Ohh I did read it, and actually I re-read your link in case I didn't remember something right. I'm not saying that it will never happen. I just have an issue with those saying that it'll happen in a few years. Besides Carmack was pretty bold, saying they are all wrong. Do you think someone like Tom Duff or Larry Gritz are plain worng and don't know their stuff. These are also pretty smart guys who work in CG for movies, with PhDs and actual practical knowledge of what it takes. The parent post implied that a graphics card would be able to do the work of a dedicated 1000 CPU render farm. Not in a couple of years. And besides CG and VFX studios will be doing even more complex stuff also, it's not like it's a stagnant industry, a quick look around SIGGRAPH would convince anyone.
But you had quotes here are some in response, which I put in the previous Slashdot article about real time graphics, plus someone elses:
So yes one day it'll probably be true but I don't think my next computer/video card would be able to do it. The hardware papers at SIGGRAOPH doesn't seem to imply that it's almost upon us that hardware will match VFX quality graphics, which is another field in CG.
Also he brings some points but there are a little bit off. The waves for the Perfetc Storm were simulated first, Origin 2000 I think. After the data was generated, then it was rendered. Still it took hours just to render one frame each. Carmack seemed to only concentrate on the simulation step, when actually you can think of it as a 2 step process. Then again at AWGUA, Bill Buxton showed the fluid effcts from inside Maya 4.5 and in a video about Jos Stam he had a fluid simulator running in a PDA. Granted it was coarse and simple but it was really impressive.
I'm all for more realistic games but I'll just wait for it.
I would take with a grain of salt that assumption. Real time CG has really taken off and some of the stuff shown at places like SIGGRAPH. But CG for VFX have other requirements and difficulties. Don't you think that the smart people inside these houses are always looking for the edge for every bit of performance and power? Even now a days we can't create in computers real time graphics that match the complexity of the work in Jurasic Park or Toy Stiry. Just look for Tom Duff's comments about the hype machine from graphic card makers. We might one day get it but I won't hold my breath. If it ever gets to that point don't you think SFX studios won't be the first to jump in?
Besides even though VFX studios charge a lot they are operating on razor thin profit margins. Many barely survive and many have gone belly up vecause of that, like Boss Films or when Warner killed Warner Digital. Second lets make a comparision. I mean in some of these movies you pay a star up to 20 million U$ plus what the director and maybe other actors might get and half the movie nbudget is spent on just a few persons above the line. Compare these to say paying U$ 30 million for a big FX show (say like Pearl Harbor or Mummy 2) on which you have to pay for maybe a couple of hundred people's salaries between 6 to 12 months. If anything studios are getting their FX work dirt cheap. Most of the VFX studios expenditures is salaries not hardware or software. You need to pay for the best artistc and technical talent.
Well how do you know they were rushed. They had about 18 months of production of VFX which is longer than the average. An artists are not overloaded and forced to say, too bad tat's it. It's the responsability of the supervisor and usually the directior has a say when he thinks the FX is good enough. Sometimes directors change things at the last minute and with the studios inflexibility with release dates, that might happen. Or when new FX are added at the last minute. But in general it's up to supervisors to make sure VFX shots are to a level where they aer OK. There is a cliche in VFX where people say that VFX are never finished you just stop working on them.
One thing, LucasArts is the company that makes video games (Grim Fandango, Jedi Knight, etc.). It's Industrial Light + Magic that does VFX.
Second not all FX should stay in the background. By that criteria most scifi, fantasy, horror or action movies wouldn't be done. I mean stuff like the Balrog is an in your face FX. That it's also a good movie with a good story is an added bonus. How would you expect for filmakers to make those kind of films?
Also by you suposition then VFX has ben a waste for a century. Did stop motion, miniature and animatronics replicated exactly the "look of the actor" before. Of course not, it's all about suspension of disbelief.
Just because you know something was an FX og CG doesn't mean it's not realistic. There is something to say about psycho-perception.
Besides, people in CG know that Tom Duff is an authority and knows what he is talking about. There are many reasons why realtime CG won't do Toy Story class rendering in the near future. Have to consider the hype from the graphic card manufacturers. The demos and presentations at SIGGRAPH are neat and impressive but film CG has a lot of requirements. The same thing was mentioned when both the PS2 and GSCube were announced and we still haven't seen a Toy Story type rendering in real time.
Here are a few more threads from the RenderMan newsgroup regarding the matter:
Just a few points. That Cinefex issue covered also The Time Machine and Black hawk Down, besides LOTR.
You might also be surprised to hear that AOTC had one of the biggest model units ILM ever employed, I think 80 modelers at peak time. Geonosis was done in part with miniatures and also footage from the wastelands of Utah. While much of the droid factory was CG there were also plenty of miniatures used on those shots. The arena in itself was a huge miniature. While it fit inside the model shop it had to be sliced into wedges to be filmed which also allowed to have to untis shooting it at the same time.
To me it seem more of a perceptual thing, if you know or think to know something is CG you believe it looks fake. It's interesting to note that many don't do the comparison all the way, say with optical printing, static matte painting shots, stop motion and animatronics. I sure hope new generations of moviegoers accept CG just as old one accepted the old techniques.
Yes, I know they were old. I listed them mainly for people that were interested to see that all is not so simple and cut and dried, like some posts suggested. You can at least get the sense from the articles that it's a huge problem/challenge for any VFX and CG studio. I too have talked with people from some studios so I'm a bit aware of their problems. I never meant to provide technical or practical info.
Although the VFXPro site is still a bit busted you can still get the articles about asset management from it and its sister site Design in Montion, or via Google. They have interviews with people from ILM, Imageworks, Pixar and PDI about the subject which gives a nice overview of some of the challenges. I think foobar is right. Here they are:
Yes it's mainly Maya and RenderMan. A good source of info is the Cinefex article. As another poster said, Shake is their main compositing app. They do develop propietary solutions, like complete apps like Massive that hook up to Maya to the standard use of MEL and plugins.
There will be some discussion of the work in 2 weeks at SIGGRAPH:
Pretty please don't slashdot me;-). Too bad I didn't mirror the article, didn't expect it on Slashdot. I also collected the other articles that came out yesterday. Probably the other two inetersting ones are from VFXPro and CGW:
One reason could be that the speed increase is for things that are CPU intensive, as opposed to OpenGL/interactive speed, which SGI's gear is very good at. Rendering, batch compositing and running their simulations are CPU intensive, so running this on fast CPUs might have shown that improvement.
At one point I heard that ILM had several Alpha machines with Linux to run their simulations, to take over some of the stuff done on the Origins, but I never could confirm it.
Another reason is that some of the stuff out there is only certified to run under redHat like Maya. So there is even more incentive to minimize any problems.
They might be able to watch them. ILM developed libraries and their own Quicktime player for Linux, for watching previews of their work. There was mention that they might release it open source. Of course the problem might be the codecs.
Yes, but does the caterer for the crew is part of the MPAA cartel? What about the nurse, or animal trainers? If you look at many credits, the FX people most of the times come at the very bottomo. After all they are contractors. Lots of people get contracted out for making a movie, it's just a job, doesn't mean they have anything to do with with all the bad things Valenti and friends are trying to push.
Well Hugo was an internal test. Then again they were showing it at their booth during the last SIGGRAPH. They would probably have it again this year at their booth. SIGGRAPH is a good way to catch some of their internal tests and bloopers.
Someone mentioned it to me but I wasn't sure if it was true or someone pulling my leg. Now I learned something today.
Still I wonder if this came out as an edict from Jobs. I wonder if they would get the same performance per cubic unit from the G4 racks as from the SUN ones. They didn't have much space left when they were at Point Richmond, so space considerations for the renderfarm were important. And if I remember right Pixar had a deal with SUN, though probably it doesn't mean anything. One more piece of the puzzle though it still doesn't fit nicely. After all it was less than a year ago that they gave that info that they were moving to Linux and rewriting almost everything for it. Darwyn Peachey is one of the top people there. If that's the case then I guess there was a lot of wasted effort. though since all is *nix it probably wasn't so bad.
Or maybe it's like the fabled ILM/SGI agreement in which supposedely ILM couldn't mention ever any use of hardware beside SGI in exchange for a sweet deal, even though they were using other stuff there. Maybe that'll be the case, only OS X will be publicized even though some other stuff might be on the background. Time will tell.
It wasn't long ago that Pixar actually started to make the switch to Linux, it was reported in several places. Has Steve Jobs given an edict? While it might be fine it sounds rather abrupt. I wonder if everyone is satisfied.
Here is the quote from the CGW article from September 2001 (which requires free registration):
A studio just beginning the Linux transition is Pixar Animation Studios. Vice president of research and development Darwyn Peachey says, "This is the platform that will replace SGI in the CG industry. There's been a lot of progress made since last year. Nobody is wondering 'if' anymore." SGI as a hardware platform is being displaced by high-performance PCs, but the company isn't going away. SGI is actively supporting Linux, both on its hardware and through the Linux port of Maya by subsidiary Alias|Wavefront. Because Linux runs on PC, SGI, and Sun machines, it enables studios to support just one OS.
Like DreamWorks, Pixar faced a massive job in porting its existing code. Pixar finished the Linux port of all its internal software, about two million lines, in May. RenderMan command line tools have been available on Linux since 1999. RenderMan Artist Tools, for use with Linux Maya, are now in beta testing. "Porting went very fast, averaging 2000 lines of code per developer day," says Peachey. "The port to Linux is straightforward, where Windows is difficult." Pixar has more than 500 SGI desktops and uses Sun servers for its renderfarm. About 30 Linux machines are in use for software development, and 20 Linux machines are used in production. By fall, at least 100 Linux desktops are expected to be used in production. Pixar's next film, Finding Nemo (release date summer 2003), is to be produced primarily using Linux systems.
The most puzzling thing is if they plan to substitute the SUN renderfarm, as one of the things they like is that they can pack a lot of power in slim racks (14 CPUs on each last time I heard). Maybe they got more space at Emmeryville now;-). As recent as last holiday season SUN touted its hardware shortly after the release of Monster's Inc.:
Well for one thing he is really an independent (the richest one though). Remember he basicly quit the Directors Guild after Star Wars, though I think he rejoined before starting Phantom Menace because of requirements. For him the merchandise is another way of funding his other ventures, since he owns the rights to Star Wars (bought them way back). As he stated in that lame CNN - Connie Chung interview, he doesn't have to go through crap like screening his films through test groups, studio meddling with content and editing etc.
If there is demand he has the supply. Maybe some fans don't find the stuff as disappointing as you. For the record nowadays I just get a few items. It's your choice what to buy and how much.
Emmm. Maya just dropped in price to 2,000 for Complete and Unlimited to 6,000 a few weeks ago. Before they were around 6,000 and 10,000 respectively. Alias/Wavefront did have prices of 50,000 on the old days when it only ran on SGIs and that was at the time PowerAnmoator, Studio and Visualizer.
While Soft3D is cheaper, XSI is still around the 10,000 range.
Of course none of these cover the annual maintenance fees.
Well it seems there is some misconception that Ep. 1 was all CG. Ep. 1 had tons of miniatures and models along the CG. Many appraches were tried. The Pod Race was first considered to be done with miniatures but they calculated that they would need to fly them at something like 50 mph. which is practically impossible, magine a miniature cameraman trying to capture that. It's on a John Knoll interview somewhere. The only way to do it was with CG, although there are several miniature elements here and there in the sequence most notably the stadium. How whould a sequence like that be realized in any other way?
Now as far as the story that is something else. You could say that that seuqnce showed Anakin's piloting skills through the nascent Force. It kind of advances the story. Now wherever if those story points appealed to anyone thats a personal taste.
Besides by definition a sci-fi story has to have tons of FX for the most part, it's the only way to set the environment and tell a story. It's an unfortunate fact that many genre pictures have poor scripts approved by the studio bean counters.
It's interesting how you hand picked some of the examples. Sure some may seem dated but others are have hold up. Other examples are really mistaken. You know that for the most part the Titanic ship was a model? I guess it's a compliment to the model builders at Digital Domin that you said how straight it was. The Phantom Menace contained numerous amounts of model work. It was ILM's biggest model project ever. Probably the only thing that'll surpass it will be Episode 2. And I don't follow how the T1000 has lost it's shine, doesn't make any sense.
As far as dated things do we really want to go back to the days with strobing stop motion, noticeable matte lines, or static a few seconds matte paintings. What about when you have miniature water or fire, it's very extremely apparent even to the least sophisticated audience.
Big VFX houses choose and pick between different alternatives. Now you can have matte paintings that combiene live action elements and have better camera moves. No strobing in CG characaters. You can film now big fire elements and composite them on miniatures or simulate water on the big scale. The list goes one.
I saw Davey Goelz (Gonzo, and others) at Siggraph this year, at the Henson booth on the show floor.
Henson booth? I think you meant the Pulse3D booth on which they have appeared the last 2 SIGGRAPHs, probably one of the most popular booths thanks to the Henson presentation and the nifty collectible. Unless I was really blind, drunk or sleepless while at the Exhibition floor;-) (and not too difficult when it was in New Orleans). I got a smallish picture of them:
There seems to be a bit of confusion as there are two animation companies at Dreaworks. There is Dreamworks/PDI (makers of Shrek and Antz) and then there is Dreamworks Animation (makers of El Dorado and Prince of Egypt). They are separate entities though both use Linux. You can get a pretty good description of their use at Animation in the Linux Journal arrticle from about a year ago. They seem to be turning both workstation and servers to Linux. PDI uses more a mix of Linux and SGI. For some interesting stats check Dan Wexler's site:
But it sounds to me like they're saying that they're actually doing the work on software running under Linux? I'm just sort of wondering.. where are they getting this software?
The important commercial software is out there for Linux: Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Rayz, etc. Henson uses Maya. I saw also their setup last two SIGGRAPHs and they were using custom software on RTLinux to conect the controlers to animation.
I do agree with you partly, I also don't know Knowles. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle. Even though Ron Wells says he doesn't have an axe to grind it sure doesn't seem from the way he wrote it. He could have just stated the facts and given an analisys but his tone really doesn't show much class. I'm sure it did bring traffic to the film threat website. Still many of the facts were reported in many other places, they might still be archived at ABC, Variety or other publications, like the Oscar debacle, or the fact that he receives a lot of gifts from the studios, or the stories of receiving or viewing stolen studio property, and for what, for having a powertrip of being the first to review them. There's a reason why Ebert didn't let him go back as guest critic after Siskel's passing away. Many of the facts reported there or elsewhere were basicly undisputed by him just given the runaround. He might have started as a rebel but now seems to be part of the machinery.
Knowles might not be evil. If anything he seems either very immature or like a politician, in the sense that they have screwed up but don't take responsability for their actions or apologize for anything. He has done many good things like exposing how studios sometimes really mess up movies, butchering them or how flawed the pre-screening process is. He was a pioneer. As someone with such high profile you would hope that he take the high ground, explain or apologize and then go on. Maybe he is a lot smarter than he appears, having us all fooled;-). My intention is for people to read and form an opinion. Personally I think he might have seen it, no reason to lie (unless he knew someone got the scoop first). It might have been planted even without him knowing, by the studio or LFL. I guess the only thing I had objection is calling him full of integrity, though on re-reading you post you actually said more integrity (0.1 being more than 0;-). I used to read it a lot back then, and on rare ocassions check it out, but I would jut hope the his antics, real or perceived, would change for the better.
Slashdot Mirror
Ohh I did read it, and actually I re-read your link in case I didn't remember something right. I'm not saying that it will never happen. I just have an issue with those saying that it'll happen in a few years. Besides Carmack was pretty bold, saying they are all wrong. Do you think someone like Tom Duff or Larry Gritz are plain worng and don't know their stuff. These are also pretty smart guys who work in CG for movies, with PhDs and actual practical knowledge of what it takes. The parent post implied that a graphics card would be able to do the work of a dedicated 1000 CPU render farm. Not in a couple of years. And besides CG and VFX studios will be doing even more complex stuff also, it's not like it's a stagnant industry, a quick look around SIGGRAPH would convince anyone.
But you had quotes here are some in response, which I put in the previous Slashdot article about real time graphics, plus someone elses:
Wjat does the GSCube do
Playstation 2 and Toy Story
Real-Time RenderMan?
Toy Story Graphics
So yes one day it'll probably be true but I don't think my next computer/video card would be able to do it. The hardware papers at SIGGRAOPH doesn't seem to imply that it's almost upon us that hardware will match VFX quality graphics, which is another field in CG.
Also he brings some points but there are a little bit off. The waves for the Perfetc Storm were simulated first, Origin 2000 I think. After the data was generated, then it was rendered. Still it took hours just to render one frame each. Carmack seemed to only concentrate on the simulation step, when actually you can think of it as a 2 step process. Then again at AWGUA, Bill Buxton showed the fluid effcts from inside Maya 4.5 and in a video about Jos Stam he had a fluid simulator running in a PDA. Granted it was coarse and simple but it was really impressive.
I'm all for more realistic games but I'll just wait for it.
I would take with a grain of salt that assumption. Real time CG has really taken off and some of the stuff shown at places like SIGGRAPH. But CG for VFX have other requirements and difficulties. Don't you think that the smart people inside these houses are always looking for the edge for every bit of performance and power? Even now a days we can't create in computers real time graphics that match the complexity of the work in Jurasic Park or Toy Stiry. Just look for Tom Duff's comments about the hype machine from graphic card makers. We might one day get it but I won't hold my breath. If it ever gets to that point don't you think SFX studios won't be the first to jump in?
Besides even though VFX studios charge a lot they are operating on razor thin profit margins. Many barely survive and many have gone belly up vecause of that, like Boss Films or when Warner killed Warner Digital. Second lets make a comparision. I mean in some of these movies you pay a star up to 20 million U$ plus what the director and maybe other actors might get and half the movie nbudget is spent on just a few persons above the line. Compare these to say paying U$ 30 million for a big FX show (say like Pearl Harbor or Mummy 2) on which you have to pay for maybe a couple of hundred people's salaries between 6 to 12 months. If anything studios are getting their FX work dirt cheap. Most of the VFX studios expenditures is salaries not hardware or software. You need to pay for the best artistc and technical talent.
Well how do you know they were rushed. They had about 18 months of production of VFX which is longer than the average. An artists are not overloaded and forced to say, too bad tat's it. It's the responsability of the supervisor and usually the directior has a say when he thinks the FX is good enough. Sometimes directors change things at the last minute and with the studios inflexibility with release dates, that might happen. Or when new FX are added at the last minute. But in general it's up to supervisors to make sure VFX shots are to a level where they aer OK. There is a cliche in VFX where people say that VFX are never finished you just stop working on them.
One thing, LucasArts is the company that makes video games (Grim Fandango, Jedi Knight, etc.). It's Industrial Light + Magic that does VFX.
Second not all FX should stay in the background. By that criteria most scifi, fantasy, horror or action movies wouldn't be done. I mean stuff like the Balrog is an in your face FX. That it's also a good movie with a good story is an added bonus. How would you expect for filmakers to make those kind of films?
Also by you suposition then VFX has ben a waste for a century. Did stop motion, miniature and animatronics replicated exactly the "look of the actor" before. Of course not, it's all about suspension of disbelief.
Just because you know something was an FX og CG doesn't mean it's not realistic. There is something to say about psycho-perception.
It was Sun SparcStations 20 (117) and a SPARCserver 1000. You can read more from SUN's press release:
Disney's "Toy Story" Uses More Than 100 Sun Workstations to Render Images for First All-Computer-Based Movie
Besides, people in CG know that Tom Duff is an authority and knows what he is talking about. There are many reasons why realtime CG won't do Toy Story class rendering in the near future. Have to consider the hype from the graphic card manufacturers. The demos and presentations at SIGGRAPH are neat and impressive but film CG has a lot of requirements. The same thing was mentioned when both the PS2 and GSCube were announced and we still haven't seen a Toy Story type rendering in real time.
Here are a few more threads from the RenderMan newsgroup regarding the matter:
What does GSCube do?
Playstation 2 and "Toy Story"
Real-Time RenderMan?
Just a few points. That Cinefex issue covered also The Time Machine and Black hawk Down, besides LOTR.
You might also be surprised to hear that AOTC had one of the biggest model units ILM ever employed, I think 80 modelers at peak time. Geonosis was done in part with miniatures and also footage from the wastelands of Utah. While much of the droid factory was CG there were also plenty of miniatures used on those shots. The arena in itself was a huge miniature. While it fit inside the model shop it had to be sliced into wedges to be filmed which also allowed to have to untis shooting it at the same time.
To me it seem more of a perceptual thing, if you know or think to know something is CG you believe it looks fake. It's interesting to note that many don't do the comparison all the way, say with optical printing, static matte painting shots, stop motion and animatronics. I sure hope new generations of moviegoers accept CG just as old one accepted the old techniques.
Yes, I know they were old. I listed them mainly for people that were interested to see that all is not so simple and cut and dried, like some posts suggested. You can at least get the sense from the articles that it's a huge problem/challenge for any VFX and CG studio. I too have talked with people from some studios so I'm a bit aware of their problems. I never meant to provide technical or practical info.
Although the VFXPro site is still a bit busted you can still get the articles about asset management from it and its sister site Design in Montion, or via Google. They have interviews with people from ILM, Imageworks, Pixar and PDI about the subject which gives a nice overview of some of the challenges. I think foobar is right. Here they are:
The State of Digital Asset Management
Interview with H. B. Siegel, Chief Technology Officer, Lucas Digital Ltd.
Interview with Lincoln Hu, SVP and CTO, Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI)
Interview with Jennifer Yu on Pacific Data Images' Asset Management System
Interview with Darwyn Peachey and Greg Brandeau on Pixar's Asset Management System
Yes it's mainly Maya and RenderMan. A good source of info is the Cinefex article. As another poster said, Shake is their main compositing app. They do develop propietary solutions, like complete apps like Massive that hook up to Maya to the standard use of MEL and plugins.
There will be some discussion of the work in 2 weeks at SIGGRAPH:
Course 30: Character Setup From Rig Mechanics to Skin Deformations: A Practical Approach
Maya Master Classes
Pretty please don't slashdot me ;-). Too bad I didn't mirror the article, didn't expect it on Slashdot. I also collected the other articles that came out yesterday. Probably the other two inetersting ones are from VFXPro and CGW:
Episode 2 VFX Work Discussed Around the Net
One reason could be that the speed increase is for things that are CPU intensive, as opposed to OpenGL/interactive speed, which SGI's gear is very good at. Rendering, batch compositing and running their simulations are CPU intensive, so running this on fast CPUs might have shown that improvement.
At one point I heard that ILM had several Alpha machines with Linux to run their simulations, to take over some of the stuff done on the Origins, but I never could confirm it.
Another reason is that some of the stuff out there is only certified to run under redHat like Maya. So there is even more incentive to minimize any problems.
They might be able to watch them. ILM developed libraries and their own Quicktime player for Linux, for watching previews of their work. There was mention that they might release it open source. Of course the problem might be the codecs.
Yes, but does the caterer for the crew is part of the MPAA cartel? What about the nurse, or animal trainers? If you look at many credits, the FX people most of the times come at the very bottomo. After all they are contractors. Lots of people get contracted out for making a movie, it's just a job, doesn't mean they have anything to do with with all the bad things Valenti and friends are trying to push.
Well Hugo was an internal test. Then again they were showing it at their booth during the last SIGGRAPH. They would probably have it again this year at their booth. SIGGRAPH is a good way to catch some of their internal tests and bloopers.
Someone mentioned it to me but I wasn't sure if it was true or someone pulling my leg. Now I learned something today.
Still I wonder if this came out as an edict from Jobs. I wonder if they would get the same performance per cubic unit from the G4 racks as from the SUN ones. They didn't have much space left when they were at Point Richmond, so space considerations for the renderfarm were important. And if I remember right Pixar had a deal with SUN, though probably it doesn't mean anything. One more piece of the puzzle though it still doesn't fit nicely. After all it was less than a year ago that they gave that info that they were moving to Linux and rewriting almost everything for it. Darwyn Peachey is one of the top people there. If that's the case then I guess there was a lot of wasted effort. though since all is *nix it probably wasn't so bad.
Or maybe it's like the fabled ILM/SGI agreement in which supposedely ILM couldn't mention ever any use of hardware beside SGI in exchange for a sweet deal, even though they were using other stuff there. Maybe that'll be the case, only OS X will be publicized even though some other stuff might be on the background. Time will tell.
It wasn't long ago that Pixar actually started to make the switch to Linux, it was reported in several places. Has Steve Jobs given an edict? While it might be fine it sounds rather abrupt. I wonder if everyone is satisfied.
Here is the quote from the CGW article from September 2001 (which requires free registration):
Here is the link:
Linux Invades Hollywood
The most puzzling thing is if they plan to substitute the SUN renderfarm, as one of the things they like is that they can pack a lot of power in slim racks (14 CPUs on each last time I heard). Maybe they got more space at Emmeryville now ;-). As recent as last holiday season SUN touted its hardware shortly after the release of Monster's Inc.:
SUN story on Monsters Inc.
Tom Duff sometimes posts around here, maybe he can comment? It's rather interesting.
Well for one thing he is really an independent (the richest one though). Remember he basicly quit the Directors Guild after Star Wars, though I think he rejoined before starting Phantom Menace because of requirements. For him the merchandise is another way of funding his other ventures, since he owns the rights to Star Wars (bought them way back). As he stated in that lame CNN - Connie Chung interview, he doesn't have to go through crap like screening his films through test groups, studio meddling with content and editing etc.
If there is demand he has the supply. Maybe some fans don't find the stuff as disappointing as you. For the record nowadays I just get a few items. It's your choice what to buy and how much.
Emmm. Maya just dropped in price to 2,000 for Complete and Unlimited to 6,000 a few weeks ago. Before they were around 6,000 and 10,000 respectively. Alias/Wavefront did have prices of 50,000 on the old days when it only ran on SGIs and that was at the time PowerAnmoator, Studio and Visualizer.
While Soft3D is cheaper, XSI is still around the 10,000 range.
Of course none of these cover the annual maintenance fees.
Well it seems there is some misconception that Ep. 1 was all CG. Ep. 1 had tons of miniatures and models along the CG. Many appraches were tried. The Pod Race was first considered to be done with miniatures but they calculated that they would need to fly them at something like 50 mph. which is practically impossible, magine a miniature cameraman trying to capture that. It's on a John Knoll interview somewhere. The only way to do it was with CG, although there are several miniature elements here and there in the sequence most notably the stadium. How whould a sequence like that be realized in any other way?
Now as far as the story that is something else. You could say that that seuqnce showed Anakin's piloting skills through the nascent Force. It kind of advances the story. Now wherever if those story points appealed to anyone thats a personal taste.
Besides by definition a sci-fi story has to have tons of FX for the most part, it's the only way to set the environment and tell a story. It's an unfortunate fact that many genre pictures have poor scripts approved by the studio bean counters.
It's interesting how you hand picked some of the examples. Sure some may seem dated but others are have hold up. Other examples are really mistaken. You know that for the most part the Titanic ship was a model? I guess it's a compliment to the model builders at Digital Domin that you said how straight it was. The Phantom Menace contained numerous amounts of model work. It was ILM's biggest model project ever. Probably the only thing that'll surpass it will be Episode 2. And I don't follow how the T1000 has lost it's shine, doesn't make any sense.
As far as dated things do we really want to go back to the days with strobing stop motion, noticeable matte lines, or static a few seconds matte paintings. What about when you have miniature water or fire, it's very extremely apparent even to the least sophisticated audience.
Big VFX houses choose and pick between different alternatives. Now you can have matte paintings that combiene live action elements and have better camera moves. No strobing in CG characaters. You can film now big fire elements and composite them on miniatures or simulate water on the big scale. The list goes one.
THe VFX for Spider-Man are being provided by Imageworks. The supervisor is John Dykstra who was the original Star Wars Supervisor.
Henson booth? I think you meant the Pulse3D booth on which they have appeared the last 2 SIGGRAPHs, probably one of the most popular booths thanks to the Henson presentation and the nifty collectible. Unless I was really blind, drunk or sleepless while at the Exhibition floor ;-) (and not too difficult when it was in New Orleans). I got a smallish picture of them:
Jim henson Cretature Shop guys at the Pulse3D booth during SIGGRAPH 2001
Pretty nifty stuff.
There seems to be a bit of confusion as there are two animation companies at Dreaworks. There is Dreamworks/PDI (makers of Shrek and Antz) and then there is Dreamworks Animation (makers of El Dorado and Prince of Egypt). They are separate entities though both use Linux. You can get a pretty good description of their use at Animation in the Linux Journal arrticle from about a year ago. They seem to be turning both workstation and servers to Linux. PDI uses more a mix of Linux and SGI. For some interesting stats check Dan Wexler's site:
Shrek Rendering statistics
The important commercial software is out there for Linux: Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Rayz, etc. Henson uses Maya. I saw also their setup last two SIGGRAPHs and they were using custom software on RTLinux to conect the controlers to animation.I do agree with you partly, I also don't know Knowles. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle. Even though Ron Wells says he doesn't have an axe to grind it sure doesn't seem from the way he wrote it. He could have just stated the facts and given an analisys but his tone really doesn't show much class. I'm sure it did bring traffic to the film threat website. Still many of the facts were reported in many other places, they might still be archived at ABC, Variety or other publications, like the Oscar debacle, or the fact that he receives a lot of gifts from the studios, or the stories of receiving or viewing stolen studio property, and for what, for having a powertrip of being the first to review them. There's a reason why Ebert didn't let him go back as guest critic after Siskel's passing away. Many of the facts reported there or elsewhere were basicly undisputed by him just given the runaround. He might have started as a rebel but now seems to be part of the machinery.
;-). My intention is for people to read and form an opinion. Personally I think he might have seen it, no reason to lie (unless he knew someone got the scoop first). It might have been planted even without him knowing, by the studio or LFL. I guess the only thing I had objection is calling him full of integrity, though on re-reading you post you actually said more integrity (0.1 being more than 0 ;-). I used to read it a lot back then, and on rare ocassions check it out, but I would jut hope the his antics, real or perceived, would change for the better.
Knowles might not be evil. If anything he seems either very immature or like a politician, in the sense that they have screwed up but don't take responsability for their actions or apologize for anything. He has done many good things like exposing how studios sometimes really mess up movies, butchering them or how flawed the pre-screening process is. He was a pioneer. As someone with such high profile you would hope that he take the high ground, explain or apologize and then go on. Maybe he is a lot smarter than he appears, having us all fooled