Maya isn't Free and is certainly not free. It is not made for the typical linux person. Maya on Linux is for when Maya comes first and Linux is secondary.
Multi-machine rendering isn't the same as clusters. Any 3D program can send an animation's frames to different computers, but using a cluster to render one frame would be a bigger step. Preivewing the finished product takes alot of time with complicated scenes, and getting preview renders is time comsuming.
I don't want to sound snobbish, but believe me when I say that Bryce is actually child's play compared to middle and high end 3D programs. It's not that Bryce isn't cool, but if/when you ever get to play with one of Lightwave/3DSMAX/Softimage/Maya you will know what I mean. Bryce is good, but those are really advanced and flexible. I guess my point is that a Bryce type program would be cool for Linux, but an advanced 3D program would advance linux. Again, don't think that I am trying to be patronizing, Alias/Wavefront offers a full time limited demo of Maya if you have access to NT or 2000.
First off, 3D studio does not use a 3d accelerator for rendering, in fact no 3D program does that I know of. 3D accelerator are just for real time and that's where they are used. Well, that and for generating preview animations much quicker than a standard render. Also, 3D studio's (pre-packaged) renderer is really fast, but is actually one of its weak points I think. Lightwave has a really good renderer, as does softimage with mental ray. I am not sure about Maya and I have never really had experience with renderman.
I hope you aren't accusing MAX for their file format, it fits perfectly with the architecture of the program and things can always be frozen and taken somewhere else.
The Evil Kyro is a fairly good budget card because it uses tile based rendering and 64MB of RAM for around $120. It's real failure though is the absence of hardware T & L. The next generation will have it and should be a worthy competitor in some niche, although I don't expect it to hold up to the NV20.
From what I could tell, the pictures didn't need to be altered. At the very most, when a kitten was already in the jar, they could have pushed it from the other end and taken the picture at the same time. That is still a little dicomforting but is really nowhere near animal cruelty.
Allanach said she's not sure if the site is a parody -- and even if it isn't, it should be taken offline because it could encourage people to experiment on their own household pets.
So it she thinks that it being a parody is worse than it being real?
Now they just need to make a goat with 5 asses and all will be well.
That said, I am tired of reading constantly about people worried about 'playing God'. We can't play God, because we aren't God. I am not trying to get in a religous argument, I am just saying that genetics etc. is more 'playing humans' than anything. Flashback to the 1500's. Don't you think that electricity, camera's, and airplanes would be considered playing God? But as soon as something is trivial, it can't be playing God, because it's not on the edge of technology anymore. In 100 years are we still going to be arguing over this? Absolutely not. People will realize the enormous benefits that it could bring, and it will become a part of every day lives because it will no longer be difficult. Try saying that it's playing God then, who would care? You would look to them as the Amish do to us. I can't believe this comes from the very people that supposedly embrace technology.
A few things. First, what do you think CD-R - 'Music' discs are for. They already carry a compensation royalty but I think are the only ones that do. Second, build you own computer, everyone here knows that there is no way to get a better deal than to buy everything from pricewatch and just build a computer yourself. Buying a pre-built computer just never seems like the proper solution and quality/price/performance is always worse than a self-built computer.
George Lucas certainly did not invent the acronymn CGI nor is he going against the grain by using it. CGI was coined in the late 60's when computer graphics was born. I knew CGI as computer generated imagery before I knew it as common gateway interface. It is a standard acronym that has been around for a long time, so accept it. I don't like George Lucas eighther, but don't think that just because you aren't familiar with something that it hasn't been around for a long time. It is arrogant to make the assumtion that your focus is shared with so many other people.
Why don't you just lay off her man, she is just tyring to cash in on the new economy using the world wide web. She just need to make some cash while surfing the web so she can upgrade her personal computing experience and maybe download the 'net.
I hope to clear up a few misconeceptions that people seem to have. I have read some of the replies and it seems that most people are making valid points that are not taking into account all of the factors involved.
1. As many people have noted, raw polygons are only the underlying factor in the visual quality of a scene.
2. There are things that are wasteful both in memory bandwidth and processing power such and redundant pixel redering on the z-buffer. PowerVR, ATI, and NVIDIA are all using techniques to bypass rendering more pixels than necessary. PowerVR in a current card, which is in the middle end because of a lack of hardware T & L (transform and lighting). PowerVR is using what is called tile based rendering, which is a more elegant way to reduce load. ATI has a somewhat less pure technique called hyper Z which decreases memory bandwidth usage (as seen in benchmarks at very high resolutions), and NVIDIA is doing something similiar with the NV20 but doesn't have anything built into their GeForce cards.
3. Yes multi-pass rendering is a factor, but at the same time techniques are being used to render multi-textured polygons in one pass instead of many. PowerVR's has this feature (at least when used with DirectX).
4. Yes, anti-aliasing is a factor also, but 4x4 anti-aliasing doesn't have to require 16 times the rendering power. Only the pixels that have enough contrast to contribute to jaggedness in the first place need to be assesed.
5. The limit how many polygons actually need to be rendered is MUCH less than one per pixel if enough optimization tricks are used. When proper smoothing algorithms are used, nothing distiguishes a highly facted sphere from a regularly facted sphere except for the edges, which will be smoother with increased polygons. A low polygon count object's edges can be smoothed more efficiently with some 2D tricks. Objects far in the distance can be simplified so that the aren't taking up more polygons than necessary.
6. More power can always always always be used. And not just for higher resolutions eighther. One of the things that is so cool about console systems I think, is that they are made to run at 640x480 so they can use plenty of effects and in the end up the visual quality quite a bit.
Microsoft and Intel are pretty dark companies, but the reference to Red Hat is rediculous. The whole reason this is news is because Apple is taking down stuff that doesn't have their logo on it. Of course Red Hat wouldn't let someone use Red Hat's brand name. But Red Hat certainly does not fall into the same realm as Microsoft and Intel, get a clue.
So Houdini can be bought for Linux? (not that I have the money). I thought it was "in the works" like Alias/Wavefront's Maya (which is sure to turn some heads)
I am surprised that no one has mentioned this yet. If porting Irix applications is easy, Linux is about to get a huge huge push. I know that there have been articles and rumors about middle and high end 3D applications coming to Linux, but I haven't seen any actually materialize yet (feel free to prove me wrong because I may be). All the big players in 3D except for 3ds MAX (Tom Hudson!) are available for Irix - > Softimage , Maya , Lightwave , Houdini and a whole host of compositing and motion capture programs. If porting those to Linux is trivial then ports will be all the more likely.
Now you may think that it's not going to happen because "Linux people aren't the type to pay for software at all, let alone software that costs thousands of dollars." This is the wrong way to look at things, the 3D companies are probably asking themselves right now if the artists that use their products are the type of people to use Linux. I think that 3D artists are the most likly to use Linux with the exception of the fleets of hackers who already do. If you have ever used a powerful 3D application you know that they are very complex. Learning Linux is a small price to pay for reliability a magnatude higher than NT. Linux drops out the cost of the OS too of course, and when dealing with Irix, that can add up. All those computers in the render farm no longer have to eat up licenses.
Now you may also think "That's great if a niche market uses Linux but I don't think it will make a huge difference." Think about this then. Photoshop is the standard imaging tool, hands down. Now if Linux takes a chunk out of the graphics market, guess what sweet application could replace it while saving $600 for every computer its used? I shouldn't have to say it, but the Gimp would shine. Graphics studios of any magnatude have armies of programmers on hand, sometimes more programmers than animators. Think what they would do if they got their hands on an open source program like The Gimp that lets them not only script simple tools very easily but extend the very program itself. If they played nice with others then the Gimp could get alot better, really fast. And how many other programs could make headway at the same time?
I know that this might seems like a jump in logic from having an Irix wm ported to Linux, but if Linux can make headway in the graphics market, cool shit will happen. The graphics scene doesn't care what everyone else uses for the most part. Studios of something of a blackbox alot of the time and if one tool works better for them, but no one else uses it, it doesn't matter. So Linux wouldn't even be a difficult transition when compared to what the average buisness would have to do to put Linux on desktops.
Welll, for one thing, I am sure they have thought of this and probably the VM does not even allow it. Second, workers of the NSA probably ARE the sharpest pencils in the box. Now patent workers and government employees of that nature? That's another story all together.
P.S. Why doesn't the government employee look out his window in the morning? So he'll have something to do later.
Re:Reminds me of...A BIG mistake by Apple
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 1
I wasn't talking about a K6 - 2, I have one and it works great. I was talking about the original K6 which was about as weak as a 486.
Re:Reminds me of...A BIG mistake by Apple
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 2
It should be pointed out that K6's were extremely weak chips. It was a mistake to buy one even when they could be bought.
I think nintendo and MS will come out on Top in the near future. From what I have read, the X-Box is really demanding as far as quality, they won't let games be published if they are using the xbox's potential for something special. Nintendo is freakin nintendo, they have put out some of the best games ever made like marios,zeldas, and the best game of all time - Super Metroid. The gamecube's graphics are astouding as I am sure the X-box's will be too.
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Maya isn't Free and is certainly not free. It is not made for the typical linux person. Maya on Linux is for when Maya comes first and Linux is secondary.
Multi-machine rendering isn't the same as clusters. Any 3D program can send an animation's frames to different computers, but using a cluster to render one frame would be a bigger step. Preivewing the finished product takes alot of time with complicated scenes, and getting preview renders is time comsuming.
I don't want to sound snobbish, but believe me when I say that Bryce is actually child's play compared to middle and high end 3D programs. It's not that Bryce isn't cool, but if/when you ever get to play with one of Lightwave/3DSMAX/Softimage/Maya you will know what I mean. Bryce is good, but those are really advanced and flexible. I guess my point is that a Bryce type program would be cool for Linux, but an advanced 3D program would advance linux. Again, don't think that I am trying to be patronizing, Alias/Wavefront offers a full time limited demo of Maya if you have access to NT or 2000.
First off, 3D studio does not use a 3d accelerator for rendering, in fact no 3D program does that I know of. 3D accelerator are just for real time and that's where they are used. Well, that and for generating preview animations much quicker than a standard render. Also, 3D studio's (pre-packaged) renderer is really fast, but is actually one of its weak points I think. Lightwave has a really good renderer, as does softimage with mental ray. I am not sure about Maya and I have never really had experience with renderman.
I hope you aren't accusing MAX for their file format, it fits perfectly with the architecture of the program and things can always be frozen and taken somewhere else.
The Evil Kyro is a fairly good budget card because it uses tile based rendering and 64MB of RAM for around $120. It's real failure though is the absence of hardware T & L. The next generation will have it and should be a worthy competitor in some niche, although I don't expect it to hold up to the NV20.
From what I could tell, the pictures didn't need to be altered. At the very most, when a kitten was already in the jar, they could have pushed it from the other end and taken the picture at the same time. That is still a little dicomforting but is really nowhere near animal cruelty.
Allanach said she's not sure if the site is a parody -- and even if it isn't, it should be taken offline because it could encourage people to experiment on their own household pets.
So it she thinks that it being a parody is worse than it being real?
Now they just need to make a goat with 5 asses and all will be well.
That said, I am tired of reading constantly about people worried about 'playing God'. We can't play God, because we aren't God. I am not trying to get in a religous argument, I am just saying that genetics etc. is more 'playing humans' than anything. Flashback to the 1500's. Don't you think that electricity, camera's, and airplanes would be considered playing God? But as soon as something is trivial, it can't be playing God, because it's not on the edge of technology anymore. In 100 years are we still going to be arguing over this? Absolutely not. People will realize the enormous benefits that it could bring, and it will become a part of every day lives because it will no longer be difficult. Try saying that it's playing God then, who would care? You would look to them as the Amish do to us. I can't believe this comes from the very people that supposedly embrace technology.
A few things. First, what do you think CD-R - 'Music' discs are for. They already carry a compensation royalty but I think are the only ones that do. Second, build you own computer, everyone here knows that there is no way to get a better deal than to buy everything from pricewatch and just build a computer yourself. Buying a pre-built computer just never seems like the proper solution and quality/price/performance is always worse than a self-built computer.
If there is will probably cost $300. And rightfully so, I mean it is DVD. So what if it actually cost less to manufacture?
George Lucas certainly did not invent the acronymn CGI nor is he going against the grain by using it. CGI was coined in the late 60's when computer graphics was born. I knew CGI as computer generated imagery before I knew it as common gateway interface. It is a standard acronym that has been around for a long time, so accept it. I don't like George Lucas eighther, but don't think that just because you aren't familiar with something that it hasn't been around for a long time. It is arrogant to make the assumtion that your focus is shared with so many other people.
Why don't you just lay off her man, she is just tyring to cash in on the new economy using the world wide web. She just need to make some cash while surfing the web so she can upgrade her personal computing experience and maybe download the 'net.
Seriously though, making fun of people is fun.
I hope to clear up a few misconeceptions that people seem to have. I have read some of the replies and it seems that most people are making valid points that are not taking into account all of the factors involved.
1. As many people have noted, raw polygons are only the underlying factor in the visual quality of a scene.
2. There are things that are wasteful both in memory bandwidth and processing power such and redundant pixel redering on the z-buffer. PowerVR, ATI, and NVIDIA are all using techniques to bypass rendering more pixels than necessary. PowerVR in a current card, which is in the middle end because of a lack of hardware T & L (transform and lighting). PowerVR is using what is called tile based rendering, which is a more elegant way to reduce load. ATI has a somewhat less pure technique called hyper Z which decreases memory bandwidth usage (as seen in benchmarks at very high resolutions), and NVIDIA is doing something similiar with the NV20 but doesn't have anything built into their GeForce cards.
3. Yes multi-pass rendering is a factor, but at the same time techniques are being used to render multi-textured polygons in one pass instead of many. PowerVR's has this feature (at least when used with DirectX).
4. Yes, anti-aliasing is a factor also, but 4x4 anti-aliasing doesn't have to require 16 times the rendering power. Only the pixels that have enough contrast to contribute to jaggedness in the first place need to be assesed.
5. The limit how many polygons actually need to be rendered is MUCH less than one per pixel if enough optimization tricks are used. When proper smoothing algorithms are used, nothing distiguishes a highly facted sphere from a regularly facted sphere except for the edges, which will be smoother with increased polygons. A low polygon count object's edges can be smoothed more efficiently with some 2D tricks. Objects far in the distance can be simplified so that the aren't taking up more polygons than necessary.
6. More power can always always always be used. And not just for higher resolutions eighther. One of the things that is so cool about console systems I think, is that they are made to run at 640x480 so they can use plenty of effects and in the end up the visual quality quite a bit.
7. This took me a while, and I didn't preview it.
Microsoft and Intel are pretty dark companies, but the reference to Red Hat is rediculous. The whole reason this is news is because Apple is taking down stuff that doesn't have their logo on it. Of course Red Hat wouldn't let someone use Red Hat's brand name. But Red Hat certainly does not fall into the same realm as Microsoft and Intel, get a clue.
So Houdini can be bought for Linux? (not that I have the money). I thought it was "in the works" like Alias/Wavefront's Maya (which is sure to turn some heads)
I am surprised that no one has mentioned this yet. If porting Irix applications is easy, Linux is about to get a huge huge push. I know that there have been articles and rumors about middle and high end 3D applications coming to Linux, but I haven't seen any actually materialize yet (feel free to prove me wrong because I may be). All the big players in 3D except for 3ds MAX (Tom Hudson!) are available for Irix - > Softimage , Maya , Lightwave , Houdini and a whole host of compositing and motion capture programs. If porting those to Linux is trivial then ports will be all the more likely.
Now you may think that it's not going to happen because "Linux people aren't the type to pay for software at all, let alone software that costs thousands of dollars." This is the wrong way to look at things, the 3D companies are probably asking themselves right now if the artists that use their products are the type of people to use Linux. I think that 3D artists are the most likly to use Linux with the exception of the fleets of hackers who already do. If you have ever used a powerful 3D application you know that they are very complex. Learning Linux is a small price to pay for reliability a magnatude higher than NT. Linux drops out the cost of the OS too of course, and when dealing with Irix, that can add up. All those computers in the render farm no longer have to eat up licenses.
Now you may also think "That's great if a niche market uses Linux but I don't think it will make a huge difference." Think about this then. Photoshop is the standard imaging tool, hands down. Now if Linux takes a chunk out of the graphics market, guess what sweet application could replace it while saving $600 for every computer its used? I shouldn't have to say it, but the Gimp would shine. Graphics studios of any magnatude have armies of programmers on hand, sometimes more programmers than animators. Think what they would do if they got their hands on an open source program like The Gimp that lets them not only script simple tools very easily but extend the very program itself. If they played nice with others then the Gimp could get alot better, really fast. And how many other programs could make headway at the same time?
I know that this might seems like a jump in logic from having an Irix wm ported to Linux, but if Linux can make headway in the graphics market, cool shit will happen. The graphics scene doesn't care what everyone else uses for the most part. Studios of something of a blackbox alot of the time and if one tool works better for them, but no one else uses it, it doesn't matter. So Linux wouldn't even be a difficult transition when compared to what the average buisness would have to do to put Linux on desktops.
Welll, for one thing, I am sure they have thought of this and probably the VM does not even allow it. Second, workers of the NSA probably ARE the sharpest pencils in the box. Now patent workers and government employees of that nature? That's another story all together.
P.S. Why doesn't the government employee look out his window in the morning? So he'll have something to do later.
I wasn't talking about a K6 - 2, I have one and it works great. I was talking about the original K6 which was about as weak as a 486.
It should be pointed out that K6's were extremely weak chips. It was a mistake to buy one even when they could be bought.
s/are/aren't/
Nah, Mexico and Canada produced their own Dreamcasts and Sega bought them and kept them.
I think nintendo and MS will come out on Top in the near future. From what I have read, the X-Box is really demanding as far as quality, they won't let games be published if they are using the xbox's potential for something special. Nintendo is freakin nintendo, they have put out some of the best games ever made like marios,zeldas, and the best game of all time - Super Metroid. The gamecube's graphics are astouding as I am sure the X-box's will be too.
Yes, but the bytecode stucture Java is set up for the java programming language which is the point that he made.
You forgot Cyrix, but they suck so badly that maybe you didn't.