How can *anyone* here argue one way or the other on this topic when any two people can rarely come to an agreement on what art is?
The issue of a new medium having trouble gaining acceptance amongst the status quo is as old as the first piece of charcoal that hit the cave wall. As mentioned by others, photography is *still* struggling to find the same level of respect as the fine arts, and it's 150 years old! So I think it's rather obvious to *anyone* that the tool is irrelevant.
However, I think there is a very important reason why both photography and CGI have an uphill battle - unlike the fine arts, they don't *require* any discipline to create an interesting picture. That doesn't mean that many users of the medium don't apply a lot of time and discipline, but the fact that there are auto-focus cameras and instant "sunlight/cloud/render me" buttons in CG means it's harder to get respect. You want to paint in oils? About the only shortcut you can get is to watch those old "How to Paint Landscapes" on PBS. However, you better be prepared to do some serious study of form, anatomy, design, composition, paints, pastels, oils, sculpture, etc. if you want to be a fine artist.
Many CG artists do this. So do a lot of fine artists, but I might think their work is shit(I once saw a pile of toffees just tossed in the corner of the gallery - give me a break!). I'll be honest, I rarely find that CG "art", whatever that is, connects with me on an emotional level. I can't say why - probably because I look at it and see all the tricks they used, and once I strip that away, I sort of shrug. Why use CG? What is at the essence of what they're trying to say?
There's exceptions, always of course! But in the end, I think you need to accept that this is an uphill battle. Don't focus on those damned digital tools - they're no more important that a brush or chisel. No-one but a CG geek gives a damn about the care you applied to the anti-aliasing on that cloud shader. Just learn the tools and make something that connects to your audience.
I don't know either, but basically, IMHO, SGI is getting out of the workstation business. They've been consistenly hammered in this market, they're losing, and they know it. I've seen signs of them shrinking their operations almost weekly, contracting out technology and getting rid of local offices. By workstation, btw, I mean a graphics workstation, not a server. Let's see what happens, but I predict they will end up specializing in high end medical/military simulation hardware only. They've always had a foothold there, but I think the workstation market will go away for them. We don't touch'em anymore - seriously overpriced and they have a habit of dropping support for hardware one year after release...
Re:Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from Gestures?
on
KDE Gesture Control
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· Score: 1
I can't speak to the implementation in an OS, but there's a gestural component to Discreet compositing software, and believe me, it makes things *much* faster. Personally I've never had any trouble with CTS, nor has anyone else here, and I've certainly never heard of increased rates of this in folks in the biz. I suspect it's related more to implementation than anything else. I mean, if I was expected to rename a file with gestures, duh, but wiping the screen to cancel an operation, or wiggling to undo something - I could see that being a nice adjunct to the normal methods.
As long as I can turn it off when playing unreal tournament.:)
Re:The audience should be challenged
on
Review: Memento
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· Score: 2
I disagree. I actually enjoyed the movie a lot on an intellectual level, but in the end, there's a big difference between keeping something deliberately vague to make the audience come to their own conclusions, and not communicating the storyline clearly. I recently got the new Criterion release of Do The Right Thing, and with all the yelling and panic that surrounded that film on it's release, it was a clear example of the former. What was "the Right Thing"? Smashing the window? Racial tolerance? Fight the Power? That was something that Lee let *you* decide, but absolutely no-one can say they came out of the theatre wondering exactly happened in the movie. Lee crafted a great film, and got the audience to think.
In Memento, I swear that over half the (packed) audience was non-stop asking each other questions for blocks after we left, and those questions weren't "what is reality?" or "how do we perceive time?", it was "I don't get it - did xxxx really happen and did yyyy know zzzz?" That's supposed to be the director's job - communicate the story. While I very much enjoyed trying to untangle it, I feel that in 10 years people will look back on it as a film school experiment. A very well done experiment, make no mistake, but an experiment.
I'd still watch it over a Segal movie, though.:)
Well, I've been lurking, but thought I should reply. We did the CG images in the article, both print and online(Axyz Animation).
Linux isn't *particularly* a cheap alternative - I mean folks, the cost of the OS pales in comparison to the hardware. We work exclusively on HP Visualize workstations running linux - and they aren't all that much cheaper than NT running on the same platforms(which HP also offers). What you *do* get, however, is Linux! It rocks compared to NT, for all the reasons that most of you know - networking, links, stability, flexibility, free development platforms, etc. Where is hurts is the lack of apps, of course, with some people saying "they won't work without Photoshop", regardless of Gimp. I've also listened to people slagging Gnome saying it "breaks all the rules of a desktop and it's ugly". Sigh. I find out that they tried the gnome distributed with RH6.2, and also expected it to come up completely configured to their personal preferences. They hadn't even heard of helix/ximian. It's difficult to fight prejudice like that.
Anyway, the cost impact in our industry has been the juggernaut of Intel workstations - Linux doesn't herald the "cheapo" 3d Workstation, it simply brings a better OS to the Intel platform. HP ported their HP-UX X windows, and it's damned stable. SGI is in big trouble - their entries into the Intel market have been very poor and plagued with bugs(this includes their Linux workstations), and we won't touch'em. The one thing they have going for them is that their(very expensive) custom hardware has much better management of internal bussing - very good for film work. However, it's becoming more and more practical to have animators working on Intel hardware rather than (very expensive) Octanes.
Yes, it goes without saying that as renderfarms Linux rocks. We use Renderman with Houdini. But not only are Soft and Maya currently beta testing their products on Linux, but both Shake and Rayz(compositing systems) have ported. Fact is, Linux as a 2d/3d workstation is here, and while there are obviously some things lacking like a multimedia standard, we use it everyday in *production*, which is the toughest test of all, and it's amazing.
Ummm, call HP and ask to purchase their Visualize Linux workstations.:) It was a very smart move on their part - it's easily the most stable X/OpenGL that I have personally run on Linux. Definitely faster than XFree and more powerful in the OpenGL dept. Obviously ported from their HPUX.
It runs *instead* of XFree, and we use these workstations to make money, so if some update app refuses to work unles we use XFree(which apparently isn't the case - thank's Joe!), then we can't use it. The HP Visualize stations start with a standard Redhat install, then install their X over top. Believe me, when you're in the high end - all the "cool" stuff XFree provides is meaningless when you're looking for serious OpenGL performance. The Mesa guys are the first to admit that - it's not in that league yet.
Ummm, this is pretty serious in my books. Admittedly, I haven't downloaded this yet, but if true then Ximian is ignoring a growing base of people that use Linux with X other than XFree. What about those running Xig, or (as in our case) the wonderfully stable and robust HP X? This package would be useless to me if it insisted on installing XFree...anyone verified this?
Any question based on the assumption that you can define art is a bogus question. It inevitably degrades into an argument designed to insult technical people or "artists", whatever they are. Personally, I've happy with the concept of "craft". Art is subjective, not objective. If you over-analyse this issue you end up arguing a school bus driver is an artist because they might show creativity in the route they take each day. Or you argue semantics - who cares about that? I'd say - just get on with your programming!
Slashdot Mirror
How can *anyone* here argue one way or the other on this topic when any two people can rarely come to an agreement on what art is?
The issue of a new medium having trouble gaining acceptance amongst the status quo is as old as the first piece of charcoal that hit the cave wall. As mentioned by others, photography is *still* struggling to find the same level of respect as the fine arts, and it's 150 years old! So I think it's rather obvious to *anyone* that the tool is irrelevant.
However, I think there is a very important reason why both photography and CGI have an uphill battle - unlike the fine arts, they don't *require* any discipline to create an interesting picture. That doesn't mean that many users of the medium don't apply a lot of time and discipline, but the fact that there are auto-focus cameras and instant "sunlight/cloud/render me" buttons in CG means it's harder to get respect. You want to paint in oils? About the only shortcut you can get is to watch those old "How to Paint Landscapes" on PBS. However, you better be prepared to do some serious study of form, anatomy, design, composition, paints, pastels, oils, sculpture, etc. if you want to be a fine artist.
Many CG artists do this. So do a lot of fine artists, but I might think their work is shit(I once saw a pile of toffees just tossed in the corner of the gallery - give me a break!). I'll be honest, I rarely find that CG "art", whatever that is, connects with me on an emotional level. I can't say why - probably because I look at it and see all the tricks they used, and once I strip that away, I sort of shrug. Why use CG? What is at the essence of what they're trying to say?
There's exceptions, always of course! But in the end, I think you need to accept that this is an uphill battle. Don't focus on those damned digital tools - they're no more important that a brush or chisel. No-one but a CG geek gives a damn about the care you applied to the anti-aliasing on that cloud shader. Just learn the tools and make something that connects to your audience.
DThorne
I don't know either, but basically, IMHO, SGI is getting out of the workstation business. They've been consistenly hammered in this market, they're losing, and they know it. I've seen signs of them shrinking their operations almost weekly, contracting out technology and getting rid of local offices. By workstation, btw, I mean a graphics workstation, not a server. Let's see what happens, but I predict they will end up specializing in high end medical/military simulation hardware only. They've always had a foothold there, but I think the workstation market will go away for them. We don't touch'em anymore - seriously overpriced and they have a habit of dropping support for hardware one year after release...
I can't speak to the implementation in an OS, but there's a gestural component to Discreet compositing software, and believe me, it makes things *much* faster. Personally I've never had any trouble with CTS, nor has anyone else here, and I've certainly never heard of increased rates of this in folks in the biz. I suspect it's related more to implementation than anything else. I mean, if I was expected to rename a file with gestures, duh, but wiping the screen to cancel an operation, or wiggling to undo something - I could see that being a nice adjunct to the normal methods. :)
As long as I can turn it off when playing unreal tournament.
I disagree. I actually enjoyed the movie a lot on an intellectual level, but in the end, there's a big difference between keeping something deliberately vague to make the audience come to their own conclusions, and not communicating the storyline clearly. I recently got the new Criterion release of Do The Right Thing, and with all the yelling and panic that surrounded that film on it's release, it was a clear example of the former. What was "the Right Thing"? Smashing the window? Racial tolerance? Fight the Power? That was something that Lee let *you* decide, but absolutely no-one can say they came out of the theatre wondering exactly happened in the movie. Lee crafted a great film, and got the audience to think. :)
In Memento, I swear that over half the (packed) audience was non-stop asking each other questions for blocks after we left, and those questions weren't "what is reality?" or "how do we perceive time?", it was "I don't get it - did xxxx really happen and did yyyy know zzzz?" That's supposed to be the director's job - communicate the story. While I very much enjoyed trying to untangle it, I feel that in 10 years people will look back on it as a film school experiment. A very well done experiment, make no mistake, but an experiment.
I'd still watch it over a Segal movie, though.
DT
Well, I've been lurking, but thought I should reply. We did the CG images in the article, both print and online(Axyz Animation).
Linux isn't *particularly* a cheap alternative - I mean folks, the cost of the OS pales in comparison to the hardware. We work exclusively on HP Visualize workstations running linux - and they aren't all that much cheaper than NT running on the same platforms(which HP also offers). What you *do* get, however, is Linux! It rocks compared to NT, for all the reasons that most of you know - networking, links, stability, flexibility, free development platforms, etc. Where is hurts is the lack of apps, of course, with some people saying "they won't work without Photoshop", regardless of Gimp. I've also listened to people slagging Gnome saying it "breaks all the rules of a desktop and it's ugly". Sigh. I find out that they tried the gnome distributed with RH6.2, and also expected it to come up completely configured to their personal preferences. They hadn't even heard of helix/ximian. It's difficult to fight prejudice like that.
Anyway, the cost impact in our industry has been the juggernaut of Intel workstations - Linux doesn't herald the "cheapo" 3d Workstation, it simply brings a better OS to the Intel platform. HP ported their HP-UX X windows, and it's damned stable. SGI is in big trouble - their entries into the Intel market have been very poor and plagued with bugs(this includes their Linux workstations), and we won't touch'em. The one thing they have going for them is that their(very expensive) custom hardware has much better management of internal bussing - very good for film work. However, it's becoming more and more practical to have animators working on Intel hardware rather than (very expensive) Octanes.
Yes, it goes without saying that as renderfarms Linux rocks. We use Renderman with Houdini. But not only are Soft and Maya currently beta testing their products on Linux, but both Shake and Rayz(compositing systems) have ported. Fact is, Linux as a 2d/3d workstation is here, and while there are obviously some things lacking like a multimedia standard, we use it everyday in *production*, which is the toughest test of all, and it's amazing.
Ummm, call HP and ask to purchase their Visualize Linux workstations. :) It was a very smart move on their part - it's easily the most stable X/OpenGL that I have personally run on Linux. Definitely faster than XFree and more powerful in the OpenGL dept. Obviously ported from their HPUX.
It runs *instead* of XFree, and we use these workstations to make money, so if some update app refuses to work unles we use XFree(which apparently isn't the case - thank's Joe!), then we can't use it. The HP Visualize stations start with a standard Redhat install, then install their X over top. Believe me, when you're in the high end - all the "cool" stuff XFree provides is meaningless when you're looking for serious OpenGL performance. The Mesa guys are the first to admit that - it's not in that league yet.
Ummm, this is pretty serious in my books. Admittedly, I haven't downloaded this yet, but if true then Ximian is ignoring a growing base of people that use Linux with X other than XFree. What about those running Xig, or (as in our case) the wonderfully stable and robust HP X? This package would be useless to me if it insisted on installing XFree...anyone verified this?
Any question based on the assumption that you can define art is a bogus question. It inevitably degrades into an argument designed to insult technical people or "artists", whatever they are. Personally, I've happy with the concept of "craft". Art is subjective, not objective. If you over-analyse this issue you end up arguing a school bus driver is an artist because they might show creativity in the route they take each day. Or you argue semantics - who cares about that? I'd say - just get on with your programming!