I've slightly lowered my desk by 3" from standard desk height so that my 30" monitor is at the proper ergonomic height. I use a MS wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard is in my lap, which is the best ergonomic position for a keyboard, and the mouse is on an adjustable platform attached to the armrest (also sold by Ekornes).
I find this setup to be much more comfortable for long-duration programming than any of the Aeron or other office chair setups I've used before. The Stressless is quite a bit more expensive than those chairs, but you can often find them second hand for much less.
Yup. I switched from a different postit note program to the 3m one recently. The other program died on me after a couple months of note taking and I lost a ton of data. I'm thinking of setting up an automatic task to backup the 3m data file every day, just in case.
I like that you can use crossed out text in PostIt. I have two main notes, one with things todo and another with important items that have been completed. The horizontal scrollbar is also surprisingly nice.
I've been trying to set this sort of thing up in my neighborhood for about a year now, but it seems tough to get it started. The plan is to purchase a T1 line and split the bandwidth with the community up here using a wireless POP. The problems are basically:
1. Cost of the T1 is about $1200/mo including the local loop, free setup and router. 2. Cost of initial setup is about $10K for all the wireless antenna and equipment capable of penetrating the trees and such where we live
We live in a rural community near Lake Tahoe that will never get DSL. Distribution via wireless is difficult because of all the trees (we live in a forest). This forces us to use high-gain antenna at both the POP and the client. With our startup costs, the costs of the T1 and the client costs of about $500, it is hard to convince enough of the locals to sign up. Most are second homeowners that only use their house on weekends and holidays and don't feel like coughing up $500 and $70/mo. We figure we need about 20 people to break even.
One nice aspect is that the longer we wait, the better technology gets. The new Motorola Canopy system (check old Slashdot) seems interesting. The price of bandwidth also keeps falling. I expect that I'll probably end up splitting the T1 with just a couple of people using hand-strung fibre. It will probably be easier to find three or four people close by willing to spend $200-300/mo anyway. Besides, I have a real job and I don't feel like playing ISP with all my spare time!
There are a number of critical factors in this process that you haven't told us. The issues of display devices, gamma, and implementation details all play an important role in your ability to visibly distinguish between two colors.
What sort of monitor are you using? Have you correctly callibrated the display? What software are you using to display the colors? How does this software deal with display gamma? Other important details include the brightness of the surrounding environment, other windows and such on the screen which can distract the eye and interfere with your visual processing of the colors.
If you haven't already read the books and web pages by Charles Poynton, they cover all the details. Color issues always seem simple, but actually this is an extremely complex and subtle issue. Also, people's ability to visually distinguish color varies quite a bit. A surprisingly large percentage of the population is color blind to at least some portion of the spectrum. Also, display devices vary widely in their ability to correctly display different colors.
Anyway, to sum it all up, I'd be really surprised if you can use any sort of theory to predict whether you can visually distinguish between different colors. Even with correctly callibrated equipment, and experienced researchers, I doubt that your problem is easily answered!
Right, I should note that I was speaking about PDI in particular, and not DreamWorks as a whole. There is quite a bit more code and many more programmers in all of DreamWorks. The stats on my page are for PDI alone, and they are a few months out of date, as well.
We currently have 14 R&D programmers, I think. PDI has been in business for over 20 years. We have been developing proprietary software the entire time. That's less than 100K lines of code per year. Not that much, IMO.
W are replacing the O200s with Linux/PC boxes, not more IRIX boxes. We do use O2000 for part of our file serving, but we don't have any need for any expensive desktop graphics box. We don't really need anything better than O2 performance 3D graphics. We are much more dependent on memory and CPU. We do require good quality 2D performance, though, which isn't usually a priority for the 3D card vendors, unfortunately.
It would be great if we could get a nice cheap box that had decent 3D speed and was able to display color callibrated, film resolution, 24bpp images at 24 fps. It would be even better if we could display 36bpp, but that won't happen for quite some time.
I work in the R&D department at PDI/DreamWorks. My website has some real renderfarm statistics and some specific Shrek statistics. This article was fairly accurate, which is great. You can believe the hype. The entire production industry is behind Linux and is pushing the hardware and software vendors to firm up their offerings. We just had an industry wide meeting on Linux, and the movement toward Linux and away from Windows is clear and strong. There is even talk that some of the high end studios may work together to release some OpenSource tools, but right now that's still pie-in-the-sky. However, the fact that these studios, which previously guarded their trade secrets jealously, are even talking about this possiblity is exciting.
Also, PDI/DreamWorks is trying to release some code under OpenSource. I just released my frame buffer library under GPL. It is a small, but important, gesture, as it represents the first source code that we have ever released. We hope to have more soon.
Someone mentioned TIFF playback, which, these days is really easy, since it the latest rounds of cards are able to support 30fps playback using standard OpenGL calls. We have had our internal flipbook and quicktime programs working for over a year now. I'm sure the public tools will soon cover this gap. Also, audio is starting to work well. Our tools have nice sync'ed audio playback, which was one of the last things we got in place. We are now placing Linux workstations on animator desktops as opposed to batch use on the renderfarm. It has been a long road, but we are finally there.
Daniel Wexler
Re:You won't see the linux boxen on the artist's d
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
You are right, we didn't use Linux boxes on the desktop for Shrek. However, the first desktop Linux boxes are now in production use at PDI.
I have some slightly out-of-date information about the actual composition of our renderfarm and some rendering statistics for Shrek on my website at www.flarg.com.
I work in the R&D department at PDI. We do use some SGI Linux boxes in our renderfarm, but not on the desktop. The SGI's probably comprise about 10% of the renderfarm and less during Shrek production. Despite what you may hear reported in the press, we only used Linux boxes in our renderfarm during Shrek. We are just starting to deploy desktop Linux boxes now.
About 80% of our pipeline is proprietary software. The other 20% is largely made up of Maya, which works on our Linux boxes (so to speak) and things like PhotoShop where we generally use Macs. We are lucky that we use proprietary software since it made it feasible to get the renderfarm ported to Linux quickly. The GUI based tools were also relatively easy, but it took us about a year to get everything totally ported and ready for desktop production. Of course our staff of 16 programmers was also doing production support at the same time.
For the details on our Renderfarm setup, check out my webpage at www.flarg.com
Also, during Shrek, our animators used desktop SGI O2s (yes, O2s, not Octanes) running IRIX. About half to three-quarters of the renderfarm was made up of Linux boxes. Of that, only about 10% were HP boxes. We also had a spattering of V/A Linux, SGI and Atipa boxes. HP just gets the press.
Daniel Wexler
Shrek Statistincs and PDI Info
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
For specific statistics regarding our Renderfarm and how it was used on Shrek, check my website www.flarg.com. I work in R&D at PDI, and these are live stats on rendering performance along with some other interesting tidbits.
Daniel Wexler
PDI Renderfarm Statistics
on
Linux in 3D
·
· Score: 1
I work in the R&D group at PDI/DreamWorks and I've put up a rendering statistics page with a description of our renderfarm and some usage graphs. We're rolling out Linux desktop platforms running our proprietary animation software right now. Our animators are getting a 12x performance and 8x memory boost over the SGI O2 machines used on Shrek, our next feature, due out in May.
I know of one computer animation company that is a massively large user of VA Linux boxes, but I can't reveal who the company is.
I don't know how you qualify "massively large," but here at PDI we've been using about 140 PCs from VA for about two years now for all of our work. This in in addition to our 200 dual processor Origin200s. The PCs are 450 MHz dual PIIIs 2U boxes with 1GB. Our new boxes will have dual 800MHz PIIIs and 2GB of memory and will hopefully be 1U. We primarily use proprietary tools in our pipeline, so it wasn't too hard for us to get everything up and working. The toughest part was the UI code and the tools for film resolution flipbook and quicktime playback. We're going to start having our animators use PCs for the primary desktop machine by the end of the year.
A few months ago, the Visual Effects Society met to discuss Linux usage. I can't find the link right now, but a farily strong message was released indicating the industry support for Linux. Although they still do have a large Sun farm, and still use SGIs on the desktop, Pixar too is working with Linux.
We tend to run two frames at a time on each box. That way, they can share the available memory and other resources, and, when we need to render really big frames, we can just run a single frame at a time to get both processors for rendering and all the memory. I think Pixar does substantially similar things on the big Sun boxes, rather than using heavily multiprocessed code. Usually for us, it is memory, rather than processing power that presents the biggest problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I use the Ekornes Stressless lounge chair in my home office:
http://new.ekornes.com/us/stressless/stressless_recliners/
I've slightly lowered my desk by 3" from standard desk height so that my 30" monitor is at the proper ergonomic height. I use a MS wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard is in my lap, which is the best ergonomic position for a keyboard, and the mouse is on an adjustable platform attached to the armrest (also sold by Ekornes).
I find this setup to be much more comfortable for long-duration programming than any of the Aeron or other office chair setups I've used before. The Stressless is quite a bit more expensive than those chairs, but you can often find them second hand for much less.
Yup. I switched from a different postit note program to the 3m one recently. The other program died on me after a couple months of note taking and I lost a ton of data. I'm thinking of setting up an automatic task to backup the 3m data file every day, just in case.
I like that you can use crossed out text in PostIt. I have two main notes, one with things todo and another with important items that have been completed. The horizontal scrollbar is also surprisingly nice.
I've been trying to set this sort of thing up in my neighborhood for about a year now, but it seems tough to get it started. The plan is to purchase a T1 line and split the bandwidth with the community up here using a wireless POP. The problems are basically:
1. Cost of the T1 is about $1200/mo including the local loop, free setup and router.
2. Cost of initial setup is about $10K for all the wireless antenna and equipment capable of penetrating the trees and such where we live
We live in a rural community near Lake Tahoe that will never get DSL. Distribution via wireless is difficult because of all the trees (we live in a forest). This forces us to use high-gain antenna at both the POP and the client. With our startup costs, the costs of the T1 and the client costs of about $500, it is hard to convince enough of the locals to sign up. Most are second homeowners that only use their house on weekends and holidays and don't feel like coughing up $500 and $70/mo. We figure we need about 20 people to break even.
One nice aspect is that the longer we wait, the better technology gets. The new Motorola Canopy system (check old Slashdot) seems interesting. The price of bandwidth also keeps falling. I expect that I'll probably end up splitting the T1 with just a couple of people using hand-strung fibre. It will probably be easier to find three or four people close by willing to spend $200-300/mo anyway. Besides, I have a real job and I don't feel like playing ISP with all my spare time!
Dan
http://www.doconnect.com
http://www.flarg.com
There are a number of critical factors in this process that you haven't told us. The issues of display devices, gamma, and implementation details all play an important role in your ability to visibly distinguish between two colors.
What sort of monitor are you using? Have you correctly callibrated the display? What software are you using to display the colors? How does this software deal with display gamma? Other important details include the brightness of the surrounding environment, other windows and such on the screen which can distract the eye and interfere with your visual processing of the colors.
If you haven't already read the books and web pages by Charles Poynton, they cover all the details. Color issues always seem simple, but actually this is an extremely complex and subtle issue. Also, people's ability to visually distinguish color varies quite a bit. A surprisingly large percentage of the population is color blind to at least some portion of the spectrum. Also, display devices vary widely in their ability to correctly display different colors.
Anyway, to sum it all up, I'd be really surprised if you can use any sort of theory to predict whether you can visually distinguish between different colors. Even with correctly callibrated equipment, and experienced researchers, I doubt that your problem is easily answered!
Best of luck,
Daniel Wexler
www.flarg.com
Right, I should note that I was speaking about PDI in particular, and not DreamWorks as a whole. There is quite a bit more code and many more programmers in all of DreamWorks. The stats on my page are for PDI alone, and they are a few months out of date, as well.
Daniel WexlerWe currently have 14 R&D programmers, I think. PDI has been in business for over 20 years. We have been developing proprietary software the entire time. That's less than 100K lines of code per year. Not that much, IMO.
Dan WexlerW are replacing the O200s with Linux/PC boxes, not more IRIX boxes. We do use O2000 for part of our file serving, but we don't have any need for any expensive desktop graphics box. We don't really need anything better than O2 performance 3D graphics. We are much more dependent on memory and CPU. We do require good quality 2D performance, though, which isn't usually a priority for the 3D card vendors, unfortunately.
It would be great if we could get a nice cheap box that had decent 3D speed and was able to display color callibrated, film resolution, 24bpp images at 24 fps. It would be even better if we could display 36bpp, but that won't happen for quite some time.
Daniel WexlerI work in the R&D department at PDI/DreamWorks. My website has some real renderfarm statistics and some specific Shrek statistics. This article was fairly accurate, which is great. You can believe the hype. The entire production industry is behind Linux and is pushing the hardware and software vendors to firm up their offerings. We just had an industry wide meeting on Linux, and the movement toward Linux and away from Windows is clear and strong. There is even talk that some of the high end studios may work together to release some OpenSource tools, but right now that's still pie-in-the-sky. However, the fact that these studios, which previously guarded their trade secrets jealously, are even talking about this possiblity is exciting.
Also, PDI/DreamWorks is trying to release some code under OpenSource. I just released my frame buffer library under GPL. It is a small, but important, gesture, as it represents the first source code that we have ever released. We hope to have more soon.
Someone mentioned TIFF playback, which, these days is really easy, since it the latest rounds of cards are able to support 30fps playback using standard OpenGL calls. We have had our internal flipbook and quicktime programs working for over a year now. I'm sure the public tools will soon cover this gap. Also, audio is starting to work well. Our tools have nice sync'ed audio playback, which was one of the last things we got in place. We are now placing Linux workstations on animator desktops as opposed to batch use on the renderfarm. It has been a long road, but we are finally there.
Daniel WexlerYou are right, we didn't use Linux boxes on the desktop for Shrek. However, the first desktop Linux boxes are now in production use at PDI.
I have some slightly out-of-date information about the actual composition of our renderfarm and some rendering statistics for Shrek on my website at www.flarg.com.
Daniel WexlerI work in the R&D department at PDI. We do use some SGI Linux boxes in our renderfarm, but not on the desktop. The SGI's probably comprise about 10% of the renderfarm and less during Shrek production. Despite what you may hear reported in the press, we only used Linux boxes in our renderfarm during Shrek. We are just starting to deploy desktop Linux boxes now.
About 80% of our pipeline is proprietary software. The other 20% is largely made up of Maya, which works on our Linux boxes (so to speak) and things like PhotoShop where we generally use Macs. We are lucky that we use proprietary software since it made it feasible to get the renderfarm ported to Linux quickly. The GUI based tools were also relatively easy, but it took us about a year to get everything totally ported and ready for desktop production. Of course our staff of 16 programmers was also doing production support at the same time.
For the details on our Renderfarm setup, check out my webpage at www.flarg.com
Also, during Shrek, our animators used desktop SGI O2s (yes, O2s, not Octanes) running IRIX. About half to three-quarters of the renderfarm was made up of Linux boxes. Of that, only about 10% were HP boxes. We also had a spattering of V/A Linux, SGI and Atipa boxes. HP just gets the press.
Daniel WexlerFor specific statistics regarding our Renderfarm and how it was used on Shrek, check my website www.flarg.com. I work in R&D at PDI, and these are live stats on rendering performance along with some other interesting tidbits.
Daniel WexlerI work in the R&D group at PDI/DreamWorks and I've put up a rendering statistics page with a description of our renderfarm and some usage graphs. We're rolling out Linux desktop platforms running our proprietary animation software right now. Our animators are getting a 12x performance and 8x memory boost over the SGI O2 machines used on Shrek, our next feature, due out in May.
Daniel Wexlerhttp://www.flarg.com
I don't know how you qualify "massively large," but here at PDI we've been using about 140 PCs from VA for about two years now for all of our work. This in in addition to our 200 dual processor Origin200s. The PCs are 450 MHz dual PIIIs 2U boxes with 1GB. Our new boxes will have dual 800MHz PIIIs and 2GB of memory and will hopefully be 1U. We primarily use proprietary tools in our pipeline, so it wasn't too hard for us to get everything up and working. The toughest part was the UI code and the tools for film resolution flipbook and quicktime playback. We're going to start having our animators use PCs for the primary desktop machine by the end of the year.
A few months ago, the Visual Effects Society met to discuss Linux usage. I can't find the link right now, but a farily strong message was released indicating the industry support for Linux. Although they still do have a large Sun farm, and still use SGIs on the desktop, Pixar too is working with Linux.
We tend to run two frames at a time on each box. That way, they can share the available memory and other resources, and, when we need to render really big frames, we can just run a single frame at a time to get both processors for rendering and all the memory. I think Pixar does substantially similar things on the big Sun boxes, rather than using heavily multiprocessed code. Usually for us, it is memory, rather than processing power that presents the biggest problem.
Daniel Wexler