBM and Pixar at odds?

[2nd Post!]

Hardly. It's to IBMs' advantage if they can also 'rent' out processing power to Pixar; it doesn't matter to IBM who makes the better movies, as long as their 'computing on demand' initiative succeeds.

What about SCO?

[clf8]

Wouldn't it be funny if the SCO lawsuit effed all this up?

This is old news in the mac world (a whole day), everyone's worried about the Apple/IBM relationship. They're freaks, it happens.

In what movie

[A1miras]

In what movie do john stewart's hands turn into wires?

Re:In what movie

[softspokenrevolution]

"The Faculty", a rather insipid and forgetable sci-fi film from the mid-to-late 90s for the teeny bopper set. It was about alien pod people and that sort of thing, I suppose that it was supposed to be a message about conformity or whatever, like the "in crowd", or whatever that equally forgetable film was.

Don't you just find mass market media, preaching to teens about conformity to be wonderfully ironic?

I suppose that I should talk about Pixar though. Some of their movies have been all right, people have been saying that they have great writers and all of that. The animation I can respect, but the writing isn't anything out of the world. Really, if it wasn't for the fact that the films were fully computer animated they would just be standard fare, but as of right now we have this love affair with all things tech.

Of course the writing is far better than a great number of a lot of the schlock they throw at us in order to keep us pacified.

Of course, visually Pixar films aren't much without all of the fun gloss of the computer animation, it all seems to be pretty standard format kinds of things, but I guess they really aren't the kinds of films to delve into the artistic side of things. I like them, I don't love them, not tha tanyone cares.

Re:In what movie

[Kelz]

but as of right now we have this love affair with all things tech

Welcome to slashdot. You must be new.

I cant wait for SCO-Alien attacks Software World

[zymano]

Should be good.

AMEN, Brother!

[UrGeek]

But then, they do have the money to buy the best. Maybe IBM can intict Hideki Anno to back into animation and to forget this live action nonsense!

Re:This Article To Be Stampeded With Moo Cows!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heyyyyyoooo!!

CowZ up in ya, BITCH

Ice Age sucked

[mrvis]

Ice Age sucked. I'm glad you accurately called it a little movie.

You guys missed th point...

[voxel]

IBM's hardware is so powerful, that there beowoulf CPU's will write the script and story itself!

They just punch in the title of the movie, and it renders not only all the animation, but the story too :P

That day will come.. You tell the computer "Tell me a story", and it generates a computer rendered image complete with computer rendered story and voices.

- Voxel the Troll.

Take on Pixar?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they going to tkae on Pixar when thier website isn't even visually impressive. Oh, and the Mortal Kombat movies?....those are some real winners.....

Am I crazy or...

[MesiahTaz]

does anyone else think this is going to piss Steve Jobs off royally?

The same company that he is buying gobs of CPUs from are now going to be competing directly with his other business.

Creativity

[Mark_MF-WN]

All the creativity and talent in the world doesn't mean anything in the 3D rendering world without lots of hardcore computing muscle to turn it into a reality. Those scenes don't just jump from the writers' minds onto the screen.

Re:Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Lasseter would still be making award winning animated stories if he didn't have computers. He's a great animator and the computer is only a tool, like a pencil.
I think IBM is doing this deal as a technical demo. That studio they are partnering with sucks and no amount of computing power will polish a turd into a mon lisa. Pixar will continue to attract the better talent. No artist really cares that much about the brand name of their hardware. But they do care about being exposed to feedback from someone like Lasseter.

I used to work for Threshold

[tinrobot]

They simply don't have the talent to take on Pixar. It's a "B" movie house. The place is run by a guy named Larry Kassanoff (sp?) who made his fortune with movies such as Mortal Kombat. He has no love for cartoons or animation like the Pixar staff does.

I saw what the projects Threshold had in the development pipeline last year. While I can't give specifics, nothing they had was worth making into an animated feature.

In my opinion, the only two studios that can even attempt to take on Pixar are Dreamworks and Sony.

Re:PIXAR's real Secret

[Anonymous Coward]

is their Story Generating software

Actually, they just start banging out a story, and let Clippy suggest all the plot twists.

"I see that you're trying to write a cliff-hanger..."

Heat

[Mark_MF-WN]

Heat dissipation is a MAJOR, HUGE factor is clustering. The G5's extremely low power output is undoubtedly a big selling point for G5 clusters. You think climate control for a cluster of AMD chips is cheap? It's hard enough to keep ONE Athlon XP cool, let alone a few hundred.

Re:What the hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

welecome to C:\DOS!

PIXAR is in no trouble

[diabolus_in_america]

PIXAR has what really counts: audience mindshare.

They also have something else that really counts with the paying public, which is a terrific track record. If a PIXAR movie and a TDRL movie were released on the same weekend, which one would you choose? 99% would go with the sure bet, and that's PIXAR.

TDRL/IBM would be better served going after the Dreamworks market. Other than Shrek, Dreamworks last couple of animated films were box-office disappointments. Sinbad, in particular, has been a collossal bomb for them. But that just proves my point, Sinbad was released so close to Finding Nemo that the audience for animated features choose the one they knew would not disappoint.

The dynamics of what makes PIXAR the undisputed king of computer animated movies has very little to do with technology and everything to do with satisfying audience expectations.

What TV show/movie is this shot from?

[antdude]

http://www.threshold-digital.com/visual-fx/fx10.ph p3

Does anyone know?

Do a whois for something funny for MK reference...

[antdude]

Threshold Entertainment
1649 11th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
US

Domain Name: THRESHOLD-DIGITAL.COM

Administrative Contact:
Wexler, Joshua (JW421) subzero@MORTALKOMBAT.COM
Threshold Entertainment
1649 11TH ST
SANTA MONICA, CA 90404-3707
US

Subzero??? :)

TDRL full of BS

[Anonymous Coward]

AC, for reasons that will soon be clear...

Jeebus, I can't believe their server survived a slash-dotting. That place is totally Mickey Mouse(TM).

TDRL has been working on "Food Fight" for nearly 8 years now. They've spent over 10 million to generate what amounts to a movie trailer. The quality is miserable. I mean, shear crap. Not only that, but the story is garbage. It is essentially a 2 hour ad for various name brand food and household items. Amazing, really, that anyone would get behind a project like that, but they seem to keep convincing people to "invest" money in the company.

Their relationship with IBM goes back a while. They used to get hand-me-down machines from IBM as a form of sponsorship.

But, as many folks have mentioned already, it takes more then computers to make a decent film.

The producer mentioned in the article is your stereotypical "Hollywood Producer". That is, he is not a nice guy. (Not all producers are assholes, but they seem to have that stereotype...) Think "The Producers"... I really believe that's how the place stays afloat... by bilking investors out of money. The rest of the management is not much better than L.K. The place is a mess.

TDRL is not taken seriously in the industry as a result of the poor quality of their work. Many talented people have passed through the place, and then promptly moved on. They can't hold on to skilled people because the work environment is extremely poor and the projects they end up doing are generally fairly low budget. (which is to say, you are almost guaranteed to not be able to do a good job due to the limited resources and time) People with skill don't need to stay in a miserable place like that.

Don't believe a word of that press release. It is pure hype.

Re:TDRL full of BS

[Anonymous Coward]

And I forgot to mention, the only box they have Linux on is the firewall! The place is so enamored with buzz-words that they think they must say "we use Linux!" because that's what all the legit places say!

Re:TDRL full of BS

[tinrobot]

Well said...

Technology is the king

[danila]

I will try to be original. Everyone here repeats the same argument that story is important, talent is important, technology will get you nowhere. I respectfully disagree.

Look at the story of Two Johns. Romero tried the "Design is King" technology and look where it got him. And look what we got - a terrible mess called Daikatana. His friend Carmack, on the other hand, is probably unable to comprehend that there might be things more important than the rendering pipeline or pixel shaders, but all id games still sell like crazy.

Why do you think the animated movies should be different? Good technology is essential, it empowers the artists, it enables the directors. The story is the cheapest and easiest thing in the whole business. For 1 million you can have the script written by the greatest scriptwriter (whoever he is). And still 1 million is just a small fraction of total costs. Even easier, everyone can use any public domain story like Disney always does. It is even possible to clone other successful films, like the Hollywood industry is often doing.

Yet, to render the underwater world beautifully you need the technology. To do it cheaply you need extensive technological expertise, you need programmers, you need hardware specialists, network engineers, etc. Consider The Two Towers. Where would that movie be without Gollum (we survived because of ME!), glorified CGI fest called Helm's Deep battle, storming of Isengard and other digital goodies? It would be just another crappy flick (no, it won't be good just because it is based on LOTR, look how they butchered the story and, anyway, remember .Bakshi's film). BTW, regarding Bakshi. Notice how everyone critisized the rotoscopy, which didn't work too well. The story there was on par with PJ's lame effort, but the technology wasn't there and Bakshi lost. Point proven - technology is the king.

P.S. And don't say anything about Final Fantasy. It was a first attempt, some argue it was too complex for unsofisticated American public and, anyway, it failed to a large extent because the technology failed (as everyone agrees, animation was stiff and unnatural blah-blah-blah).

Re:Technology is the king

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comparison to "Masters of Doom" is a bit ridiculous.

The video game medium is quite different than the movie industry. When was the last time you sat on your butt and watched a 90 minute recording of someone else playing a video game (let alone payed $9.50 for it!)?

I would argue it is a serious snooze-fest.

There are two real talents at Pixar. The story telling, and mapping that story onto existing technology.

The technology itself is pretty irrelevant. Sure, newer technology gives the directors a larger palette to play with, but the technology itself doesn't make or break Pixar (Luxo Jr. is still quite entertaining).

Romero failed because he missed two key elements: shooting for a technology that didn't exist yet and lacking the discipline and hard work necessary to make something revolutionary.

Carmack succeeded because he mapped the "story" to the technology. He did it in reverse order (made the technology, then made up a story)

The key observation is mapping the story telling to the technology itself. Neither in isolation is the route to success.

Re:Technology is the king

[Darth]

that is a colossal simplification of the events around id and ion storm.

Romero's efforts didnt blow up because of the "design is law" philosophy he had. They blew up for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he tried to build a very large game with complex new technological features (like ai backup. that hadn't been done when romero started) in 7 months. In that same time, he tried to build a company, produce 2 other games, grow the company to 100+ people, and court investors. He bit off way too much.

Carmack doesn't have to focus on the storyline. He has a company full of people who do the art and the storyline. His focus is on the technology. He builds the framework for them to do their jobs in and he lets them do their jobs.

Lord of the Rings wouldnt be made if the technology didnt exist to do it right because nobody (aside from Bakshi) would touch it unless they could do it right. But without Lord of the Rings, the story, you have Dungeons and Dragons. And that movie sucked (but had good effects).

I liked Final Fantasy. I liked the story. the animation was good enough for the story.

Re:Technology is the king

[Ondo]

For 1 million you can have the script written by the greatest scriptwriter (whoever he is).

No, you can't. M. Night Shyamalan gets paid much more than that.

Re:Technology is the king

[danila]

Good point. But he usually also works as the director and the producer, not only as writer. If we can separate these roles, his stories would probably be worth (taking into account that we also play for the name, not just for the script) about 3 millions.

And even together with directing and producing it's only 12 million (for one of the best). Hardly significant today in the age of 100+ mln budgets. So my point that you can get the best possible story relatively cheaply (compared with technology and actual filming expenses) still holds.

I would disagree on Final Fantasy

[metalhed77]

FF had good quality visuals as far as realism went, but as far beauty went, it was not beautiful really. Aki Ross may have been hot, but that aside, the imagery was just standard sci-fi fare, albeit rendered in CG. Beauty and accuracy are two different things.

Re:I would disagree on Final Fantasy

[Vadim the Conqueror]

to use a cliche, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. an accurate rendition of something done by something other than a photograph is an impressive feat. the way they accurately (re)produced scenery, vehicles, and people the way they did was amazing to me. i find things that amaze me beautiful.

Re:I would disagree on Final Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

>FF had good quality visuals as far as realism went, but as far beauty
>went, it was not beautiful really. Aki Ross may have been hot, but
>that aside, the imagery was just standard sci-fi fare, albeit rendered
>in CG. Beauty and accuracy are two different things.
>
>
The FF movie should've been along the lines of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 storylines. Yuna performing that first sending was truely beautiful. And what can you say about Sin?

Read between the lines

[UnknowingFool]

both Pixar and TDRL recently dumped Sun and MS, respectively, in favor of Linux

While it is true that Pixar is replacing their Sun/Solaris rendering farm with Intel/Linux, the comment makes it seem that Pixar has ripped out all of their Sun boxes which isn't quite true. In the article the author mentions that the back-end systems (databases, filesystems) are still run in UNIX.

In another note, Pixar replaced their SGI IRIX workstations with IBM workstations running Linux last year. It does appear that IBM is merely supplying hardware and software as they would normally do to any company willing to buy.

Thats 4 films not five...

[cmdrbuzz]

According to Pixar, Toy Story 2 does not count as one of the five, being a sequel. So we will get another film: 'The Incredibles' The trailer is here

Uhhh..

[Kelz]

We slashdotted a site that is using IBM's bandwidth?

Just shows you how much faith they have in threshold digital that they don't even give them enough bandwidth to withstand 200,000+ geeks with broadband all connecting at the same time :)

Still not right

[nakhla]

You're still not right. Disney and Pixar renegotiated their contract in the early days, following the success of Toy Story. I can't remember at what point, though. There are at least 2 more films coming out. The Incredibles, as you mentioned. I belive the other is tentatively titled Cars.

Re:Still not right

[Kailden]

But I suppose everything could be up for renegotiation since PIXAR has a strong hand to play...

Sheesh you give a guy a server farm or two..

[vudufixit]

And all of a sudden, they're a "filmmaker"

Obviously

[maroberts]

...they're not using their server farm to host the website!

Pixar is switching to Mac OS X

[afantee]

GabrielBenveniste & BethanyHanson from Pixar Animation Studios are going to talk about Deploying and Maintaining Mac OS X in the Enteprise in this years O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.

Pixar president Dr Ed Catmull has said on record that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac is the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan to be released for Mac OS X very soon.

Tron

[Icephreak1]

Good. Maybe IBM could move against Disney's will and do the Tron sequel Pixar hasn't bothered to do up to now.

- IP

Gollum?

[mccalli]

Consider The Two Towers. Where would that movie be without Gollum...?

Err...Gollum was crucial to the plot of The Two Towers quite some time before CG animation become prevalent. Like the 1940s, for example, when the book was actually written.

Besides, as I've posted on this board before I think Peter Woodthorpe, from the BBC radio series, made a far better Gollum. Without any CG at all.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Gollum?

[danila]

Ian? McCalli? Coincidence?...

Anyway, you all just prove my point. Peter Woodthorpe made a better Gollum. So how much would Serkis be worth without CGI? It just shows that it's technology that matters and it can compensate for inferior story or acting. And Darth admits that without the technology LOTR movie wouldn't be made. So technology IS essential.

2Darth: You say the same thing as I do. You say that one of the main reasons for Ion Storm fiasco was their inability to develop the AI technology and (as AC says) to porn the content to the Q2 engine. Technological failures dictated the fate of the project. And Carmack didn't have "a company full of people", id is very tight. And read the book to see how much attention they pay to storylines (none whatsoever, and the only guy who tried to infuse Doom with a decent story got fired), and even art is definitely developed to exploit the possibilities of the technology, not vice versa. Just one example is Carmack's initial refusal to add slide doors to Wolf3D (and essential feature according to everyone else in id) just because he thought it would make the code less elegant.

Doesn't all that prove (or at least suggest) that if IBM throws enough $$$/manpower at technological problems and solves them, they would have easy time doing the movies/games/whatever with these tools? I think it does.

Re:Gollum?

[mccalli]

an? McCalli? Coincidence?...

No coincidence, you're right. Ian McCall, at your service...

How much would Serkis be worth without CGI? For me, still less than one Peter Woodthorpe, who had no images at all to work with - just the sound of his voice on radio. Radio is by far the lower tech here, but it comes out better by virtue of quality acting. I believe the key where we (politely - this is not a flamefest...) disagree is your statement: "technology...matters and it can compensate for inferior story or acting. ". I agree that technology matters, but I don't accept that it can compensate for inferior story or acting.

Cheers,
Ian

Pixar is switching to Mac OS X

[afantee]

>> Have an url to back this up?

GabrielBenveniste and BethanyHanson from Pixar Animation Studios are going to talk about Deploying and Maintaining Mac OS X in the Enteprise in the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.

Star Wars

[softspokenrevolution]

To go off on a really different tangent, it's actually pretty sad that ILM can do some great work for other companies, but when it comes to Lucas's baby so far they've been striking out.

In the pst two years two trilogies have come out, the Lord of the Rings series and the Harry Potter series (don't know if it's really a trilogy, but whatever). Each of them is being put out one year after the last film and the digital work is fair (arguably in Fellowship and the Two Towers some of it was painful, like where the fellowship runs through the mines of Moria; I really didn't scrutinize the Harry Potter films that much).

If we're lucky, the Star Wars films come out once every two years, the visual effects at that point are nothing to marvel and and overall they're really like getting a date with the pretty girl next door and then finding out that what she meant was that she wanted you to take out her frumpy second cousin.

My current theory is that Lucas is putting a big gap between releases not just because of production, but so that the general public forgets how much the last movie managed to inhale vigorously.

XServe Clusters?

[2nd Post!]

How does the XServe fit into your worldview then?

Of course there isn't a G5 XServe yet, but unless Apple plans on abandoning the XServe market and form factor, I am supposing it's just a matter of time before you get dual G5s in a 1U enclosure...

Pixar Schmixar

[sir_dragonmike]

I frankly don't care about Pixar's choice of changing OS's. The computer hasn't really been interesting since Toy Story. I gave big appluases to Square Pictures for they DID what they could Pixar hasn't done: almost pseudo-realistic actors. Most of their (Pixar) movies are done cartoony to the point that it's that great anymore. I want them to do at least a movie with a mature storyline. Their writers may be great, but they really need to have new blood.

But it also is not timeless

[metalhed77]

FF's visuals may have been engaging, but some beauty is timeless. 40 years from now people will say, oh yes, very real, for its time, but it won't get accolades as far as cinematography composition, or compelling story telling goes. What you found beautiful was the experience of watching it, which is not timeless, to enjoy it FF had to be the cutting edge of tech. So apparently, we're discussing two different kinds of beauty, the experiential beauty which cannot exist without the context of FF being a CG breakthrough, and beauty from the standpoint of composition, compelling characters, story, etc.. So I agree, I too was interested by the advanced rendering tech, but I'll say that its a one off, its a gimmick, an enjoyable one, but a gimmick which I think doesn't deserve beauty, an overused term.

all true

[Anonymous Coward]

I can vouch for that

Another Good Example

[PetoskeyGuy]

South Park.

Nothing close to realistic 3D and makes a bundle because it's funny and smart and sometimes even makes some good points by the end of the show.

What happens at a super market when the doors close? I have no idea, all the grocery stores around here are open 24 hours.

Maybe next time they could adapt their massive computing power to building a web server to handle slashdot overloads on command.

If $HTTP_REFERRER =~ /slashdot.org/
StartNewServerNode();

Pixar's secret weapon is not its technology.

[kobotronic]

The shading and lighting tech used at Pixar is nice and certainly serves their purpos, but you could argue that the tech itself is nothing special compared to the rendering employed elsewhere in photorealistic CG F/X. The Final Fantasy flick had fine rendering and great tech, but sank like a lead balloon in the box office because of a dumb story and marginal direction. If IBM wants to compete in this market, they have to provide much more than a render farm.

Look at the IMDB top 50 animation features. Pixar and Studio Ghibli combined share most of the top ten popular user votes. Disney is further down the ladder, their new stuff fails to captivate the audiences the way the other two studios mentioned do. This is no coincidence -- these studios wins out against their competition because of creative talents and skillful directors, the technology employed is not the answer.

Studio Ghibli and Pixar are masters at production design and storytelling, and their works have appeal to children and adults alike. You could argue that Pixar has put out a few 'buddy' pictures following a very safe and mainstream formula, but generally both Ghibli and Pixar pursues original works that aren't derivative.

Disney on the other hand, is content with stealing from other sources and perpetually rehashing their own tired 'success' formulas, often compromising style, pace and adult interest with jarring diversions and noisy, needless extra characters crammed in by accountants and suits in order to sell a few more McDonald's toy tie-ins.

Ghibli and Pixar's stuff is immensely marketable, but that seems like an emergent property, something coincidental rather than the very reason for the production to exist. Compared to Disney, Ghibli and Pixar's studio structures seem to have much thinner strata of lawyers, accountants and other suits for ideas to percolate through, which means more direct creative control from directors and production designers.

This produces richer and much more satisfying features than the bland and safe works that always result from too many suits in a creative design process.

The secret weapon of Studio Ghibli is Hayao Miyazaki. The secret weapon of Pixar is John Lasseter. Tech doesn't have anything to do with it.

Rendering horsepower != animation skill

[fellini8.5]

you could be a great computer animator and be handicapped by the abilities of your computer

A great computer animator can achieve fantastic results on an M-5 Anti-aircraft Gun Director if they want to. All animation is creating the illusion of motion over a series of stills. Great animators take that further by introducing suspension of belief, making you forget the methods or the technology behind the illusion and be drawn into what the illusion creates in your mind.

For character animators, that means you react deep down and emotionally to the illusion as if it were actually alive, and forget for the moment that there are a bunch of pixels that took 20 minutes to render flitting by at 1/24th seconds.

How accurately light reflects off of a variety surfaces is only important if your attempt to suspend disbelief depends on it. If you're depending on it, and you don't do it right, then yeah, it interferes with the illusion and sticks out like a sore thumb. But the proverbial "great animator" will work within, and even exploit, the limitations of their technology; they won't be handicapped by it.

Can they get one out befor Pixar's next movie?

[sharkey]

And will it be called the "Unremarkables"?

Pixar, Apple, Mac OS X and the G5

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixar's web site has absolutely nothing to say regarding a change to Mac OS X or the G5 architecture. Whatever information you have heard is nothing but a rumor.

http://corporate.pixar.com/releases.cfm?press=ye s