"According to their website, their full precision renderer use 128bits: 32 bits for each component (RGBA)."
I don't think we're reading the same # here. The 32-bit channels are for the final output so you can save HDRI imagery. What I was talking about was the pipeline, i.e. the values that go through the various transformation processes. Here's the blurb from Newtek's site:
"Over 320 bit IEEE floating point rendering pipeline? the expandable pipeline accommodates a growing list of optional buffers, such as reflection, x and y motion, geometry, shading and depth"
I was off by a few bits. Take that with a grain of salt, though, that IS a marketing document.
"Does anyone have any routines they go through before coding (or any other work-like activity) that helps?""
Not exactly. I usually go straight from my bed to the office. That's why I have a beard and an outfit that I don't want to be seen in public in, causing me to brown-bag lunch for today. (Incidentally, I pack a banana in there because they require no preperation, very efficient food I might add.) Then, I come in, and drink 3 cups of coffee, though the third cup is pretty bitter. By then, it's about 9:30, so I catch up on the news. I post a little bit on Slashdot, those stupid pro-MS ppl get on my nerves. Don't they see that they can download the source code to other people's apps, decipher their coding style, rummage through all of their code, and fix the problems that come up with it? Anyway so I gotta teach those Microsofties what a real OS is. God they're so stupid with their ease of use and their GUI, it's like they don't know how to operate a caps-lock anymore. Oh anyway uh around 10:30 I wrap up my news gathering and get straight to work. I fire up my email and read the joke of the day and carry on my conversations about last week's episode of Enterprise. Unfortunately, we won't see new eps of Enterprise until September so instead we discuss the good old days before Babylon 5 came along inexplicibly rose to popularity. But that's just an aside, I really check my email to see what new defects and updates I need to do to the code. Usually there's something I need to run past a coworker. So I'll go over to him and then we'll have a brief 20 minute discussion about it and how the war in Iraq is going. Oh! Crap! It's 11:30, we better go to lunch early so the lines are short and we can get back in time. At 1:30pm, I come back from lunch and sit down ready for work! Then, there's usually a meeting. So I attend that little hole in time for about 2 hours. At 3:30 I check up on my posts on Slashdot to make sure some dumbfuck moderator didn't mod me as redundant for my Simpsons quote that should have been a +5, Funny. Afterall, that same Comic Store Guy quote was +5, Funny quite a few times after that. Man, I swear the mods are against me. Anyway, at 4:30 I really sit down and work for the next 2 hours, then I go home.
"You do know this is going to bring all the Box and Cube fanboys out of the woodwork, right?"
Not really. Even the most zealous Nintendo fan such as myself knows the PS2's whompin it's butt.
However, Nintendo is still making quite a profit, so it really doesn't matter to me. Sony is a Microsoft away from losing it's crown, Nintendo will always have fans chasing it.
"Pixar is migrating to OS X, primarily because of the G5. Pixar's OS/machine of choice seems to vary with the wind, whatever is the most powerful at the time. It seems that they believe the G5 is where it's at in the near future."
Not surprised. I can't speak for what Pixar uses, but Lightwave has a pipeline that's like 390 bits wide or something like that. Each pixel value is described to a ridiculous number of decimal places. The reason for this involves color precision as each step of the rendering process mutates the number. It strikes me that a 64-bit processor would have significant advantages here.
If anybody here is knowledgable about the advantages (or disadvantages) of 64-bit processing in the 3D world I'd LOVE to hear about them. Opteron may be in my not too distant future.
" film student who racks up $7,000 on a credit card and films in 2 weeks time can offer a more compelling and moving story than centimillions spent on the most dazzling special effects ever seen... so what"
The reason for that is a film student would have very strict limitations to work within. I think filmmakers have forgotten that part of the appeal of visual FX is to see something on screen that cannot easily be explained. CG is pertty much watering that down. I mean, who saw previews for Minority Report and thought "Whoah... I wonder how they did that?"
Indie Filmmakers now have that arena to play in. That's why TROOPS was so impressive. Heh.
"If once a week doesn't sound like a lot to you, imagine how annoyed you'd be if your ISP was down once a week, because that's what we're talking about.... and here's some for-pay updates to fix that problem, you drooling idiot customer. WINDOWS IS YOUR GOD. WORSHIP IT. "
I don't think I've ever downloaded anything from MS to fix a stability issue. About the only thing I've ever done is download a driver update from the manufacturer of the soft/hard ware that caused the problem.
Long story short: Nobody'll have to pay once a week for an update.
As for the "Windows is your god" comment, consider this: We don't measure the 'godness' of an OS by how long it stays up. We measure it based on what we do with it. We also measure it by how easy it is to do things with it such as add new hardware or apps. Then there's the whole matter of software availablity and yadda yadda yadda.
I wouldn't call customers who buy Windows related products idiots, but I would call Linux zealots masochists.
"This machine hasn't been restarted in nearly 2 years. Tell me that isn't reliable!"
I just finished a two-day render on my dual Athlon machine here using Lightwave. I had two instances of Lightwave open, each rendering a different scene. I had the affinity set so that each instance of LW had its own processor. While it was doing that, I was browsing the web with Opera and occasionally firing up Photoshop to examine the latest image rendered. When that was all done, I fired up After Effects and did several different passes on the imagery to get it into a final state. From there, I used Windows Media Encoder to make a.WMV file so I could host it on our site.
After doing all that, my machine is eager to perform. This type of work is not uncommon for me and I have uptimes of roughly 12 days. Okay, that's not brilliant from a Linux point of view, but considering what all I get done and how much activity is happening on the processors and on the video card, I think it's not too bad. (I have a dual monitor setup to boot.)
BSODs? Nope. Haven't seen one since I first put a Sound Blaster Audigy in it. Crashes? Ehhh towards that 12 day mark I can have an app go stupid on me. Games? Hell yeah.
I'm not computer lucky here. My desktop at home is a similar setup with virtually the same up-time. (it's a little shorter, I think it's because I play games on it.) My previous desktops at work and at home all worked just as well.
As for a server, I haven't built a Win2k server. But I've got an NT4 server running exchange that's got an uptime of 108 days and is still performing marvelously. (I should point out that the up-time of it went up dramatically since I closed it off as an open relay. Man, being a newb with MS can really bite you in the ass.)
Okay, Windows ain't perfect. But when you can do all the fun stuff of having a PC and not have to reboot it more than once a week, you start reaching a point where you just don't care if Linux has a longer uptime. I do 3D rendering. I haven't lost a rendering to a Windows crash. (or even an LW crash for that matter.) 48 hours of rendering over a weekend can be an expensive loss. You don't shrug and say 'Oh well' if it goes down. Believe me, I'd be the first to toss Windows out the window if it was as 1/10th as bad as the anti-MS zealots here make it out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
"But is it SCO free? "
Sign this NDA and I'll tell you.
"My record is 55 hours of straight coding. What's yours? "
I'm curious how many hours it would have taken you to write the same code with regular sleeping breaks. Betcha the # is lower.
"Is this a great way to reward people for being generous with their unused body parts --"
And without thinking about it, thousands of Slashdot visitors simultaneously cross their legs.
"Time and time again, Windows developers have shown they can't be trusted to future-proof their apps."
Why do people compare Windows developers to Linux developers as if they live on opposite sides of the planet?
"But I still wouldn't run my servers on Windows. "
For the record, I wouldn't either. And I've had really good luck with Win2k and NT.
Troll?
Ya know, I'm a die-hard Nintendo nut. I did not find his comment offensive. I wonder if he was misinterpreted?
I don't think we're reading the same # here. The 32-bit channels are for the final output so you can save HDRI imagery. What I was talking about was the pipeline, i.e. the values that go through the various transformation processes. Here's the blurb from Newtek's site:
I was off by a few bits. Take that with a grain of salt, though, that IS a marketing document.
Interesting! Thank you for writing that! :)
"Bill is becoming the world expert on increasing revenue without providing value to his customers. "
An easy to use de-facto backed OS with broad hardware and software support isn't valuable to customers?
"Does anyone have any routines they go through before coding (or any other work-like activity) that helps?""
:)
Not exactly. I usually go straight from my bed to the office. That's why I have a beard and an outfit that I don't want to be seen in public in, causing me to brown-bag lunch for today. (Incidentally, I pack a banana in there because they require no preperation, very efficient food I might add.) Then, I come in, and drink 3 cups of coffee, though the third cup is pretty bitter. By then, it's about 9:30, so I catch up on the news. I post a little bit on Slashdot, those stupid pro-MS ppl get on my nerves. Don't they see that they can download the source code to other people's apps, decipher their coding style, rummage through all of their code, and fix the problems that come up with it? Anyway so I gotta teach those Microsofties what a real OS is. God they're so stupid with their ease of use and their GUI, it's like they don't know how to operate a caps-lock anymore. Oh anyway uh around 10:30 I wrap up my news gathering and get straight to work. I fire up my email and read the joke of the day and carry on my conversations about last week's episode of Enterprise. Unfortunately, we won't see new eps of Enterprise until September so instead we discuss the good old days before Babylon 5 came along inexplicibly rose to popularity. But that's just an aside, I really check my email to see what new defects and updates I need to do to the code. Usually there's something I need to run past a coworker. So I'll go over to him and then we'll have a brief 20 minute discussion about it and how the war in Iraq is going. Oh! Crap! It's 11:30, we better go to lunch early so the lines are short and we can get back in time. At 1:30pm, I come back from lunch and sit down ready for work! Then, there's usually a meeting. So I attend that little hole in time for about 2 hours. At 3:30 I check up on my posts on Slashdot to make sure some dumbfuck moderator didn't mod me as redundant for my Simpsons quote that should have been a +5, Funny. Afterall, that same Comic Store Guy quote was +5, Funny quite a few times after that. Man, I swear the mods are against me. Anyway, at 4:30 I really sit down and work for the next 2 hours, then I go home.
Hope this warmup exercise helps.
"You do know this is going to bring all the Box and Cube fanboys out of the woodwork, right?"
Not really. Even the most zealous Nintendo fan such as myself knows the PS2's whompin it's butt.
However, Nintendo is still making quite a profit, so it really doesn't matter to me. Sony is a Microsoft away from losing it's crown, Nintendo will always have fans chasing it.
... but all those apps that begin with K become a real nuisance to find on KDE's version of the start-menu when you're a Linux newb such as myself.
I thought Killustrator was funny, but Kroupware? Ugh. Very krappy.
"Pixar is migrating to OS X, primarily because of the G5. Pixar's OS/machine of choice seems to vary with the wind, whatever is the most powerful at the time. It seems that they believe the G5 is where it's at in the near future."
Not surprised. I can't speak for what Pixar uses, but Lightwave has a pipeline that's like 390 bits wide or something like that. Each pixel value is described to a ridiculous number of decimal places. The reason for this involves color precision as each step of the rendering process mutates the number. It strikes me that a 64-bit processor would have significant advantages here.
If anybody here is knowledgable about the advantages (or disadvantages) of 64-bit processing in the 3D world I'd LOVE to hear about them. Opteron may be in my not too distant future.
" film student who racks up $7,000 on a credit card and films in 2 weeks time can offer a more compelling and moving story than centimillions spent on the most dazzling special effects ever seen... so what"
The reason for that is a film student would have very strict limitations to work within. I think filmmakers have forgotten that part of the appeal of visual FX is to see something on screen that cannot easily be explained. CG is pertty much watering that down. I mean, who saw previews for Minority Report and thought "Whoah... I wonder how they did that?"
Indie Filmmakers now have that arena to play in. That's why TROOPS was so impressive. Heh.
"They've shown they can rip off the matrix so, I mean, what can't they do!? "
;)
For the record, that was a parody and not a rip-off.
Carry on.
Why is this 2-day old thread still getting attention? Did somebody link to it from another website or something?
Thank you! :)
"I could have all the computing power and still not be able to do something worth watching."
That's basically what it boils down to. Dr. Who didn't drastically improve when its movie budget a few years ago.
"ow long will it be before he gets sued by Barbra Streisand? "
I missed this story. Explain?
"If once a week doesn't sound like a lot to you, imagine how annoyed you'd be if your ISP was down once a week, because that's what we're talking about. ... and here's some for-pay updates to fix that problem, you drooling idiot customer. WINDOWS IS YOUR GOD. WORSHIP IT. "
I don't think I've ever downloaded anything from MS to fix a stability issue. About the only thing I've ever done is download a driver update from the manufacturer of the soft/hard ware that caused the problem.
Long story short: Nobody'll have to pay once a week for an update.
As for the "Windows is your god" comment, consider this: We don't measure the 'godness' of an OS by how long it stays up. We measure it based on what we do with it. We also measure it by how easy it is to do things with it such as add new hardware or apps. Then there's the whole matter of software availablity and yadda yadda yadda.
I wouldn't call customers who buy Windows related products idiots, but I would call Linux zealots masochists.
"I still greatly perfer Linux, but you must admit that Microsoft products are getting better. "
I really would like to see the anti-MS zealots here say that. Until that day comes, we're still going to see +5, Funny BSOD jokes.
...how many of the original Playstations were defective in their first season.
"This machine hasn't been restarted in nearly 2 years. Tell me that isn't reliable!"
.WMV file so I could host it on our site.
I just finished a two-day render on my dual Athlon machine here using Lightwave. I had two instances of Lightwave open, each rendering a different scene. I had the affinity set so that each instance of LW had its own processor. While it was doing that, I was browsing the web with Opera and occasionally firing up Photoshop to examine the latest image rendered. When that was all done, I fired up After Effects and did several different passes on the imagery to get it into a final state. From there, I used Windows Media Encoder to make a
After doing all that, my machine is eager to perform. This type of work is not uncommon for me and I have uptimes of roughly 12 days. Okay, that's not brilliant from a Linux point of view, but considering what all I get done and how much activity is happening on the processors and on the video card, I think it's not too bad. (I have a dual monitor setup to boot.)
BSODs? Nope. Haven't seen one since I first put a Sound Blaster Audigy in it. Crashes? Ehhh towards that 12 day mark I can have an app go stupid on me. Games? Hell yeah.
I'm not computer lucky here. My desktop at home is a similar setup with virtually the same up-time. (it's a little shorter, I think it's because I play games on it.) My previous desktops at work and at home all worked just as well.
As for a server, I haven't built a Win2k server. But I've got an NT4 server running exchange that's got an uptime of 108 days and is still performing marvelously. (I should point out that the up-time of it went up dramatically since I closed it off as an open relay. Man, being a newb with MS can really bite you in the ass.)
Okay, Windows ain't perfect. But when you can do all the fun stuff of having a PC and not have to reboot it more than once a week, you start reaching a point where you just don't care if Linux has a longer uptime. I do 3D rendering. I haven't lost a rendering to a Windows crash. (or even an LW crash for that matter.) 48 hours of rendering over a weekend can be an expensive loss. You don't shrug and say 'Oh well' if it goes down. Believe me, I'd be the first to toss Windows out the window if it was as 1/10th as bad as the anti-MS zealots here make it out to be.
"I still have blisters on my legs from the last time I took "laptop" at its word."
Shoulda used some protection.