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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."
What the fucking fuck?!
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
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My reputa
Apparently they open sourced it over Steve Job's dead body.
"an open source implementation of the Renderman subdivision surface technology, thus releasing the patents to the long standing Pixar 'secret sauce."
The Renderman Interface spec already contains how the subdivision surfaces are supposed to be described and computed, so we know how to do that. There are already other implementations. Moreover, publishing the source code does not "release patents" in any meaningful sense, not to mention the fact that patents are, by definition, public.
Ezekiel 23:20
With the libraries open, it should be interesting to see what comes of it. It lowers the barriers to entry in the rendering package world... And no one can say it is not commercial grade code. :)
Uh-oh. Source code is licensed under the Ms-PL. Ignorant anti-Microsoft flame-war igniting in 3... 2... 1... Duck and cover!
they are articulating it in real time! having graphics like this in videogames would be really amazing.
Our intent is to encourage high performance accurate subdiv drawing by giving away the "good stuff".
I want to be wrong about this. I really do. But I read this as "our intent is to establish a tie to our proprietary products Renderman and Maya via a license carefully designed by Microsoft to be incompatible with GPL, and thus Blender."
Well, this would be as good a time as any to point out that Maya is not the only game in town. There is Blender of course. And there is my as-yet-unannounced project based on a half edge meshing technology that is way superior to the creaky old infrastructure Maya relies on. There are already some great results in terms of high complexity meshes and excellent real time performance. So far it has been just me pushing on the code, but that should change pretty soon. Go here to find out about World Welder. Check out some demo images here, here and here. Those are all high triangle count, high complexity meshes rendering at smooth interactive frame rates on low end hardware. There are various algorithms in use. The 3D Freetype Unicode fonts are done with Root3 subdivision, arguably superior to Catmull Clark favored by the Maya crowd. Still lots of work to do to implement boundaries, creases, deformable heirarchy and the like, but the base it's built on is solid as a rock. And really compact as well, yes sometimes you can have it all. Anyway, I will be making a more official project announcement in due course but for now, a tarball is online here. I apologize in advance for the documentation quality, but not for the code quality. Please be kind to my server and don't browse all the images, it's just a cable modem with pathetic upload bandwidth. (By the way, sponsorship in the form of web hosting would be much appreciated.)
There remains much work to do, sigh, there always is. But this is already the skeleton of a nice 3D meshing workbench, and it is time to put some meat on the bones. Language is C++11, scripting is Lua, GUIs are GLX and QT, revision control is Mercurial, license is GPLv3. Anybody who wants to join the mailing list is more than welcome, developers and future users alike.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Can you people stop pissing and moaning and hairsplitting about license terms and allow some discussion of what this tech means for the medium-term future?
A few questions I'd certainly love to get answered from someone who's knowledgeable:
-Is this the REYES algorythm?
-Does it differ in important ways from the Catmull-Clark subdivision that's pretty much standard in off-the-shelf 3D software?
-With the increasing prevalence of raytraced GPU/coprocessor rendering replacing rasterisation in near-realtime applications, is this tech now mostly irrelevant?
-What are some things the release of this technology might make possible?
-Does this have any impact on the patent encumbrance surrounding Renderman's nearly-free motion blur?
-How much longer were those REYES patents going to last anyway?
There are currently 12 comments at +5 and only one talks about the software--the other 11 are about the license. Dropping down to +3 doesn't help any.
Can anyone else here weigh in on the technology itself?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So, will this give games that look like Toy Story?
(Hey, it's been a while since anyone mentioned that, thought I'd bring it back just for old time's sake....although the demo video kinda looks like the jokes not funny anymore...)
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
GPL-compatible does not mean that you can simply copy and paste code willy-nilly into a GPL project.
Most BSD style licenses are unencumbered enough that you can relicense direct derivatives (not just composite works) under practically any terms you want. Commercial companies do this all the time, and it is in fact what makes BSD style licensing for open source software projects so controversial - anyone can create a proprietary fork at will, with components that quickly lose their BSD character as modifications are added.
GPL licensed derivatives of BSD licensed components can be created in the same manner. It is the copyright of the authors of the modifications that makes the relicensing have teeth, it is the lack of a prohibition on additional license terms in BSD style licenses that makes it possible.
The MS-PL, on the other hand, specifically prohibits this practice, much like the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Both are moderate copyleft licenses, designed to make sure that derivatives of covered source files are always available under the terms of the original license.
You forgot to mention that Pixar was acquired by The Walt Disney Company, the chief beneficiary of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsPheErBj8
But you cannot remove the copyright notice, as a rule, if you are distributing it in source code form, nor can you remove the license terms. All BSD licenses contain this clause:
I'm not aware of any software licenses that do not contain similar provisions except for the WTFPL.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I agree, you certainly cannot remove the copyright notice, nor can you remove the license. However, you can indicate that a given file contains "portions" copyright so and so that are subject to a BSD license, and portions copyright someone else that are subject to a more restrictive license.
That has the effect of subjecting the whole file (assuming substantial modifications have been made) to the restrictions contained in both licenses, because the copyrights of both the original copyright holder and later contributors are applicable. In the case of code that was originally BSD licensed that has substantial contributions released under a more restrictive license, the file is (for most practical purposes) governed by the the conditions of the the more restrictive license, because the requirements of the BSD licensed portions are trivial to satisfy.
No care need be taken to avoid mixing the code subject to the different licenses within the file either, as long as the copyright notice and conditions that apply to portions derived from the original distribution are included. The whole point of a derived work is that the copyrights (and hence the conditions) of both contributors apply. If a function or code fragment subject to the terms of both licenses is not a legal nullity, no problem.
That's like saying that justice is "toxic" to murderers. Well I suppose you're right. That doesn't make justice wrong though.
GPLv3 is the most community-friendly license, since it prevents the fruits of community labor from being closed off into proprietary products, and it provides some small measure of retaliation against those who try to do that. It's an interesting first attempt at justice by FOSS license.
I guess it's "toxic" to community-unfriendly people, but just like court justice, that's a good thing. Those who want to take from the community but not give back don't like GPLv3, for sure. There's plenty of those people, so it's good to have a license containing some modern defenses.
No, it doesn't effectively change the license on the existing code. The portions that were under a BSD license remain so licensed, at least to the extent that the person who receives it can still figure out what parts were originally covered by the BSD license. The clause in the MS-PL requiring that distribution of that code in source code form must be under the MS-PL and that a copy of the license must be included is not really different from the clause in the BSD license requiring that the BSD license terms be included, at least in practice.
Pedantically, yes, there's a very slight difference. In practice, assuming people follow good code hygiene (keeping source code from different sources in separate files is a good practice anyway, because doing so makes it easier to keep things in sync with the original), there's no difference. Content in source code form (in separate files) inherently does not impose any restrictions on other files in the project unless you distribute the content in binary form, and the MS-PL does not, to the best of my understanding, impose any additional restrictions on the GPLed binary code above what GPLv3 allows. So to the extent that this is different from BSD at all, the differences solely affect code maintainers, and in a way that is generally considered to be positive. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, it doesn't effectively change the license on the existing code
I didn't say it changed the license on anything. I said it has the effect (the practical effect) of subjecting the whole file to the more restrictive license. The reason why this is the case is (as you note) it can quickly become impossible to determine which lines are subject to which license.
Of course it doesn't subject the original code to the more restrictive license, you just don't know what is the original code. If you want to create something based on the original code with modifications under a different license, you should start with a clean copy. The further encumbered version is almost useless for that.
I agree, however, that there is no point in encumbering a BSD licensed source file with another license if all you are going to do is make minor changes. If you are going to make major changes, on the other hand, you may have a very good reason to do just that.