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Ask Slashdot: Quality Graphics in Linux?
Another of Clan Anonymous Coward asked:
"We will be getting a few new boxes soon,
and I want to know: can you get workstation
quality graphics out of Linux? NT-GL seems
to be acceptable, SGI-IRIX has great
graphics, and the best I hear about Linux is
that it runs X in 2D!" I remember
hearing a sentence with the words "Titanic"
and "Linux" in it. But seriously, how much
would one have to spend to get quality
workstation graphics out of a Linux box?
And this doesn't have to mean Titanic quality
either. If you're interested, hit the
link.
continued...
"Given say, a $1000 budjet for Drivers, Monitor, and Video Card, what could you do with that in Linux? I would like to know details, for example: what 3D-32M video cards work, what cards are the faster cards, what commercial X product with GL/glide/Mesa are avaliable now, and for what price? With money to spend NOW and a need for graphics NOW, what is there in Linux that works NOW? (and not in a few months, or planned, or in progress)"
C :Good questions, I'm sure there are folks out there that have some answers. Does anyone have the link to that Linux Times article about the Linux Farm used to render _Titanic_?
"Given say, a $1000 budjet for Drivers, Monitor, and Video Card, what could you do with that in Linux? I would like to know details, for example: what 3D-32M video cards work, what cards are the faster cards, what commercial X product with GL/glide/Mesa are avaliable now, and for what price? With money to spend NOW and a need for graphics NOW, what is there in Linux that works NOW? (and not in a few months, or planned, or in progress)"
C :Good questions, I'm sure there are folks out there that have some answers. Does anyone have the link to that Linux Times article about the Linux Farm used to render _Titanic_?
I'm not even sure if those Linux Alpha boxes had video cards. If they did they were probably cheap pieces of crap. The Linux boxes were a render farm, not a workstation in front of a person.
Go to www.xig.com and see what their OpenGL X servers do and if they fit your need. Can you live with software only OpenGL? Then check out Mesa.
You'd have to spend at LEAST $1000 to get a decent 21" monitor.. that doesn't even figure in the costs of a video card. ;-) Anything less is uncivilized.
Mesa works fine as a software renderer.
Hardware acceleration of 3d rendering? Supposedly,
it's just around the corner. Just like last year.
If you want accelerated 3d in an X window, you can
pick from a number of servers, none of which are
available yet. Please, prove me wrong. sr
Realtime complex photorealistic 3D modelling? Buy an SGI box, or Evans & Sutherland if you're really into simulations (lotsa $$$!). But drop "realtime" from that requirement and Linux running Povray will do the job. Drop "photorealistic" and there are probably packages out there that'll do the "realtime".
Given the basic essentials of 24- or 32-bits per pixel card and a big enough screen, you can get any quality you want. You just need to come up with your own optimization function for money vs time.
What I'm looking at is the voodoo banshee. Daryl Strauss (of titanic fame) has been working on an X server to support the banshee. He has one with partial accelerated support out now look here. The 2D core is supposedly very fast, and the 3D core is a voodoo2, which gives almost workstation quality graphics. None of the geometry transformation is done in hardware, but rasterization is, so things are sped up considerably.
The 3D chipset is already supported, but as of current the X server will not let you render 3D to a window. He says there are still some issues to work out. He is releasing a new version of his server almost daily now, so I'm hoping he will have this done soon. If you absoluetely need good 3D right now, you can either go with the voodoo rush, with an absymal 2D chipset and a voodoo1 3D core, or you could go with a commercial implementation from either metrox or xig. They support a wide range of boards, but the cost of the server is oftentimes more than the cost of a board :(. This is especially true now as the banshee is around $100 US.
Nope, no way, nada, zip. There are a few vendows who say that 3D X will be out any day now, most have said that for over a year. No decent 3D IHV will let their driver source out so forget about it on Linux. NT is definately the way to go, once again.
M$4VR
Are you just fishing with flame bait, or what?
Once again NT is pretty. Wow. Performance wise it still sucks.
$1000 eh? Hmm. Well the ultimate graphics card on Linux right now would be the Voodoo Banchee. Voodoo is the only 3d card with a proper driver on linux (glide), and the Banchee support appears to have reached stability (both glide and the X server). (But do your own research). Whatever money left over spend on the biggest monitor you can find (with good Hz and resolution). Sony are the best, but the IBM pro series look like an economical option with good specs (There's nothing like a BIG monitor, preferably 21"). See here for Banchee on X. Banchee X Support
First of all, you don't need a video card to render scenes. The "Titanic Project" just used Alphas to do the numerical work of ray-tracing (or whatever they did). The alphas didn't display any images.
Anyway, I have question similar to this one. What non-linear video-editing software exists for Linux (if any)? What hardware do I need? Etc? Resource pages, anyone?
Read the story from earlier today?
SGI opensourced their code for GLX just so that Linux and BSD could have hardware accelerated 3D.
And the specs will be released. The secrets are in the hardware anyway, not the software interface.
I fart in your general direction!
The problem up until quite recently has not been source disclosure, it's been that most companies don't feel that its worth their while to produce linux drivers for their hardware. The microsoft model is to bully the rest of the industry into thinking that if they don't support their platform, then noone will buy their card (this is unfortunately all too true at the moment), so companies take it upon themselves to release drivers for windows at the same time the harware is released.
The linux model has been that some random hacker somewhere wants to use some hardware under linux, so he goes and codes a driver for it. This cannot typically happen at the time hardware is released, as specs for the boards usually aren't disclosed to anyone until much later.
This hasn't typcially been as much of a problem with most hardware as it has been with graphics hardware. Graphics hardware is evolving very quickly, which makes the turn around time for getting linux drivers out quickly harder. It is also a very competitive market, so many manufacturers are reluctant to give specs to anyone.
This is all starting to change, as more momemtum is building in the mindshare of corporate types they realize maybe they should release linux drivers at the same time as the hardware. There are already people who've been contracted to do this.
Hell, if 3dfx had done that, instead of just using Daryl Strauss under NDA in his free time (which totally breaks down the free software development model BTW), I'd have bought a banshee long ago.
$1000 budget for a decent quality workstation on Linux? Any platform? Can't be done. Period. Sorry, but unless you like things compling for weeks on end, you're SOL. If you want a decent graphics workstation try the $5000-$10000 range minimum.
You can settle for an AMD powered box w/ Blender w/ lots of RAM and a good video card, but then you're just poking along and you still don't have a monitor.
-laMeduCK
P.S. Sorry about the pessimism, but I've done POV-Ray animations(prolly the lightest weight way of doing them, and you could get rid of the RAM), but compile times turned me away eventually. I think you might find similar results.
NT is definately the way to go, once again.
...and is going strong. This type of flame bait rhetoric is ridiculous. There is no way you'd get an NT box to do 3D rendering nicely, and least Linux stands a chance(if you through enough money at it, but then again SGI isn't cheap either).
-laMedUcK
Try the website:
www.linux3d.org
It seems like a pretty good source of information.
I bought a Creative Labs Graphics Blaster
Exxtreme ( Permedia 2, 4MB ram ) for $60 at the local OfficeMax store. S.U.S.E. has a free
downloadable X server which is solid and
seems to be beyond alpha/beta quality. I
haven't tried any 3D rendering on it and
can't say about overall speed, but its
cheap and solid - something to look at
if last generation video speed is adequate.
That seems to say it all.
You can try to poke around and find the right support for linux (for photorealism and 3d, you're going to be hunting high and low), or you could just go to a vendor who has solved this problem.
SGI is the obvious choice.
Sun and HP also have "graphics" boxes.
As for doing it on the cheap - there are forces outside the control of linux, such as the cost of a good monitor. Just bite the bullet and get an SGI.
PS Only AC b/c I'm lazy fezzik@rocketmail.com
:[ but at least it's free.
Well, *I* do it. I'm a grad student in the graphics program at Linux. I run Mesa Glide, based on Mesa 3.1, on my box. It's got a PII 333Mhz, an ATI Xpert@Play which runs on top of the ATI XFree86 X server for 2D mode, and a second monitor hooked to a Voodoo2. All open source except the glide driver
The problem with Linux 3D support is A.) Hardware support is weak, unless you want to pay, and even then is questionable. B.) It almost all centers around OpenGL, which is fine by me, but could be constraining.
httP://vizzini.cs.jhu.edu/~fezzik
A good Sony 21", like the 500PS, is very hard to come by for less than $1000. And after sitting in front of one, you never want to sit in front of something else.
And to hell with flat panels... until they have 21-25" displays, they're not terribly useful.
I suspect that 32M consumer cards aren't far behind. Good workstation 3D graphics systems are always going to be better than consumer-grade 3D (they are also more expensive), but the consumer-grade 3D today is so much better than even workstation 3D from a few years ago that it may well be sufficient for many uses.
If your looking at all for Radiosity raytracing, there is a program called "Radiance" which can be used to create absolutely stunning pictures. The syntax is a bit hard to learn, though it's not too awful once you get the hang of it. You just need to be able to visualize everything in your head. I did the following image all with "joe" text editor and a single sheet of graph paper:
http://www.itlabs.umn.edu/~nels1678/pofr.jpg
The homepage for radiance itself is:
http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance
If text based 3d isn't your thing, blender of course is another option, as others have already mentioned here...
Nite_Hawk (efnet irc)
Don't get me wrong.. I appreciate what you've been doing all this time. It's just been somewhat agonizing watching the whole process. As productive as you've been, it's still not possible for one person in their free time to keep up with the latest drivers from even one company.
FWI, my housemate just got a banshee for his new machine largely because of the impressive progress you've been making on your X server lately. And I plan to get one as soon as 3D is working..
The Diamond Monster 2 (Voodoo 2) works just fine, as well.
I do not have a link to the article in LJ, but the RenderFarm was more than 200 Alpha/Linux boxes and several SGI's.
That being said, graphics on Linux are very good when viewed at a price performance level. A $10,000 SGI does not produce 500% better graphics than a $2000 linux box.
Two questions. Absolutely!
Graphics run in two catagories: Fast, low quality, hardware accellerated graphics and painstakingly slow high-quality graphics.
The folks who make Titanic, Toy Story, Babylon 5 use dozens or hundreds of compters working in parallel to produce one frame of animation in several hours. Digital Domain (who made Titanic) needed the best number crunching to cost ratio solution. The Alpha hardware had high number crunching ability. Linux had zero cost.
RAID 5 100 GB, motherboards taking 1.5+ GB RAM, dual processor P2/400, and REAL SUPPORT.
:)
2 displays, something just a little faster than Intergraph Wildcats for big meshes..
Notice I asked for 2 P/2 400's... thank's to Intel's stranglehold on the CHIPSET market, no one has innovated a 4 way Xenon or 4-way P2 board. At least not from SGI, Intergraph, or HP. Thanks mr. Bunny Person..
Oh, and the impossible piece: DRIVER AND VENDOR SUPPORT. Build your own is not an option.
Until Ciprico RAID drivers and fast hardware guaranteed OpenGL support exists, I'm just a Microsoft hater advocating Linux from the corner of the company...
Open source is OK as long as someone is willing to bet their reputation on it (not me!). RedHat is slowly getting respect, but if SGI *really* steps in with workstation CAD/3D animation SoftImage style they could REALLY change the market. And strike back at Microsoft for neutering them...
SGI 1600SW Flat Panel Monitor w/Number Nine Rev IV graphics board is now supported by Accelerated-X Display Server v4.1.
Now you can get support for the new flat panel monitor from SGI that comes bundled with Number 9's Revolution IV FP (32 MB) AGP board. Click here for more details including benchmarks.
www.xig.com
:)
For accelerated 3D you basically have to go with
either 3DFX/Glide/Mesa (can copy from the frame
buffer to a window too) or Metro/OpenGL. Xi also
has an OpenGL port but last I heard it did not
include hardware acceleration (but check the web
page.)
On top of the OpenGL/Mesa API there are a number
of free applications available.
You never buy one from SGI unless you have an extra 2k to blow (even the remanufactured ones).
Go check comp.sys.sgi.marketplace (best place), or www.reputable.com
I, not less than 5 days ago, got an Indigo2 R4400 200mhz with Extreme graphics, 128 meg of memory, irix 6.2 media, 2 gig hd, cdrom, for a thousand bucks.
A quick check shows others selling at this price.
These replies were almost completely useless. To get an idea of real-time hardware-accelerated 3d graphics on Linux, read Daryll's response only. It is possible now (I do it daily), and it's basically the same support as under Windows.
Only problem is you're limited to 3dfx (and now, apparently, Permedia2?) hardware only for the video card. This info may be out-of-date by the time you're reading it.
You can get good 1024x768x16 60fps graphics playing games under Linux. As for super high-end graphics, say 3-head etc, you're probably still out-of-luck, but I MAY BE WRONG! The best pointers are in Daryll's post.
Daryll is THE GUY doing 3d in Linux right now, and it would behoove you to ignore most of this flak and see what he has to say. Some people mentioned good non-Linux resources, but most of the Linux posts I saw displayed ignorance more than usefulness.
Today SGI released GLX source code, which will significantly accelerate the widespread development of accelerated 3d under Linux. It may not help today, but it is a big step. See:
http://www.sgi.com/software/opensource/glx/
I am running an AGP Matrox Millenium G200 16Mb in ;-). The plain X
full 24 bit color at 1920x1440 on a Princeton
Graphics 21" monitor (EO2100 I believe). I do not
use it for 3D (not yet anyway). I can suggest an
X-server from the Xi Graphics. It is not free, but
it is worth every penny. I have both a laptop and
a desctop version, both have worked flawlessly
(once the patches were applied
server will cost you around $120, without
accelerated OpenGL. As far as I understand, OpenGL
is a separate product Xi will also sell to you.
You can get more detail at http://www.xig.com
The monitor I use is the best monitor I've ever
seen, even better than the ones they've got on the
UltraSparcs in school. The monitor will cost you
approximately $900. I've got mine at
http://www.nexc.com -- The price is amaising, any
other monitor with similar capabilities costs $600
more. The graphics card is up to you, my bias is
towards Matrox Millenium - very fast even
unaccelerated. 8Mb edition should be plenty, but
16Mb edition will give you more colors at the
highest resolutions. For 3D I gather you are
better off with one of the 3Dfx add-on boards,
however here I'm no expert.
In general, you may find that $1000 budget is not
enough (at least according to my appetites)
chill out mon!
g4wd 1m4 3133+
Well, a $10k SGI might not have 500% graphics perf then a $2000 Linux box - but at least you can run cool software on the SGI - such as Lightwave 3D if your on a budget
The DD/Titanic story well known but is not the only use of Linux-
a number of other facilities are using or evaluating Linux.
For example Centropolis (who did most of the animation for Godzilla)
converted an Intel NT render rack to Linux.
Also worth mention:
- Renderman (beta) is available for linux/intel,
$5000/copy. Renderman is not available for NT
currently.
- Mental Ray is available for Linux, $1500(?)/copy.
- The up-and-comping Shake compositing engine is said to be available if you ask for it.
- One of the high-end animation packages is being ported, another one "has been asking around" i.e. looking into possible demand.
The original question was misphrased- "pre-vis"
graphics would be a better term than "quality".
It might be interesting to note that we just saw an email from Silicon Graphics. They're selling off all the MIPS kit, for example:
;-)
200Mhz O2 workstation, 64mb ram, 4gb hard drive, Irix 6.5, 17" colour monitor - 2000ukp.
It is twice the price you were looking for, but the graphics hardware is more than twice as good
Well on my 21'' monitor here, text is more fuzzy in 1280x1024 that it is on my home 19'' monitor at 1600x1200. Maybe is it because I have a crap S3 video, or maybe is it because it is a Diamontron monitor (better constrast and better for CAO, but not necesseraly better for text).
NT workstations from HP and Intergraph are amongst the fastest out there. They do suffer from NT's lack of stability but that does not impact quality. Actually the graphics cards from E&S, HP, and Intergraph (ever hear of the WildCat?) are the best 3D cards out there but, when running on typical PC-style workstations, they suffer from 2nd-rate I/O subsystems and so the bottom-line performance is about the same (maybe a fraction less) as those high-end UNIX boxes from SGI.
As a certified NT specialist and having used and managed NT boxes for the past 5 years, I can assure you that NT's admin capabilites are in no way on par with even the weakest UNIX box. NT has a lot going for it. On paper, it is an awesome OS. In reality things go wrong. When they do, I don't enjoy the fact that most every serious aspect of administration must be done locally. Sure X is chatty, but at least it works. It's a different design philosophy. It has it's pluses and minuses but it is better than anything NT has for admin purposes. Client server on NT is good for apps but it doesn't provide useable admin tools. Terminal server does add multi-user support and remote admin tools but at a price. And I'm not overly impressed with the multi-user aspects of it either (want a job supporting a clustered TS running a dozen different apps {including IE4}?). It can get to be a real nightmare (house of cards comes to me mind for some reason).
I've followed the 3D scene for the past 9 months or so. I tried graphics cards with Evans & Sutherland chips as well as Intergraph RealiZm. I found the best bang for the buck is the AccelEclipse II which can be had for around $600 street price.
I actually found a lot of new DEC Powerstorm 4D60T cards (made by Intergraph - same as RealiZm Z25) for $300 each w/o texture RAM. I bought a 16MB texture RAM module for $250. That brought the price per card to $550. These cards were awesome. Not quite as fast as the A&S cards but much better texture memory support (up to 64MB)and more reliable by far (the Diamond FireGL 4000 would lock me up constantly - don't get a Diamond card, their drivers are trash). They are still over $4k street price if you buy one of those from Compaq/DEC.
My point is this... you can find bargains out there but most of them are going to target the NT market. If you dump $1,000 at the problem you can get yourself a copy of NT and a good card with drivers. I just don't know if Linux has anything comparable.
I know some of the X vendors have drivers for old low-end cards (Glint 500TX & MX) but nothing for the newer better cards. Maybe they updated since I last checked (about 4 or 5 months ago). Good luck!
Now, mind you, it's a far cry from the state of the art in graphics design, which is Photoshop 5 and Alias/Wavefront (or an equivalent 3D system), but...
:) But that's RenderMan for you. You can get Alias to output RIB files, as well as many other editing suites on many other platforms. You won't do much better than BMRT for quality, though it might lack the luster of the GUIs available under Windows and on SGI systems.
2D: Gimp is still state of the art, where it's at. You can do a lot with this, though it's a very different beast from Photoshop.
3D: POV, IMO, is a lower-end rendering system. I know, I'll take serious flames for that, but if you want real rendering quality, you want RenderMan, and the Blue Moon Rendering Tools. BMRT are SOTA, fucking brilliant package that is bar-none the best out there. Unfortunately, also the most complex out there.
--
Greg Block, gblock@netscape.net, and lazy bastard.
It seems to me that the RivaTNT would be an optimal solution now...Much better quality than any 3dfx board..and strond 2D. I saw a post about a Creative Employee working on 3D support via Mesa...anyone know of this?
Not really. They boot and work happily with SMP, but the HOWTO tells you how to connect a serial console, presumably because either the display or the keyboard (or both?) is unsupported. The graphics aren't supported under X yet, let alone GL.
So if you want to buy an SGI Visual PC to be a headless compute box...
.. where he said "$1000" system. Try again.
When you are using PCanywhere, you tie up the entire box for one tiny little user. This is in no way a substitute for true remote admin. Also, you have to pay at least about $200 more for this hack. Before you flame, I am a NT admin, not a UNIX guru. I just happen to have lived with the beast long enough now to know where all the warts are. Theys gobs of 'em sonnie!
The Banshee Xserver works well in the current state of alpha that it's in BUT you can forget about glide till Darryl gets around to porting it for the Banshee the trick of 3dfx and glide working with the voodoo1 and 2 will not work in anyway with the Banshee. I'm waiting for glide too.
I've got an AMD 333 and would love to get the max outta my Banshee.
...but the software. I love Linux as much as the other guy, but until modelling packages like Maya or Softimage come out for Linux, I wouldn't even consider it as a platform for professional 3d graphics. Unless you're using it as part of a render farm (how it was used in Titanic), no Linux-based 3d modelling package out there has the maturity of the NT-based packages.
And don't try to convince me that Blender or any other package is even remotely comparable. They're not.
I wouldn't mind seeing great 3d on Linux, but it isn't there (and won't be for a long time). I think that it'll get there eventually, but personally, I'd like to see more development on the BeOS. They don't call it the "poorman's SGI" for nothing.
Radiance is open source, but not Open Source(tm). You can't modify it or redistribute it, even though it comes with source.
Xfree doesn't support much of the high end hardware, but the commercial X-servers do. Go to Xi for the best X-server and full OpenGL support. Metro-X is another good vendor of commercial X-servers. Not quite as good but a better bang for your buck. Their servers cost between $50 and $250 depending on what you want, but they are usually worth it. As for Hardware to get. Find out what the X-server will support and get the best one.
It seems most people here are answering questions about 3d rendering in Linux. However, from reading the guy's question, he seems to be asking about 3d workstation graphics (as in real-time while-you-look-at-it display and modelling), not render farms. So references to Titanic are off-topic, since it used a render farm, and most of its boxes didn't even have video cards. This guy seems to want a workstation with SGI-IRIX quality graphics. Unfortunately, such a beast doesn't exist running Linux, and probably won't for a while. We're talking about the 32meg 3d cards here used for serious work, not your voodoo2 that you need to play games.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Until the 3D card vendors get a clue and start releasing specs... As both the Voodoo2 and the Matrox G200 have proven, the driver interface is not the key to high performance.
:)
The Voodoo2 worked under Linux before Darryl ported the Voodoo2 Glide drivers because someone changed one byte in the card detection code to fool Glide into thinking that a Voodoo2 was a 1. Worked great, didn't use the new features of the Voodoo2, but there weren't many. All a V2 is is a really fast dual-TMU V1 with a few small enhancements. 90+ percent of the performance differences between the V1 and V2 don't need those enhancements.
Someone used an alpha-level driver for the 3D portions of the Matrox Mill II on a G200 - It worked pretty decently, considering the quantum leap in 3D capability between the Mill II and the G200. (Nowhere near as good as the V2 story, tho.)
As far as my advice - Get an IRIX SGI. Once Linux's 3D performance is "there", going from SGI IRIX to Linux will be a lot easier than migrating to/from NT. Still, SGIs will probably be eternally ahead of Linux machines, with the exception of Linux running on SGI hardware, which looks like a very good possibility.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The original question stated "Workstation-quality" graphics capability. $5000 is cheap for this class. SGI's lowest-end box is $4500 (The VisWS), and that's the bare minimum to be called "workstation quality"
$5K-10K is realistic, even more.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wish I could afford one! Maybe they'll be affordable one day - it's progress that they are available at all.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
mmm, sending every mouse movement across the network is so efficient.... NOT
X is a travesty of a windowing system, NT's client/server approach is *way* superior. and anyhting you want to script, you can with WSH.
as for the graphics, show me Maya or Lightwave on linux... and get a clue before you post. All the bashing of NT i see here is from people who've no idea how to use it.
The advantage to using more than one monitor is more desktop space. Or you could be running the 3d display on one monitor and the menus/controls on the other. Use your imagination to find out what to do with a 3200x1280 desktop...
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
I believe the question was $1000 for drivers and video card, maybe not even including the monitor, but maybe. But I sure didn't read that it was the whole workstation!!! I believe they were talking $1000 specific to video, and then add the CPU/RAM/Motherboard/etc to that.
"Given say, a $1000 budjet for Drivers, Monitor, and Video Card, what could you do with that in Linux?"
No where in that do I see anything about CPU, RAM, Motherboard, etc.... They are being VERY video specific. And when I see posts that say "you can't get a system that will do 3D at all for $1000" it seems to say to me, you didn't even read the question.
I don't know much about 3D, I have never done any on x86, what I have done is on SGI's, but I would guess that a high quality SONY selling for about $400 (checking PriceWatch, that would get about a 17" .25 pitch, blah blah blah Sony) might not be the biggest monitor, but should be high quality. That leaves $600 for a video card and commercial X server. My God, if you can't do it on that, I will be sad to hear Linux is soo far off. I bet an NT newsgroup would give you endless suggestions. I can't believe all the Linux fanatics here say it can't be done.
There are widely differing assumptions here about what makes a "Graphics Workstation." Me, I think it would be something that an architect or engineer can use to do CAD type stuff, and then manipulate a 3D model of the design in a window.
It would have helped quite a lot if the original poster had mentioned what sort of work was being planned, and what sort of software was to be used.
For work that needs to be done today:
A used SGI indy runs less than $2k these, irix 6.5 and a 1-year service contract will run you around $350. Not a speed demon, but the graphics hardware is dandy, and the applications are readily available.
$1000 and Linux just aren't reasonable yet for building a "Graphics Workstation". Give it a year or two.
Yep, NT's just the best thing since sliced bread isn't it? Well perhaps you can answer me this one simple little question: Since NT's administration is largely GUI based why didn't they design it from the ground up to support the kind of behavior x windows has had for - oh lets just say "decades"? Boggles the mind how the geniuses didn't chose to (a) Make sure every gui administration screen had a functional command-line equivalent or (b) Build in x-like ability, this OS was designed in the *90's* you know. Hard to conceive how they selected option (c) - do neither of the above, you have to be physically sitting at the machine to do *many* administration tasks. But pay no attention to the man behind the curtain - just keep repeating "NT is definitely the way to go, once again".
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
For OpenGL graphics, you'll need either AccelX from Xi graphics , or Metro X with one of the supported cards.
However, the accelerated versions are RSN, which is not what you want, so you may be better off looking at an old Indy or Indogo2, either from the open market, or at SGI's remanufactured products page.
How are the SGI NT boxes at 3D rendering?
actually I dunno, but you can go here:
Jujunem
I guess I'm first, huh? =)
Who cares about your Bill Gates Dumbfuckware?
You have been assimilated.
I'm trying to do this at work for some scientific visualization work. Most of our boxes are SGIs, but I ended up with an x86 on my desk, so I ran out and got a #9 Revolution 3D card (as I loved the Imagine 128 I used back in my NT days) and a Xi Graphics server (as they looked to have the best server that supported it). It's slow as a dog. Screen redraws (like between virtual desktops) take on the order of seconds. 3D is just unuseable. My box here at home just has a cheap Matrox Millinium II in it that I use with Mesa and it rocks. I tried out another box at work with a S3 chip & Mesa and that worked beautifully too. My project lead is running a 3Dfx card in his box at home and said that the Linux support for that is impressive.
So, if you aren't looking to spend much, I'd pick up a nice 2D card (like the latest & greatest from Matrox) and a 3Dfx card, and just use the XFree86 server with Mesa.
I now do my graphics work on an Indigo 2 that's floated down to me. For what you can pick one of those beasts up for these days, I'd say that's probably the best solution if you're doing anything more that fiddling around. How is the SGI port of Linux doing anyway?
And in case anyone is wondering, I tried XFree86 3.3.3 with the Rev3D and it looks like #9 changed the RAMDAC on it from what the XFree86 group ran on, which may well explain Xi's problem with it. I'd avoid #9 products for now.
Hrm. Maybe you're confused... how can you compare NT's "client/server" approach to X? The main client/server functionality built into NT is user authentication and file sharing, and X is responsible for neither of the two. I've never heard of setting NT's $DISPLAY; perhaps NT can't forward command prompts, etc? Also, keep in mind that the WM is seperate from the X Window System. Sorta like Microsoft's browser is seperate from their OS. Well okay, maybe not.
Go to www.blender.nl to look at one of Linux's prominent 3d programs. AC3D is also a 3d option.
I don't have the url right off hand. Sorry.
I had heard that one of the big companies had ported their stuff to Linux, but I think it was mostly a CAD app.
As for 2d, well of course there is GIMP. Nuff Said there.
when the Voodoo 3 comes out the banshee server that daryll has will suport it
since voodoo 3 = banshee with dual texture ps
1 voodoo 3 > #2 voodoo 2 in sli
I have a NEC 21" and a Sony 19", and the picture of the Sony is actually sharper (since it's newer), and I have no trouble reading text at 1280x1024 (the same resolution I have the NEC at).
The Sony's $ 799 and worth every penny.
I used to agree with you, but the 19" technology really won me over. I wouldn't recommend 17" or below, though.
D
Use BMRT (www.bmrt.org) for great rendering. It will render scenes written in the RenderMan shading language (originally developed by Pixar). Lots of packages should be able to output RIB. There are lots of good modelers on NT.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I do some 3d graphics as a hobby, and I'm looking to buy a new system soon. Unfortunatly, from all the research I've been doing, I'm finding that there isn't much in the way of midrage graphics cards available, period. Once you start trying to look above consumer level Matrox Milleniums, Viper 550s, etc., you find there aren't may other cards until you start looking in the $1000+ range. For hardware accelerated OpenGL, there are some permedia2 cards that are cheap, but they don't really qualify as professional quality. You can get some Glint TX based cards (Leadtek 2500, Symetric Glyder, Diamond FireGL 3000, etc. - all in the $300 range) that are probably supported loosly in Linux, but they're old and not really supported by the manufacturer. When you start looking at current chipsets (Glint MX and above), all the cards are well over $1000 (Intergraph, Evans & Sutherland, 3dLabs, etc.). It's true that there are some cards in the $700-900 range, but that's still a bit expensive for me. My suggestion is, if you don't want to spend over $1000 on the graphics part of your system is to go for a decent monitor ($700 for the Mitsubishi 900u flat crt, Sony GDM-400ps, etc.) and get a high end consumer level card (Matrox Millenium G200 w/16 megs, or maybe a Number Nine card).
I bought a Viewsonic PT813 from onsale.com
:)
for $650USD. True its refurbished but other then
the box it arrived more or less like new.
(even has a 1 year warranty)
Once you run X at 1600x1200 @ 85Hz you aint
goin back to anything less.
You just need to look in the right places for
cheap stuff.
I'll be doing a presentation at Linux World Conference on the state of 3D for Linux. The presentation and benchmark results will be available on my website (http://www.linux3d.org) soon after the show.
Here's the short answer:
Xi Graphics and Metro Link have servers out to Beta testers. I have them and will be benchmarking them before the show.
Precision Insight is adding Mesa and GLX support to XFree as well as creating a direct rendering infrastructure for drivers to be built on.
3Dfx Voodoo cards work now. Banshee and V3 will be reasonable (low end) cards for in a window 3D. No extra software costs.
Permedia2 is in alpha and is open source.
I personally expect all this to really be solid by Linux Expo and I expect SIGGRAPH to be pretty exciting.
For Titanic we used the boxes strictly for rendering, no interactive work. Without 3D hardware support doing interactive work doesn't make any sense. We did run our compositing software remotely using Mesa and X and it worked surprisingly well! That was just for testing not for real work.
Can you get a reasonable setup for $1k? It depends on what you mean by reasonable. For film work, the answer would be no. The modelling packages we use range from $2,500 to $15,000. A good OpenGL card can set you back another $2,500. A good rendering package is another $2,500 to $5,000.
As a home user you could buy a V3 or Permedia for $150, no extra OpenGL cost, and a low end modelling package (say Animation Master were it available) for another $200. You'd be in good shape.
- |Daryll
ya i could never use that low of a res on a big moniter. they arn't designed for it anyways, it is no wonder he has an unsharp picture with the 21" if he is using a res that low.
i use a 22" with 1600x1200 at work, going home to my poor 17" with 1024x768 is annoying!
V
What was the original question again?
:-)
Ahh, who cares...
Why is it that NT people are always taking things that *NIX can do, which NT can't do and saying 'boy is that inefficient', or 'boy is that complicated'?
That makes no sense to me. You're taking a feature that you can't do at all on your NT box and complaining about it on *NIX. If *NIX is to complex for you, read a computer book or just stick with NT. If you want to be a good administrator, you need to know more than which button to press. You should know why you're pushing the button.
Obviously 3D support is not here yet for X. Of course, Linux wasn't here a few years ago. Linux is usable now and more and more people will use it. As more people use it, more companies will start to produce binary linux kernel modules to support their proprietary hardware.
It will happen. It's happening already. Creative, who use 3Dfx, nVida (among other) graphic chipsets have hired a guy (I forget his name) to write Linux drivers for _all_ of their products (sound and video).
Those who want to use NT, go ahead and use it. Those who choose to use Linux, use it. Those who seriously think that NT is in some way superior to _any_ *NIX should get educated. It's not a debate. It's a fact. *NIX is far superior to NT as far as OSes go. Anyone who says otherwise is just yapping and has no facts to back up their words simply because none exist. If you don't believe me, then you have never been to post-secondary school.
I would love to hear how. I'm building a CAD station to run SURFCAM 7.0 for a guy who builds 427 Cobras.
I would love to deliver him a Linux box. Any help would be appreciated.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
This article appeared in Linux Journal last year, it's a little thin on tech, but does talk about how Digital Domain made use of Linux for rendering.
Hi. I checked out the penguin computing site and you could get a system with the number9 32M card that comes with the 19" SGI flat panel in it with the X-Server fully configured and everything.
Not under $1000, but still good.
Why not their VisualPCs, despite NT? They have future Linux xupport being decided upon, so you may even be in luck in the future...
Of course, much more than the 1000$ per system, but no where else can you get this performance for 3000$ or less...
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Is this the same person who always posts M$4VR, or are there copycats now? So much for originality =)
But in a twisted way, he's sorta half right...
Note SGIs VisualPCs running WinNT. Not exactly a point ofr NT, of course, but a point for SGI. Given the fact that they already have to modifiy and patch M$ source and bins to run on the system, I don't think it will hurt them any to adopt Linux instead, and rely upon the open source model of things. So for now we can get kick-butt systems with awesome hardware capabilities, a mediocre and passable OS, and maybe later, support for Linux as well!
So if you're going to support NT, use SGI's VPCs, for 3000$ each you cannot beat the performance, and then, as a loyal SGI customer, lobby for Linux support because NT is too unstable, its unreliable, its a resource/performance hog, and because it will actually be easier for SGI to maintain with the open source available to them =)
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Mentionned renderman as a possible alternative
to using linux-boxes as a rendering farm...but it coasts near $5000 for a license, altough little companies would consider linux as a cheap but powerful unix alternative with native applications.
Tried Blue Moon Rendering Tools?
www.bmrt.org
A free implementation of the renderman standard.
Reading standard rib (renderman) format files, its ayet a powerful rendering solution with the features of Renderman.
Simply go to www.debian.org. Ask for pixar's guy. Do you remember Toy Story? This is the person to ask. Enjoy.
Where the only monopoly we support has a Boardwalk and a Baltic Avenue.
It's based on a ray-tracer that is used for commercial animation by a company that's closely tied to our research lab (I couldn't use their actual source code, but had access to it while writing mine). It's quite easily capable of producing commercial-quality animation, if you know what you're doing. We are producing a short film (4 min) here which we hope to submit to the SIGGRAPH 99 Screening Room.
It will run on any Linux system using glibc; we use Red Hat 5.1. It has no interactive previewing; you run the ray-tracer and view the resulting output image(s) using a program such as XV. So, you'll need a video card and a monitor, but nothing special.
Incidentally, it's also GPL Library licensed.
Those interested may check out the Mirage web page, which has a download link from our anonymous FTP server.
- Chris Butcher
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