It wasn't copyright infringement, they didn't rip off lyrics. It was intellectual property infringement and it was because of Entropy and not BMRT. Pixar said Entropy used the same stochastic sampling method for anti-aliasing (very common, very documented, see Andrew Glasner's 1989 compilation of SIGGRAPH papers, one of which is on stochastic sampling by PRman author Robert Cook). This in itself is stupid enough, but the fact of the matter is that Entropy used a completely different analytic method of anti-aliasing and so the case had absolutly no basis whatsoever, and it was only because Pixar went after the founders of Exluna, Larry Gritz and Matt Pharr, personally that they didn't fight it.
These features might be there, but they are probably not very robust, fast, stable, elegant or even usable in some cases. Features alone are a small part of why people choose 3D apps.
This used to be true because of Softimage's great character animation, Maya's (and before that, Power Animator) great nurbs modeling (everything was nurbs), and Photorealistic Renderman being basically the only option for high end rendering, and Houdini being the only application with programability in mind.
Now things have changed and Softimage XSI is probably the best modeler (polygons/subD's now, and just wait for 3.0, it rocks), Maya is possibly the best animation package (because of Maya Embedded Language, its stability and its rigging tools) and Houdini isn't needed near as much (because of Maya Embedded Language and Maya's node based architecture). PRman still seems to be one of the only renderers with its priorities straight for high end production rendering, the others being Entropy (gone, killed by Pixar) and Final Render (only for 3DS) and maybe Brazil (only for 3DS).
The average high end pipeling doesn't really reflect this yet, and it is very varied, but many times everything is done in Maya because it is so complete. I think the average pipeline will be very scattered from here on out and that there won't be a standard way of doing things like in the past.
shows, some of which were basically some kid reading in monotone the events of the day and the sports scores, along with the cheesy Video Toaster graphics.
The free trial version of Maya does not support plugins, so Liquid will not work with it.
I have said it many times and most people (not you specifically of course) refuse to believe that Blender is not even in the same world as Maya. No way no how, there is absolutly no comparison. The differences are too extreme to list and I wish I could give more examples, but it isn't one big thing, it is many little concrete things, like driven keys, nurbs tools, subdivision surface tools, customizable interface, particles handling, hardware buffer rendering, and on and on and on. It is also big abstract things, like node based architecture, ( or object architecture like Softimage or 3D studio), and underyling scripting language called MEL, which is the foundation of Maya.
Professional 3D programs have lots of documentation. I GUARANTEE learning Maya will be easier than Blender. Companies depend on people learning their software well and using it to its fullest extent. Piracy comes into play here, and it is pretty much not something the companies worry about on an individual level, because it increases mindshare. If you want to learn 3D, you have to pirate software, it just works like that. Professionals ( eighther at studios or freelance ) buy the software when they use it professionally, because it is well worth it , is the legal thing to do, and is the right thing to do. No one cares if you pirate Maya to learn it.
If you want to get into 3D, go get Maya 4.5 (and a 3 button mouse). Load it up, watch the intro movies and you will be navigating around in no time. Then, hit F1 to see all the wonderful tutorials it comes with and you will be able to go through and learn all the features of the program easily. To take it further, practice sculting or go and get a book on cartoon animation, or lighting, or photography. Softimage XSI is also very easy to learn, although there is not as much documentaion as Maya. Learning the features is easy, learning the artistic side is hard. But it's great fun.
This really bothers me too. I think that the only chances are Adobe breaking down and porting photoshop to Linux ( not holding my breath ), the next version of the Gimp, (still basically in planning, but it seems its being done right), or someone's proprietary Irix image manipulation software being ported to Linux.
I use both Mental Ray and Maya's own render every day and there are many reasons. Mental Ray is a good renderer, but it doesn't do motion blur, depth of field, or shadow maps very well. It is a very good ray tracer, but when very high quality AA, motion blue, depth of field and so on are thrown in to a film resolution renderer, it becomes a tool that you are fighting with. The connection is also inelegant.
Maya's renderer is pretty good, but doesn't quite handle many things as well as most people would like. It could be faster, and its handling of large scenes and high resolutions needs to be improved, although it is still workable. Its depth of field and motion blur are 2D, and its 3D motion blur is very slow to get looking artifact free.
I would have replied earlier, but I just got up and didn't realize that my story had been accepted. Many people are wondering why having a connection from Maya to the Renderman rendering standard is a big deal and it's a very valid concern.
First of all I will say that I have known about Blender for quite a while, and while it does share many of the basic features of other high-end software (basic being the key word), it really is not acceptable to use for anything except as an intoduction to 3D. The magic 4 programs that are used for professional 3D are Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Softimage | 3D and XSI, and Maya. They are very well architectured, very fast, and very elegant to use. There are many others but these are the programs that are used to make 90 % of the 3D CGI out there.
Maya does have Renderman output, but it is abysmal and not suitable for anything but experimentation. I have used it to test Renderman shaders and I still needed to edit the actual.rib file ( the file containing the frame description, which is plain text) by hand. This wouldn't be practical on a scene containing anything more than a sphere and two lights.
This is important because it encourages standards and it encourages open source. By far the area that Linux is penetrating the fastest is the high end computer graphics market. Large studios have made sweeping conversions, not just on render farms, but on workstsations. Softimage 3D and XSI now run on Linux as does Maya. Almost every software based compositor out there runs on Linux (the exceptions being After Effects and Combustion). Many studios that have proprietary software are porting it to Linux. ILM , Digital Domain, PDI, and Weta have very big investments in it. Being open source helps, but open source is not the reason it is there. This tool being open source is one more piece of the puzzle as far open source penetrating large graphics studios. High end studios will be going to sourceforge to get a tool that they may end up depending on to get the job done. Some will start becoming active in its development, and this is very good. Its sets a precedent for releasing proprietary tools into the OS world. There are many extremely skilled programmers working in 3D.
More importantly than open source being furthered however is that it encourages standards. There are many Renderman compliant renderers out there, (Renderman is a frame description standard) Pixar's own implementation, Photorealistic Renderman is the most popular one. Most people just use the internal renderer of the software package they are using because the only standard for going between a 3D package and a renderer is Renderman, and a plugin is needed to facilitate that. Until now all of the choices were very expensive (somtimes more expensive than Maya itself believe it or not). Now that this part is free, people may start to see the benefits that come along with having a standard in place.
Aren't those graphics applications still ungodly expensive? Yes and no. Maya is now at $2000 USD for the base version (everything you need is there) which is one hell of a deal. Don't I still need Pixar's PRman? Yes and No. It is not the only Renderman renderer, but it is the best. It is sold alone or with many tools to go between Maya and itself (more expensive). If someone uses Liquid, eighther way they are saving alot of money and getting a production proven tool.
So is the entire pipeling Free? No, of course not, but that isn't the point. Open Source getting into 3D graphics studios is a very good thing, and this is a pretty cool step in the right direction. You want open minded people who just want to get the job done, and use the very best tools for their situation? That's 3D, perhaps overall one of the most intelligent and dynamic industries out there. They do their own thing and that's why Linux is taking over and OS can too, it just has to meet extremely high quality standards.
P.S. No Hollywood is a hyprocrite crap today please. Visual effects and computer graphics as a whole is so far removed from the issue that making a connection between the MPAA and a visual effects house just shows how little you know about it, and it isn't fair to the people working in the 3D industry.
I'll chime in with a bit of relevance. Being formerly from Topeka, Kansas (and an old school lightwave animator to boot) I would say that people's perception of Kansas is way off most of the time. I know alot of geeks, especially because of KU, Newtek trails, and KC. Also, there is nothing to do in Kansas, but so much to do with the internet and computers so I think it makes alot of sense. I just moved from Kansas and now am in Vancouver (VFS baby) and people's idea of Kansas is all about hicks and farmers and accents and tornados. Its kind of shame, but oh well.
You have worked at all these programming jobs and don't have anything written outside them? I think anyone worth their salt has written programs outside of work or school. If they haven't then they probably don't enjoy programming enough to be very good at it anyway.
MS's next OS, Longhorn is supposed to do exactly this. I am not sure how much the requirements will be tied in with directX version numbers but I imagine that it will be quite close.
There is another projection system made by JVC/Hues that is actually much better (supposedly) than the TI alternative, but Texas instruments is doing much more to publicize their digital cinema efforts.
Lightwave will definitly be ported to linux sometime in the next year or two. Lightwave is the last program to be completly redone into a next generation system, but it is in the works, and I imagine that it will be available for linux right out of the gate.
Re:Which is why you use an LCD...
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IBM's Deep View
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· Score: 2
Actually film runs at 24 frames a second, and even though this is enough for the illusion of motion, persistence of vision does not stretch that far. Projectors in movie theatres open and shut twice every frame, so standard theatre film movies are shown at 48Hz
It is forgery. The BMRT images are so old there is little way they could dig up 5 or 6 year old images from someone who doesn't have any association with Exluna and that created them before there was an Exluna.
More than that, the coffe cup is rendered with Entropy, not BMRT, it was done as all those images were, by someone else, this one recently in an image contest.
The most obvious flaw though, is that those images are raytraced, and this is not something that anyone is claiming to do in realtime yet. It is beyond the scope of Nvidia's processor, as it should be. Those images are scaled duplicates that aren't changed a bit, and there is no way that an Nvidia card rendered them, because there is no way the reflections would be the same, but they are. Reflection maps have a tendancy to look correct, but not the same. There is also depth of field which is not impossible, but is improbable for now.
I have read a lot of good books (mostly by Wrox publishing) but the best book, and most relevant (and very seminal too!) is Avanced Renderman: Creating CGI for motion pictures. If you want to write shaders (and who doesn't) this is the book. All of the concepts apply directly to the current realtime shaders even though the book s written with movie CGI in mind. If you want to be taken into the world of 3D rendering, see where its going, where its been and how it got there, this is the book. It will take you in new directions, it will tell you all you need to know and is written so well, you will almost lose respect for 3D developers because it makes things seem so simple.
Only one is necessary for the OS but for programs like Shake, Maya, and Softimage|XSI (best use of the three button mouse ever) it really a very elegant solution, and the simplicity of a one button mouse gets in your way, there needs to be more control.
Re:Maya still has greater appeal on non-macs
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Maya for Mac OS X
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· Score: 2
I am sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. A geforce4 can flatten an SGI, and a professional card can do even better, although a geforce 4 makes 3d silky smooth and I don't think better cards are keeping the mac from 3D.
Second, wake up and realize that ILM, Digital Domain, dreamworks, sony pictures imageworks, and a whole host of others are turning from SGI to Linux, not just for rendering, but for workstations. Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Shake, PRman (Renderman is the standard, not the renderer), Entropy, Mental Ray and (Soon) Nuke are available on Linux. Maybe you don't know a 'graphic artist' who would consider linux, because these are professional 3D artists and professional 3D programmers, not someone gouging the local soccer team for the logo they made in illustrator.
I think that Mac's can definitly succeed in 3D, but there are alot of things that will have to happen. Apply is playing hardball in the compositing market, and Maya is right there in the Mix, so its getting close. Now all Apple has to do is ACTUALLY MAKE FASTER COMPUTERS than PC's. Not just at running a multi-threaded photoshop filter, they will have to make some dual or quad processor workstations that are beyond G4s and take advantage of the latest RAM to outperform PC's by a good margin before they will see easy adoption.
That doesn't mean that someone can't take lessons from its interface or that a program has to be expensive to have a good interface, or (probably the biggest misconception) that a interface will naturally be difficult if a program is complex and powerful.
This is not true. I have used 7 completly different 3D programs and many revisions of some of them. The best interface I have ever seen is Softimage XSI by a wide margin. If you want to see a program 10 times as fast, elgant, and powerful as blender with an interface better than any program I have ever seen, grap hold of a copy or get the trial version off of their website. That is what an interface should be. Blender's is easily the worst. No organization, very arbitrary. It is rediculous.
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It wasn't copyright infringement, they didn't rip off lyrics. It was intellectual property infringement and it was because of Entropy and not BMRT. Pixar said Entropy used the same stochastic sampling method for anti-aliasing (very common, very documented, see Andrew Glasner's 1989 compilation of SIGGRAPH papers, one of which is on stochastic sampling by PRman author Robert Cook). This in itself is stupid enough, but the fact of the matter is that Entropy used a completely different analytic method of anti-aliasing and so the case had absolutly no basis whatsoever, and it was only because Pixar went after the founders of Exluna, Larry Gritz and Matt Pharr, personally that they didn't fight it.
These features might be there, but they are probably not very robust, fast, stable, elegant or even usable in some cases. Features alone are a small part of why people choose 3D apps.
No, because Blue Sky uses CGI Studio as their renderer and has no plans to sell it.
This used to be true because of Softimage's great character animation, Maya's (and before that, Power Animator) great nurbs modeling (everything was nurbs), and Photorealistic Renderman being basically the only option for high end rendering, and Houdini being the only application with programability in mind.
Now things have changed and Softimage XSI is probably the best modeler (polygons/subD's now, and just wait for 3.0, it rocks), Maya is possibly the best animation package (because of Maya Embedded Language, its stability and its rigging tools) and Houdini isn't needed near as much (because of Maya Embedded Language and Maya's node based architecture). PRman still seems to be one of the only renderers with its priorities straight for high end production rendering, the others being Entropy (gone, killed by Pixar) and Final Render (only for 3DS) and maybe Brazil (only for 3DS).
The average high end pipeling doesn't really reflect this yet, and it is very varied, but many times everything is done in Maya because it is so complete. I think the average pipeline will be very scattered from here on out and that there won't be a standard way of doing things like in the past.
shows, some of which were basically some kid reading in monotone the events of the day and the sports scores, along with the cheesy Video Toaster graphics.
I still had fun doing it you insensitive clod!
The free trial version of Maya does not support plugins, so Liquid will not work with it.
I have said it many times and most people (not you specifically of course) refuse to believe that Blender is not even in the same world as Maya. No way no how, there is absolutly no comparison. The differences are too extreme to list and I wish I could give more examples, but it isn't one big thing, it is many little concrete things, like driven keys, nurbs tools, subdivision surface tools, customizable interface, particles handling, hardware buffer rendering, and on and on and on. It is also big abstract things, like node based architecture, ( or object architecture like Softimage or 3D studio), and underyling scripting language called MEL, which is the foundation of Maya.
Professional 3D programs have lots of documentation. I GUARANTEE learning Maya will be easier than Blender. Companies depend on people learning their software well and using it to its fullest extent. Piracy comes into play here, and it is pretty much not something the companies worry about on an individual level, because it increases mindshare. If you want to learn 3D, you have to pirate software, it just works like that. Professionals ( eighther at studios or freelance ) buy the software when they use it professionally, because it is well worth it , is the legal thing to do, and is the right thing to do. No one cares if you pirate Maya to learn it.
If you want to get into 3D, go get Maya 4.5 (and a 3 button mouse). Load it up, watch the intro movies and you will be navigating around in no time. Then, hit F1 to see all the wonderful tutorials it comes with and you will be able to go through and learn all the features of the program easily. To take it further, practice sculting or go and get a book on cartoon animation, or lighting, or photography. Softimage XSI is also very easy to learn, although there is not as much documentaion as Maya. Learning the features is easy, learning the artistic side is hard. But it's great fun.
This really bothers me too. I think that the only chances are Adobe breaking down and porting photoshop to Linux ( not holding my breath ), the next version of the Gimp, (still basically in planning, but it seems its being done right), or someone's proprietary Irix image manipulation software being ported to Linux.
I use both Mental Ray and Maya's own render every day and there are many reasons. Mental Ray is a good renderer, but it doesn't do motion blur, depth of field, or shadow maps very well. It is a very good ray tracer, but when very high quality AA, motion blue, depth of field and so on are thrown in to a film resolution renderer, it becomes a tool that you are fighting with. The connection is also inelegant.
Maya's renderer is pretty good, but doesn't quite handle many things as well as most people would like. It could be faster, and its handling of large scenes and high resolutions needs to be improved, although it is still workable. Its depth of field and motion blur are 2D, and its 3D motion blur is very slow to get looking artifact free.
I would have replied earlier, but I just got up and didn't realize that my story had been accepted. Many people are wondering why having a connection from Maya to the Renderman rendering standard is a big deal and it's a very valid concern.
.rib file ( the file containing the frame description, which is plain text) by hand. This wouldn't be practical on a scene containing anything more than a sphere and two lights.
First of all I will say that I have known about Blender for quite a while, and while it does share many of the basic features of other high-end software (basic being the key word), it really is not acceptable to use for anything except as an intoduction to 3D. The magic 4 programs that are used for professional 3D are Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Softimage | 3D and XSI, and Maya. They are very well architectured, very fast, and very elegant to use. There are many others but these are the programs that are used to make 90 % of the 3D CGI out there.
Maya does have Renderman output, but it is abysmal and not suitable for anything but experimentation. I have used it to test Renderman shaders and I still needed to edit the actual
This is important because it encourages standards and it encourages open source. By far the area that Linux is penetrating the fastest is the high end computer graphics market. Large studios have made sweeping conversions, not just on render farms, but on workstsations. Softimage 3D and XSI now run on Linux as does Maya. Almost every software based compositor out there runs on Linux (the exceptions being After Effects and Combustion). Many studios that have proprietary software are porting it to Linux. ILM , Digital Domain, PDI, and Weta have very big investments in it. Being open source helps, but open source is not the reason it is there. This tool being open source is one more piece of the puzzle as far open source penetrating large graphics studios. High end studios will be going to sourceforge to get a tool that they may end up depending on to get the job done. Some will start becoming active in its development, and this is very good. Its sets a precedent for releasing proprietary tools into the OS world. There are many extremely skilled programmers working in 3D.
More importantly than open source being furthered however is that it encourages standards. There are many Renderman compliant renderers out there, (Renderman is a frame description standard) Pixar's own implementation, Photorealistic Renderman is the most popular one. Most people just use the internal renderer of the software package they are using because the only standard for going between a 3D package and a renderer is Renderman, and a plugin is needed to facilitate that. Until now all of the choices were very expensive (somtimes more expensive than Maya itself believe it or not). Now that this part is free, people may start to see the benefits that come along with having a standard in place.
Aren't those graphics applications still ungodly expensive? Yes and no. Maya is now at $2000 USD for the base version (everything you need is there) which is one hell of a deal. Don't I still need Pixar's PRman? Yes and No. It is not the only Renderman renderer, but it is the best. It is sold alone or with many tools to go between Maya and itself (more expensive). If someone uses Liquid, eighther way they are saving alot of money and getting a production proven tool.
So is the entire pipeling Free? No, of course not, but that isn't the point. Open Source getting into 3D graphics studios is a very good thing, and this is a pretty cool step in the right direction. You want open minded people who just want to get the job done, and use the very best tools for their situation? That's 3D, perhaps overall one of the most intelligent and dynamic industries out there. They do their own thing and that's why Linux is taking over and OS can too, it just has to meet extremely high quality standards.
P.S. No Hollywood is a hyprocrite crap today please. Visual effects and computer graphics as a whole is so far removed from the issue that making a connection between the MPAA and a visual effects house just shows how little you know about it, and it isn't fair to the people working in the 3D industry.
That's great and all, but I think they were talking about 3 to 4 times the power to DECODE the video, not encode it.
If they deinterlace the video it would be 30 frames a second.
Stephen Hawking is not physically retarded.
I'll chime in with a bit of relevance. Being formerly from Topeka, Kansas (and an old school lightwave animator to boot) I would say that people's perception of Kansas is way off most of the time. I know alot of geeks, especially because of KU, Newtek trails, and KC. Also, there is nothing to do in Kansas, but so much to do with the internet and computers so I think it makes alot of sense. I just moved from Kansas and now am in Vancouver (VFS baby) and people's idea of Kansas is all about hicks and farmers and accents and tornados. Its kind of shame, but oh well.
You have worked at all these programming jobs and don't have anything written outside them? I think anyone worth their salt has written programs outside of work or school. If they haven't then they probably don't enjoy programming enough to be very good at it anyway.
MS's next OS, Longhorn is supposed to do exactly this. I am not sure how much the requirements will be tied in with directX version numbers but I imagine that it will be quite close.
There is another projection system made by JVC/Hues that is actually much better (supposedly) than the TI alternative, but Texas instruments is doing much more to publicize their digital cinema efforts.
Lightwave will definitly be ported to linux sometime in the next year or two. Lightwave is the last program to be completly redone into a next generation system, but it is in the works, and I imagine that it will be available for linux right out of the gate.
Actually film runs at 24 frames a second, and even though this is enough for the illusion of motion, persistence of vision does not stretch that far. Projectors in movie theatres open and shut twice every frame, so standard theatre film movies are shown at 48Hz
It is forgery. The BMRT images are so old there is little way they could dig up 5 or 6 year old images from someone who doesn't have any association with Exluna and that created them before there was an Exluna.
More than that, the coffe cup is rendered with Entropy, not BMRT, it was done as all those images were, by someone else, this one recently in an image contest.
The most obvious flaw though, is that those images are raytraced, and this is not something that anyone is claiming to do in realtime yet. It is beyond the scope of Nvidia's processor, as it should be. Those images are scaled duplicates that aren't changed a bit, and there is no way that an Nvidia card rendered them, because there is no way the reflections would be the same, but they are. Reflection maps have a tendancy to look correct, but not the same. There is also depth of field which is not impossible, but is improbable for now.
I have read a lot of good books (mostly by Wrox publishing) but the best book, and most relevant (and very seminal too!) is Avanced Renderman: Creating CGI for motion pictures. If you want to write shaders (and who doesn't) this is the book. All of the concepts apply directly to the current realtime shaders even though the book s written with movie CGI in mind. If you want to be taken into the world of 3D rendering, see where its going, where its been and how it got there, this is the book. It will take you in new directions, it will tell you all you need to know and is written so well, you will almost lose respect for 3D developers because it makes things seem so simple.
Only one is necessary for the OS but for programs like Shake, Maya, and Softimage|XSI (best use of the three button mouse ever) it really a very elegant solution, and the simplicity of a one button mouse gets in your way, there needs to be more control.
I am sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. A geforce4 can flatten an SGI, and a professional card can do even better, although a geforce 4 makes 3d silky smooth and I don't think better cards are keeping the mac from 3D.
Second, wake up and realize that ILM, Digital Domain, dreamworks, sony pictures imageworks, and a whole host of others are turning from SGI to Linux, not just for rendering, but for workstations. Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Shake, PRman (Renderman is the standard, not the renderer), Entropy, Mental Ray and (Soon) Nuke are available on Linux. Maybe you don't know a 'graphic artist' who would consider linux, because these are professional 3D artists and professional 3D programmers, not someone gouging the local soccer team for the logo they made in illustrator.
I think that Mac's can definitly succeed in 3D, but there are alot of things that will have to happen. Apply is playing hardball in the compositing market, and Maya is right there in the Mix, so its getting close. Now all Apple has to do is ACTUALLY MAKE FASTER COMPUTERS than PC's. Not just at running a multi-threaded photoshop filter, they will have to make some dual or quad processor workstations that are beyond G4s and take advantage of the latest RAM to outperform PC's by a good margin before they will see easy adoption.
Just remember, just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean everyone's not out to get you.
That doesn't mean that someone can't take lessons from its interface or that a program has to be expensive to have a good interface, or (probably the biggest misconception) that a interface will naturally be difficult if a program is complex and powerful.
This is not true. I have used 7 completly different 3D programs and many revisions of some of them. The best interface I have ever seen is Softimage XSI by a wide margin. If you want to see a program 10 times as fast, elgant, and powerful as blender with an interface better than any program I have ever seen, grap hold of a copy or get the trial version off of their website. That is what an interface should be. Blender's is easily the worst. No organization, very arbitrary. It is rediculous.