In the "golden age" of movies (whenever you consider that to be) movies were made by writers, directors, and actors who considered it an art form. Today, the studios are run by people who consider it a profit-oriented business.
Sure, the studios always wanted to make money. But technology has improved and now it is extremely expensive to produce a movie to modern technological standards, so budgets have skyrocketed. No studio will take risks when they're spending $100 million MINIMUM to make a movie. Unfortunately, art is all about taking risks.
Apparently you stopped reading when my critical remark made your head explode. I clearly described how open source has a role in animation workflows. It just hasn't got any role in the major apps that do the real work. You said it yourself, Disney tried to get Photoshop running under WINE, rather than trying to get GIMP to replace Photoshop.
The power players in professional animation are serious pro development shops, Autodesk (Maya, 3DS, Flame, Inferno, MotionBuilder etc.) Pixar (Renderman), Avid (XSI), Apple (Shake), 2d3 (boujou), d2 (Nuke) etc etc. None of these apps are open source.
Comparing the other 3D apps to Blender is like comparing Photoshop to The Gimp - the workflow is different, the menus are different, the tools are different. You need to un-learn Photoshop habits to become productive in The Gimp.
Yeah, with Gimp, you need to unlearn habits like using CMYK, using accurate mode conversions, color management, etc. You know, the stuff that means the difference between amateurs and professionals.
This is a big reason why nobody takes open source seriously: amateurs who know nothing about actual professional work environments, declaring some primitive open source software as equivalent to the top-end industry-standard proprietary software package. If Blender was all that good, pro animators would be using it instead of paying big bucks for Maya Unlimited.
Open source has its place in the workflow. I went to a Maya seminar about 5 years ago, I think it was the v3.5 launch, that featured some student animators who coordinated all their work through custom open source apps. I forget the specific details, but they set up an Apache/Linux/PHP web server with a message board to coordinate work assignments, used a version control package to coordinate changes to the models, and wrote their own PHP-based render farm management. I was pretty impressed, managing dozens of students with little pieces of a major project. But the modeling and animation was done solely in Maya.
Ah, I see the problem now. You looked at the web page, not the PDF. The images on the web page are screwed up, the PDF has much better quality. Don't judge by the website. Try the PDF, the main article's link was a botched attempt to use Coral Cache or something, edit it to get the original URL and it will load OK. Well at least it did for me.
WTF are you talking about? The SSTV pictures have much more detail and better greyscale levels than the downconverted NTSC video. Sure, there are artifacts in the picture, they were taken with Polaroid or 35mm cameras which have problems capturing raster images, but these were obviously test shots and not intended for reproduction. Photos of TV screens are difficult to produce, your shutter speed has to exactly match the time it takes to paint one raster, and film cameras weren't built for that, especially when you're using funky raster timings like SSTV.
I checked the man page, there's a command "amverify" but it merely tests the backup dataset for internal consistency, it doesn't verify it against the original. This is a recipe for disaster. I can think of multiple scenarios where I could perform a backup that is internally consistent but will not work upon restoration. In fact, MOST of the backup systems I've ever seen have no method to truly test integrity other than a full restoration on a duplicate hardware system and then running a bitwise comparison between machines.
The heartbreaking part is, most people only discover their backups are bad when they need to do a disaster recovery for the first time, and they discover their procedures have been wrong all along, and now they have no way to restore. Backups are trickier than most people suspect, there is no quickie 15 minute solution.
The catch is, it's supposed to take 15 minutes to SET UP the backup system, not to actually PERFORM the backup.
I suspect it will be a long time before I have a fast enough network connection to back up my (90% full) 950Gb RAID over a network in 15 minutes. And then there's the issue of the CPU horsepower required to encrypt all those hundreds of gigs of data. And come to think of it, this system doesn't really have any way to test if the backup actually WORKS, other than by restoring it to the primary system and wiping out the original data. And you know what will happen if you restore a hosed backup over your live production system.
Good catch. I guess I can't be faulted for forgetting an attribution to something I read like 25+ years ago. Still, it seems nobody gets the recursive joke.
Let me solve your question by solving a more generalized case. Let me reformulate the question more generally.
What should one do if one wants to prepare for a technical field that is in its infancy and changing so rapidly that any current technology is likely to be obsolete by the time one develops sufficient skills to create real applications?
Answer: study math. Math is the fundamental basis for all technical fields. Math skills never become obsolete, technical skills are obsolete the moment you learn them.
It's not fully clear just how the price structure has changed. Nobody is going to buy just ONE Shake workstation, usually it's backed by at least a small render farm with Shake client renderers. A few years back, I went to an Apple seminar about Shake, they said the $3000 package came with licenses for one workstation and 5 client machines for rendering. It looked like any smart configuration would be one big Mac workstation and 5 commodity Linux render stations. I just checked the Apple website and now they're offering a 5 user volume license (including Linux workstations) for $129 per system. So I am guessing that they dropped the price on the main package and unbundled the extra licenses for the 5 render machines so those are sold separately. Of course the volume licenses are for full workstation usage, but I suspect most people will use them for small render farms. But I'm only speculating here. But still, there's a huge incentive to switch away from Linux to Mac render farms, Shake supports distributed rendering through QMaster, which AFAIK only runs on Mac, and is totally free. I've seen hacks to use QMaster to manage Linux Maya render farms, but I believe that's because the Maya renderer specifically wrote hooks to QMaster even on their Linux clients. And you still need license management on large Maya render farms. Nobody gives out free render farm licenses.. except Apple's QMaster.
FileMaker seems to be the easiest for non-techies to grasp, and supports image storage, publishing to web servers, and other goodies they want. Also hooks to SQL if you need more horsepower on the backend.
Well then, why don't you point me to some non-Apple mp3 players that support it? I mean, if it's so open, then surely Creative and others must support it, right?
Right. Sony recently dropped their proprietary ATRAC format and now supports AAC in their digital audio players. I even found one Sony portable CD player that can play mp3/AAC CDs, the Sony Walkman D-NS707. Toshiba's DAPs support AAC. Hell, even Dell ships DAPs that support AAC.
It looks to me like the only DAPs that don't support AAC are WMA units aligned with the Microsoft "Plays For Sure" disinformation program. And there's your tipoff. If you want Microsoft's support behind you, you abandon industry standards like AAC and go with proprietary, locked formats like WMA.
What "great effort and expense" has Apple experienced because they used an industry standard?
Well, for example, they spent a lot of effort on the MPEGLA group working to establish the AAC standard. Then there's IEEE1394. And there are many other things that are now industry standards that Apple developed and brought to market first. Remember when Macs had USB and nobody else did? It isn't cheap or easy to be first-mover on industry standards. It is even more expensive and time-consuming to help author those standards.
I don't see MS locking down wma anywhere CLOSE to the way Apple has locked down AAC.
Open your eyes. AAC isn't locked down, it's an industry standard. You can use AAC without using DRM, but even if you do use DRM, it runs equally well on Windows and Mac systems. On the other hand, WMA protected files run only on Windows. Oh, I see, you meant the iPod and AAC. I don't have a single AAC file on my iPod. I guess that's not locked down either. Or maybe you meant the iTunes Music Store. You do realize you can burn those files to AIFF/WAV files on CDs and turn them into other formats, right?
Oh well, I guess there's no sense explaining this to someone who has their eyes shut.
Yeah right, Apple's lock-in formats like.jpg,.pdf, DV,.zip, mpeg4, etc. are real dead ends.
You DO realize that Apple is going to great effort and expense to use industry standards, unlike OTHER mass-market OS vendors that are famous for their proprietary formats?
I said it before and I'll say it again: Dvorak is deliberately screwing the advertisers that pay for his web hits.
Dvorak publishes on PC-centric websites, but he trolls Mac users for hits. The PC advertisers are getting screwed, they pay for advertising to PC buyers, Mac users aren't the target audience. The trolling articles draw a massive influx of Mac users, the PC advertisers pay for all those hits from people that will never buy their products.
The only way Dvorak is going to stop trolling is if the PC advertisers wake up and realize their money is being wasted by a maniac that values his own ego more than he provides value for advertisers.
If you want to protest, the usual method is by "voting with your feet." That doesn't mean marching in the streets, it means walking out and choosing another vendor. If you don't like iTunes DRM, then don't use it. Buy something else, like an unprotected CD and rip it yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason why movies suck is very simple.
In the "golden age" of movies (whenever you consider that to be) movies were made by writers, directors, and actors who considered it an art form. Today, the studios are run by people who consider it a profit-oriented business.
Sure, the studios always wanted to make money. But technology has improved and now it is extremely expensive to produce a movie to modern technological standards, so budgets have skyrocketed. No studio will take risks when they're spending $100 million MINIMUM to make a movie. Unfortunately, art is all about taking risks.
Is TPM actually shipping in any product other than the Intel Macs?
Whatever was the top story 30 minutes ago on BoingBoing.
Street prices:
Beginning Gimp (book) - $40
Photoshop Elements 4.0 (software) - $80
Note that Photoshop Elements includes a printed manual with tutorials, and extensive help files. Gimp does not.
Apparently you stopped reading when my critical remark made your head explode. I clearly described how open source has a role in animation workflows. It just hasn't got any role in the major apps that do the real work. You said it yourself, Disney tried to get Photoshop running under WINE, rather than trying to get GIMP to replace Photoshop.
The power players in professional animation are serious pro development shops, Autodesk (Maya, 3DS, Flame, Inferno, MotionBuilder etc.) Pixar (Renderman), Avid (XSI), Apple (Shake), 2d3 (boujou), d2 (Nuke) etc etc. None of these apps are open source.
Yeah, with Gimp, you need to unlearn habits like using CMYK, using accurate mode conversions, color management, etc. You know, the stuff that means the difference between amateurs and professionals.
This is a big reason why nobody takes open source seriously: amateurs who know nothing about actual professional work environments, declaring some primitive open source software as equivalent to the top-end industry-standard proprietary software package. If Blender was all that good, pro animators would be using it instead of paying big bucks for Maya Unlimited.
Open source has its place in the workflow. I went to a Maya seminar about 5 years ago, I think it was the v3.5 launch, that featured some student animators who coordinated all their work through custom open source apps. I forget the specific details, but they set up an Apache/Linux/PHP web server with a message board to coordinate work assignments, used a version control package to coordinate changes to the models, and wrote their own PHP-based render farm management. I was pretty impressed, managing dozens of students with little pieces of a major project. But the modeling and animation was done solely in Maya.
Ah, I see the problem now. You looked at the web page, not the PDF. The images on the web page are screwed up, the PDF has much better quality. Don't judge by the website. Try the PDF, the main article's link was a botched attempt to use Coral Cache or something, edit it to get the original URL and it will load OK. Well at least it did for me.
WTF are you talking about? The SSTV pictures have much more detail and better greyscale levels than the downconverted NTSC video. Sure, there are artifacts in the picture, they were taken with Polaroid or 35mm cameras which have problems capturing raster images, but these were obviously test shots and not intended for reproduction. Photos of TV screens are difficult to produce, your shutter speed has to exactly match the time it takes to paint one raster, and film cameras weren't built for that, especially when you're using funky raster timings like SSTV.
I checked the man page, there's a command "amverify" but it merely tests the backup dataset for internal consistency, it doesn't verify it against the original. This is a recipe for disaster. I can think of multiple scenarios where I could perform a backup that is internally consistent but will not work upon restoration. In fact, MOST of the backup systems I've ever seen have no method to truly test integrity other than a full restoration on a duplicate hardware system and then running a bitwise comparison between machines.
The heartbreaking part is, most people only discover their backups are bad when they need to do a disaster recovery for the first time, and they discover their procedures have been wrong all along, and now they have no way to restore. Backups are trickier than most people suspect, there is no quickie 15 minute solution.
The catch is, it's supposed to take 15 minutes to SET UP the backup system, not to actually PERFORM the backup.
I suspect it will be a long time before I have a fast enough network connection to back up my (90% full) 950Gb RAID over a network in 15 minutes. And then there's the issue of the CPU horsepower required to encrypt all those hundreds of gigs of data. And come to think of it, this system doesn't really have any way to test if the backup actually WORKS, other than by restoring it to the primary system and wiping out the original data. And you know what will happen if you restore a hosed backup over your live production system.
Good catch. I guess I can't be faulted for forgetting an attribution to something I read like 25+ years ago. Still, it seems nobody gets the recursive joke.
The Estimator's Rule:
It always takes longer than estimated, even after accounting for the Estimator's Rule.
Let me solve your question by solving a more generalized case. Let me reformulate the question more generally.
What should one do if one wants to prepare for a technical field that is in its infancy and changing so rapidly that any current technology is likely to be obsolete by the time one develops sufficient skills to create real applications?
Answer: study math. Math is the fundamental basis for all technical fields. Math skills never become obsolete, technical skills are obsolete the moment you learn them.
It's not fully clear just how the price structure has changed. Nobody is going to buy just ONE Shake workstation, usually it's backed by at least a small render farm with Shake client renderers. A few years back, I went to an Apple seminar about Shake, they said the $3000 package came with licenses for one workstation and 5 client machines for rendering. It looked like any smart configuration would be one big Mac workstation and 5 commodity Linux render stations. I just checked the Apple website and now they're offering a 5 user volume license (including Linux workstations) for $129 per system. So I am guessing that they dropped the price on the main package and unbundled the extra licenses for the 5 render machines so those are sold separately. Of course the volume licenses are for full workstation usage, but I suspect most people will use them for small render farms. But I'm only speculating here.
But still, there's a huge incentive to switch away from Linux to Mac render farms, Shake supports distributed rendering through QMaster, which AFAIK only runs on Mac, and is totally free. I've seen hacks to use QMaster to manage Linux Maya render farms, but I believe that's because the Maya renderer specifically wrote hooks to QMaster even on their Linux clients. And you still need license management on large Maya render farms. Nobody gives out free render farm licenses.. except Apple's QMaster.
Who gives a damn about gold medals? We want to see the video of BattleBots tearing each other to shreds!
Same as the old Boss.
FileMaker seems to be the easiest for non-techies to grasp, and supports image storage, publishing to web servers, and other goodies they want. Also hooks to SQL if you need more horsepower on the backend.
Right. Sony recently dropped their proprietary ATRAC format and now supports AAC in their digital audio players. I even found one Sony portable CD player that can play mp3/AAC CDs, the Sony Walkman D-NS707. Toshiba's DAPs support AAC. Hell, even Dell ships DAPs that support AAC.
It looks to me like the only DAPs that don't support AAC are WMA units aligned with the Microsoft "Plays For Sure" disinformation program. And there's your tipoff. If you want Microsoft's support behind you, you abandon industry standards like AAC and go with proprietary, locked formats like WMA.
Well, for example, they spent a lot of effort on the MPEGLA group working to establish the AAC standard. Then there's IEEE1394. And there are many other things that are now industry standards that Apple developed and brought to market first. Remember when Macs had USB and nobody else did? It isn't cheap or easy to be first-mover on industry standards. It is even more expensive and time-consuming to help author those standards.
Open your eyes. AAC isn't locked down, it's an industry standard. You can use AAC without using DRM, but even if you do use DRM, it runs equally well on Windows and Mac systems. On the other hand, WMA protected files run only on Windows.
Oh, I see, you meant the iPod and AAC. I don't have a single AAC file on my iPod. I guess that's not locked down either.
Or maybe you meant the iTunes Music Store. You do realize you can burn those files to AIFF/WAV files on CDs and turn them into other formats, right?
Oh well, I guess there's no sense explaining this to someone who has their eyes shut.
Yeah right, Apple's lock-in formats like .jpg, .pdf, DV, .zip, mpeg4, etc. are real dead ends.
You DO realize that Apple is going to great effort and expense to use industry standards, unlike OTHER mass-market OS vendors that are famous for their proprietary formats?
So how long has XGrid been available on the Mac? Two or three years?
I said it before and I'll say it again: Dvorak is deliberately screwing the advertisers that pay for his web hits.
Dvorak publishes on PC-centric websites, but he trolls Mac users for hits. The PC advertisers are getting screwed, they pay for advertising to PC buyers, Mac users aren't the target audience. The trolling articles draw a massive influx of Mac users, the PC advertisers pay for all those hits from people that will never buy their products.
The only way Dvorak is going to stop trolling is if the PC advertisers wake up and realize their money is being wasted by a maniac that values his own ego more than he provides value for advertisers.
Nice link to a story about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Did you mean to imply that an iTunes boycott as I suggested, is not a protest?
If you want to protest, the usual method is by "voting with your feet." That doesn't mean marching in the streets, it means walking out and choosing another vendor. If you don't like iTunes DRM, then don't use it. Buy something else, like an unprotected CD and rip it yourself.