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Pixar Demos Newly Open-Sourced OpenSubdiv Graphics Tech
An anonymous reader writes "Last week at SIGGRAPH, Pixar Animation Studios announced OpenSubdiv, an open source implementation of the Renderman subdivision surface technology, thus releasing the patents to the long standing Pixar 'secret sauce.' In addition to the offline subdivision scheme, it also includes a GPU implementation. This video demonstrates a realtime deforming subdivision surface running at 50 FPS in Maya (though it is freely available to use anywhere). The source code is available on Pixar's GitHub account."
Says the project's site: "OpenSubdiv is covered by the Microsoft Public License, and is free to use for commercial or non-commercial use. This is the same code that Pixar uses internally for animated film production."
It's free for non-commercial AND commercial use. What the fuck else do you want?
In a nutshell, lose the Ms-PL in order to appear genuine and gain the trust of the community. We have seen enough faux-open code bases, thankyou. Let's see proof that this is actually open and not a strategem, in which case Pixar would get the love they deserve.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.