Just to be nice, I sat there and hit reaload on a mirror:)
Re:8 hours is an estimate, folks!
on
A Tour of Pixar
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· Score: 1
Talk to some pixar guys actually. (I work in the industry as well, just not for pixar). They keep most of the shot in camera. Rarely ever do they split up the frame. At most, you're looking at a foreground/background split, but they usually just throw the whole frame at the renderfarm. In special effects, there's a reason to render out in multiple passes, it gives the compositor more flexability to make the effects fit in right. But in a CG animation, you only have to get the CG to fit in with other cg.
I do however, think that 300 machine renderfarm was a bit off. Wasn't there a story not long ago about pixar buying a new renderfarm of ibm blade servers?
Here's an odd, but very very specific example. Alias Wavefront maya's implementation of Subdivision surfaces uses a 64 bit integer to address the lower levels of the mesh. Therefore, running on a 32 bit machine, it requires numerous hacks and work arounds to get those long longs to work. Not to mention that every single call to the api for work on one of these bits of data is not only going to use a whole bunch of doubles as is normal for graphics, but also a bunch of 64bit integers. Simply having a cpu that can handle 64bits all at once over a cpu that has to hack it's way through getting them to work will help immensely.
Someone else mentioned some rendering benefits to 64bits (floating point precision is huge here), but there are other benefits in that arena as well.
During college, I spent two of my years as a minor DJ at the campus radio station, which was probably the most bizzare part of its history. College radio, as we all know, is the music snobs paradise. The students play off the wall bizzare shit, and the format is whatever the current DJ feels like playing. However, at KSU, right before I started, a graduate student took over control of the station and the first thing she did was organize it into a "modern rock" format station. For the most part, it was good. In the time I was there, the station became very highly regarded by the students, to the point that the old guard rock station in town changed formats to match us. They were stuck in the 80's rock (constant Poison!) and then suddenly started playing new bands to try and get some of their market back.
Ok, fine great. The problem was, in an effort to make the station more like a real station, the graduate student controlling this mess enforced a series of strict rules and a rigid playlist. The station is now no better than the Clear channel crap that dominates the airwaves.
Reading this article made me laugh because I witnessed this entire history of FM radio they describe over the course of my five years at school. It went from the playground of the stoners, to the perfect mix of a format guideline, but free dj's to the utter crap you hear on every station now.
Strictly formatted radio, mostly brought on by Clear channel type monoliths, is the evil that is ruining, not just radio, but all of music in america. Have a guideline for the DJ's, but let them expand out of it. Expose the listeners to something different. Play something that they haven't heard in a very long time. Throw on the Smiths just to play with someone's head.
The first thing I always did at the start of my shift was go down my playlist for the day and cross out everything by the Kottonmouth Kings. IMHO the worst thing to hit the radio in the last 5 years. I tried to fill in the crap I hated with listener requests, but on slow days, I had to fill in my own stuff.
On the off days, when students weren't around, the station would go to an automated playlist (a computer with a giant database of mp3s). Immediately, our listenership dropped like a rock. There was no life to the station, and this is why I don't see XM taking off.
Where am I going? DJ's are what's important. The listeners like having someone familiar on the air. Each DJ used to have their own flavor. Mine was a little broader, but my selection leaned to harder rocking songs. People liked the interaction with the DJ, and it got listeners. Calling in made them feel like part of it. Dj's are your friend who introduce you to this crazy new band who has a different sound. You should see them live!
I love music. I go see small live shows whenever I can (unemployment has killed this pastime unfortunately). Radio today has me very pissed off because nobody is introducing me to new stuff. I'm completely on my own.
And right now I'm listening to RL Burnside - Ass Pocket of Whiskey
This is exactly what got me year after year in pinewood derby. I have a whole string of 3rd place trophies because of it. It wasn't a flaw in my car, I just got screwed every year. (The troop leader was a very close personal friend of ours -- my dad saved his son's life, but that's a whole differnt story. I think it was a conspiracy).
What happened was our track had three lanes on it and they ran the cars on the outside lanes the whole night and then the final used all three. I ALWAYS got the middle, and I know it was an accident. My dad and I had the whole thing down to a science and it was well known my cars would mop up there. But on that middle track, there wasn't any graphite or other gunk from the cars running down it all night. So, rolling friction is what I attribute to all my 3rd place finishes.
On another note, have fun with the design. Someone mentioned a table mounted belt sander, but also break out the dremel. Buy new bits after modding your case with it though. Rough out the shape with the sander and dremel, then sand the thing until it shines. My dad and I experimented with the cars to the point of making six or seven cars every year, some of them real works of art. Keep them handy too, we invariably had some teary eyed kid asking us if he could have one of our cars since he lived with his mom and consequently, didn't have access to any power tools.
If you buy one of those store kits with all the plastic fenders and crap on them, I'll hunt you down and shoot you. These things are a blast to make.
I gather from your nick that you went to the school of mines. I don't knock the school completely, it's a very good school. While the 3-1 ratio there might be alright for an engineering school, I have to admit, that still sucks.
In all the schools I visited while playing rugby, if the ratio wasn't rougbly 1-1, the men there were just nuts. U of Missouri Rolla had the worst ratio, with only a small handful of women, and the men there typically went ape-shit on the weekends. The worst school I visited, however, was Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. I think the ratio was around 2-1 there, as it is a predominently engineering school, and it simply was one of the worst places to party I have ever been. The ugliest of women were still stuck up because they had at least two guys hanging off of them at all times.
And it's not just sex I'm talking about, having women around raises the maturity level of the whole area by a couple notches -- and this is coming from a man who frequented rugby parties, I know immaturity when I see it.
So even if you are the geeky anti-social type, simply having a higher female ratio around benefits you.
This isn't what stopped me from going to Mines though. I decided late in my senior year of high school that I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer, instead, I wanted to get into computer animation. Funny you mentioned UIUC. That's the only school that turned me down, and in retrospect, probably the place I should have gone to. Don't know if it was because I applied to the engineering department though. As if their comp sci program is any less selective:)
Am I happy with how that choice wound up? Not really. I enjoyed school, but Manhattan, Kansas was a total shit hole, and I'm glad to be out. I don't feel my degree is all that valuable -- most of my education came from what I've taught myself. But overall, I think it was better that I went to KSU instead of Mines.
Man, you hit both reasons I decided not to go there. No women (75% male might be a little low) and the town absolutely reeks from that plant.
Somewhat on topic though, what about crashing random trade shows? Not sure how easy it would be but I've snuck into a rather amusing Plumbing convention (There were fewer butt cracks than you would think), and there's a fireworks convention in North Dakota that's supposed to be insane.
way way way (way!) back when I was a grocery sacker at a local supermarket, we had a standing rule that no guy had to clean the women's bathroom, and for this specific reason. One unfortunate day, however, there weren't any girl sackers working, so I was tapped to clean the bathrooms, women's included. I still have flashbacks to that experience. For some reason, there are women out there that don't understand a big yellow sign, saying "Do not flush your tampons". Nothing like putting on the big rubber gloves and fishing those out of the bottom of the toilet.
You hit it right on the head actually. I don't know who designed the thing, but every art degree on the planet starts all their students with basic color theory. Surely Microsoft has some graphic designers on their payroll that could look at it and barf.
Either that or someone switched their color wheel with the Twister spinner.
"especially silver model has engendered the atmosphere such as sphere of the puzzle which in movie..."
They gave some japanese movie I guess, but it reminds me of the pleasure sphere from Woody Allen's "Sleeper". Now THAT is a toy I want for christmas. Oh, and an orgasmatron.
As someone who has gone into debt just trying to get out of a moderately sized city in the midwest (Kansas City), I would rather take a bullet to the forehead than live in Des Moines.
Maybe it's because of the use of acutal studio tools that were released for Linux in the last two years. Maya, Softimage|XSI, Shake (a compositor, but it uses GL heavily). Throw in renderman, which has been in Linux for years, but doesn't require video (it's just a renderer), and your whole CGI pipeline is running under linux. And with the NVidia drivers, very very well.
Film Gimp? Give me a break. I like where it's heading, but it's not what pushes studios to linux.
Normally, I am a supporter of gun control, but as long as Ashcroft is paid by my tax dollars, we need the right to bear arms. Which, ironically, is the reason the second amendment was put there in the first place.
"True, they won't offer you free service in return"
Or here's another idea. If we believe that the TCO of linux is, in fact, lower than the Windows servers they are moving from, then possibly the money saved there will trickle back to the customers in the form of lower bank fees. Probably not in the form of "We have lowered our costs, so we are cutting what you pay in fees in half". Instead, maybe the next time they have to raise fees to cover their costs as they increase over time will be pushed back a year or two.
As a fellow back packer from this summer, avoid the cities. They're too stressful to get around in. Go to the smaller places. They're cheaper, more culturally interesting (you'll meet people different than yourself instead of just Americans or Canadians in you case). Paris is a nightmare, I never met a spaniard (or whatever that region's name is) in Barcelona, just a ton of travelers.
My favorite places I went: Sorrento, Italy. Outside of Naples, only a short local train ride away. Can get to all of the sites (Hurculaneum, Pompeii) and all the same boats to the islands go out of there. Take a boat to Ischia. Much more fun than Capri.
Florence, Italy, but don't stay there. Rent a scooter for a couple days and head for the hills. Beautiful countryside. Take a sleeping bag and camp around the cathedrals.
Vigo, Spain. Nobody goes there. Very friendly people, and the countryside around there is fantastic. Unfortunately, it's right in the middle of that current oil spill. Any Galicians out there want to comment?
Melk, Austria. Not terribly great, but a good place to pause before you head into Vienna.
Next trip, I'm going to do the northern half of europe. I skipped it this time around.
Ok, with the amount of jar-jar bashing (deservedly) I'm seeing so far on the board, I imagine the first week after this release will consist of a giant lynch mob roaming the galaxy.
Nothing like a common enemy to unite old foes. The dark side ang good side will join forces to kill off the annoying character.
Once they find him, however, the game will fall into every man for himself to get the honor to get in the first shot.
After reading three of the original Bond books (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) this past summer, I have come to realize that Bond really was an action character from the beginning. So, those talking about how Connery's Bond was thoughtful and dealt with more espionage, read the books.
M was constantly telling Bond to try and be more inconspicuous, but he got into too much trouble anyways. I think instead, the pacing of the original Bond films comes from the style of film making during the 60's. They used much more dramatic pacing, where as Flemming raced through much of the slower points of his books by skimming details. Whereas, when the action was going, he described every little pore on Bonds body.
I do have to note, however, I much prefer the thoughtful pacing of that era of movies instead of the non stop action of today's movies. Another example outside of the Bond area is the movie "The Day of the Jackal" and it's horrid remake "the Jackal". The original was extremely slow, but kept you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to be nice, I sat there and hit reaload on a mirror :)
Talk to some pixar guys actually. (I work in the industry as well, just not for pixar). They keep most of the shot in camera. Rarely ever do they split up the frame. At most, you're looking at a foreground/background split, but they usually just throw the whole frame at the renderfarm. In special effects, there's a reason to render out in multiple passes, it gives the compositor more flexability to make the effects fit in right. But in a CG animation, you only have to get the CG to fit in with other cg.
I do however, think that 300 machine renderfarm was a bit off. Wasn't there a story not long ago about pixar buying a new renderfarm of ibm blade servers?
The car the ghosts were riding in hit a 5-Series BMW and knocked the trunk clean off of it. That was early on in the chase.
They did trash a '68 firebird though. Depressing on so many levels. 1) I have one, 2) the firebird is no longer in production.
[flips on computer in the morning]
"Oh my god! Why is my hard drive full of geriatric lesbian donkey porn!?!?"
I'm going to shoot this idea down right now. Go to the back of the line. Please try again.
Here's an odd, but very very specific example. Alias Wavefront maya's implementation of Subdivision surfaces uses a 64 bit integer to address the lower levels of the mesh. Therefore, running on a 32 bit machine, it requires numerous hacks and work arounds to get those long longs to work. Not to mention that every single call to the api for work on one of these bits of data is not only going to use a whole bunch of doubles as is normal for graphics, but also a bunch of 64bit integers. Simply having a cpu that can handle 64bits all at once over a cpu that has to hack it's way through getting them to work will help immensely.
Someone else mentioned some rendering benefits to 64bits (floating point precision is huge here), but there are other benefits in that arena as well.
During college, I spent two of my years as a minor DJ at the campus radio station, which was probably the most bizzare part of its history. College radio, as we all know, is the music snobs paradise. The students play off the wall bizzare shit, and the format is whatever the current DJ feels like playing. However, at KSU, right before I started, a graduate student took over control of the station and the first thing she did was organize it into a "modern rock" format station. For the most part, it was good. In the time I was there, the station became very highly regarded by the students, to the point that the old guard rock station in town changed formats to match us. They were stuck in the 80's rock (constant Poison!) and then suddenly started playing new bands to try and get some of their market back.
Ok, fine great. The problem was, in an effort to make the station more like a real station, the graduate student controlling this mess enforced a series of strict rules and a rigid playlist. The station is now no better than the Clear channel crap that dominates the airwaves.
Reading this article made me laugh because I witnessed this entire history of FM radio they describe over the course of my five years at school. It went from the playground of the stoners, to the perfect mix of a format guideline, but free dj's to the utter crap you hear on every station now.
Strictly formatted radio, mostly brought on by Clear channel type monoliths, is the evil that is ruining, not just radio, but all of music in america. Have a guideline for the DJ's, but let them expand out of it. Expose the listeners to something different. Play something that they haven't heard in a very long time. Throw on the Smiths just to play with someone's head.
The first thing I always did at the start of my shift was go down my playlist for the day and cross out everything by the Kottonmouth Kings. IMHO the worst thing to hit the radio in the last 5 years. I tried to fill in the crap I hated with listener requests, but on slow days, I had to fill in my own stuff.
On the off days, when students weren't around, the station would go to an automated playlist (a computer with a giant database of mp3s). Immediately, our listenership dropped like a rock. There was no life to the station, and this is why I don't see XM taking off.
Where am I going? DJ's are what's important. The listeners like having someone familiar on the air. Each DJ used to have their own flavor. Mine was a little broader, but my selection leaned to harder rocking songs. People liked the interaction with the DJ, and it got listeners. Calling in made them feel like part of it. Dj's are your friend who introduce you to this crazy new band who has a different sound. You should see them live!
I love music. I go see small live shows whenever I can (unemployment has killed this pastime unfortunately). Radio today has me very pissed off because nobody is introducing me to new stuff. I'm completely on my own.
And right now I'm listening to RL Burnside - Ass Pocket of Whiskey
No.. the Windows XP drink is the same as the regular Windows drink, except it has a splash of grenadine for color.
Yeah, we had a style award, but you were only allowed to enter one car a year, so we always went with the fastest.
I think we actually did use wood putty for some of the more complex curves, but you would be amazed with what you can do on a belt sander.
This is exactly what got me year after year in pinewood derby. I have a whole string of 3rd place trophies because of it. It wasn't a flaw in my car, I just got screwed every year. (The troop leader was a very close personal friend of ours -- my dad saved his son's life, but that's a whole differnt story. I think it was a conspiracy).
What happened was our track had three lanes on it and they ran the cars on the outside lanes the whole night and then the final used all three. I ALWAYS got the middle, and I know it was an accident. My dad and I had the whole thing down to a science and it was well known my cars would mop up there. But on that middle track, there wasn't any graphite or other gunk from the cars running down it all night. So, rolling friction is what I attribute to all my 3rd place finishes.
On another note, have fun with the design. Someone mentioned a table mounted belt sander, but also break out the dremel. Buy new bits after modding your case with it though. Rough out the shape with the sander and dremel, then sand the thing until it shines. My dad and I experimented with the cars to the point of making six or seven cars every year, some of them real works of art. Keep them handy too, we invariably had some teary eyed kid asking us if he could have one of our cars since he lived with his mom and consequently, didn't have access to any power tools.
If you buy one of those store kits with all the plastic fenders and crap on them, I'll hunt you down and shoot you. These things are a blast to make.
I gather from your nick that you went to the school of mines. I don't knock the school completely, it's a very good school. While the 3-1 ratio there might be alright for an engineering school, I have to admit, that still sucks.
:)
In all the schools I visited while playing rugby, if the ratio wasn't rougbly 1-1, the men there were just nuts. U of Missouri Rolla had the worst ratio, with only a small handful of women, and the men there typically went ape-shit on the weekends. The worst school I visited, however, was Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. I think the ratio was around 2-1 there, as it is a predominently engineering school, and it simply was one of the worst places to party I have ever been. The ugliest of women were still stuck up because they had at least two guys hanging off of them at all times.
And it's not just sex I'm talking about, having women around raises the maturity level of the whole area by a couple notches -- and this is coming from a man who frequented rugby parties, I know immaturity when I see it.
So even if you are the geeky anti-social type, simply having a higher female ratio around benefits you.
This isn't what stopped me from going to Mines though. I decided late in my senior year of high school that I didn't want to be a mechanical engineer, instead, I wanted to get into computer animation. Funny you mentioned UIUC. That's the only school that turned me down, and in retrospect, probably the place I should have gone to. Don't know if it was because I applied to the engineering department though. As if their comp sci program is any less selective
Am I happy with how that choice wound up? Not really. I enjoyed school, but Manhattan, Kansas was a total shit hole, and I'm glad to be out. I don't feel my degree is all that valuable -- most of my education came from what I've taught myself. But overall, I think it was better that I went to KSU instead of Mines.
Rich
Man, you hit both reasons I decided not to go there. No women (75% male might be a little low) and the town absolutely reeks from that plant.
Somewhat on topic though, what about crashing random trade shows? Not sure how easy it would be but I've snuck into a rather amusing Plumbing convention (There were fewer butt cracks than you would think), and there's a fireworks convention in North Dakota that's supposed to be insane.
way way way (way!) back when I was a grocery sacker at a local supermarket, we had a standing rule that no guy had to clean the women's bathroom, and for this specific reason. One unfortunate day, however, there weren't any girl sackers working, so I was tapped to clean the bathrooms, women's included. I still have flashbacks to that experience. For some reason, there are women out there that don't understand a big yellow sign, saying "Do not flush your tampons". Nothing like putting on the big rubber gloves and fishing those out of the bottom of the toilet.
Is there a -1 Repulsive?
It's time to go drink.
Hmm, I see your mac is purple. That means (flips through user's manual)... It's horny!
You hit it right on the head actually. I don't know who designed the thing, but every art degree on the planet starts all their students with basic color theory. Surely Microsoft has some graphic designers on their payroll that could look at it and barf.
Either that or someone switched their color wheel with the Twister spinner.
Rich
They gave some japanese movie I guess, but it reminds me of the pleasure sphere from Woody Allen's "Sleeper". Now THAT is a toy I want for christmas. Oh, and an orgasmatron.
Rich
Wait until those model numbers reach T-100, then we'll need to call in Linda Hamilton to clean up the mess.
Rich
As someone who has gone into debt just trying to get out of a moderately sized city in the midwest (Kansas City), I would rather take a bullet to the forehead than live in Des Moines.
Rich
Give this man a cookie.
Maybe it's because of the use of acutal studio tools that were released for Linux in the last two years. Maya, Softimage|XSI, Shake (a compositor, but it uses GL heavily). Throw in renderman, which has been in Linux for years, but doesn't require video (it's just a renderer), and your whole CGI pipeline is running under linux. And with the NVidia drivers, very very well.
Film Gimp? Give me a break. I like where it's heading, but it's not what pushes studios to linux.
Rich
Normally, I am a supporter of gun control, but as long as Ashcroft is paid by my tax dollars, we need the right to bear arms. Which, ironically, is the reason the second amendment was put there in the first place.
Do I hear police sirens outside?
To: Linus
Subject: Patch to move all rounding errors into a Cayman Islands bank account
superman-III.diff.gz follows....
Or here's another idea. If we believe that the TCO of linux is, in fact, lower than the Windows servers they are moving from, then possibly the money saved there will trickle back to the customers in the form of lower bank fees. Probably not in the form of "We have lowered our costs, so we are cutting what you pay in fees in half". Instead, maybe the next time they have to raise fees to cover their costs as they increase over time will be pushed back a year or two.
Taos
As a fellow back packer from this summer, avoid the cities. They're too stressful to get around in. Go to the smaller places. They're cheaper, more culturally interesting (you'll meet people different than yourself instead of just Americans or Canadians in you case). Paris is a nightmare, I never met a spaniard (or whatever that region's name is) in Barcelona, just a ton of travelers.
My favorite places I went:
Sorrento, Italy. Outside of Naples, only a short local train ride away. Can get to all of the sites (Hurculaneum, Pompeii) and all the same boats to the islands go out of there. Take a boat to Ischia. Much more fun than Capri.
Florence, Italy, but don't stay there. Rent a scooter for a couple days and head for the hills. Beautiful countryside. Take a sleeping bag and camp around the cathedrals.
Vigo, Spain. Nobody goes there. Very friendly people, and the countryside around there is fantastic. Unfortunately, it's right in the middle of that current oil spill. Any Galicians out there want to comment?
Melk, Austria. Not terribly great, but a good place to pause before you head into Vienna.
Next trip, I'm going to do the northern half of europe. I skipped it this time around.
Wow, how off topic can I get? I'll stop now.
Ok, with the amount of jar-jar bashing (deservedly) I'm seeing so far on the board, I imagine the first week after this release will consist of a giant lynch mob roaming the galaxy.
Nothing like a common enemy to unite old foes. The dark side ang good side will join forces to kill off the annoying character.
Once they find him, however, the game will fall into every man for himself to get the honor to get in the first shot.
She was a militant lesbian, dude. She'd sooner rip your nuts off.
Taos
After reading three of the original Bond books (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger) this past summer, I have come to realize that Bond really was an action character from the beginning. So, those talking about how Connery's Bond was thoughtful and dealt with more espionage, read the books.
M was constantly telling Bond to try and be more inconspicuous, but he got into too much trouble anyways. I think instead, the pacing of the original Bond films comes from the style of film making during the 60's. They used much more dramatic pacing, where as Flemming raced through much of the slower points of his books by skimming details. Whereas, when the action was going, he described every little pore on Bonds body.
I do have to note, however, I much prefer the thoughtful pacing of that era of movies instead of the non stop action of today's movies. Another example outside of the Bond area is the movie "The Day of the Jackal" and it's horrid remake "the Jackal". The original was extremely slow, but kept you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
Taos