Linux and Shrek 233
Delrin writes "This article on Zdnet reports on how Linux is slowly becoming an important player in the high-end graphic design industry. The latest upcoming movie "Shrek" a perfect example. Dreamworks and others are turning to linux for a large portion of their work, turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft." The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).
Seems like a good movie but... (Score:1)
Re:Render in Linux. Play in Windows. (Score:1)
Re:Anything wrong with SGI? (Score:1)
First, they aren't generally rejecting SGI in favor of Linux; they're mixing the two for a more cost-effective solution. SGI IRIX/MIPS machines still do a lot of the work, with a cluster of cheap linux boxes chugging in the background as a render farm. There is still plenty of work you can do on an SGI Onyx with Infinite Reality 3 graphics that you can't do on your x86 Linux box.
If you're asking why the Slashdot people think it's good to dump SGI in favor of Linux, it's because they're biased in favor of Linux.
Sorry for double post. I forgot Slashdot defaults to HTML, not text, for submissions.
Jabs at Disney, always a plus :) (Score:2)
Alex Bischoff
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Render in Linux. Play in Windows. (Score:1)
Looks like the only way I'll see this on my Linux box is to render it myself. Anyone got a Beowulf cluster I can borrow? :^)
Re:Also in the WSJ (Score:1)
SGI Everywhere @ ILM (Score:2)
Somthing in the SGI licences to ILM makes ILM talk and show only SGI boxes even though there are Macs used for 2 and 3D work and sound editing, and some NT boxes used for 3D work.
But because of the licence, all ILM shows are SGI boxes. However...that said...most of the work is done on SGI boxes at ILM IIRC.
Re:*I* know that, but the casual reader doesn't (Score:1)
Most people that go to the trouble of customizing something rarely actually WANT to do so. They do it out of business necessity.
Re:The plot and story line... (Score:1)
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Now that being said I would also be busy aranging a major all town party the same day in a park across town so that the Local Paper would put us not them on the front page.
Maybe try to get people to pledge $5 to the Sourthern Poverty Law center for every klansman who shows up. When All else fails employ irony.
Final Fantasy blows this away... (Score:3)
That was until I heard that the whole movie was computer generated!
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:1)
Re:Linux / SGI notes (Score:2)
We have demoed both boxes in house.
I am impressed with both HP and SGI Linux Graphics workstations. I do know that my home grown box has close enough the performance for me (but being a coder, that is not saying it would be good for an animator).
IMHO, I like the SGI systems a bit better because of the NVidia chips, but that is me being a bit biased. As always, it boils down to price vs. performance.
With us looking at going to Linux desktops and render farms (not near the order of PDI or Dreamworks) it is good to keep all of the major parties in mind.
Thanks for the reminder, Bruce...
Re:Don't extrapolate from PDI/Dreamworks (Score:2)
We are looking at it (and in some stages doing it). We have coders in house doing some custom stuff, but we have made 90% of our code cross platform from the get go. C and MEL (Maya's scripting language). My custom code is in perl, so it is just as happy in IRIX world and Linux world. LSF, the other key to our render solution is also multi-platform, so the migration has been painless.
As long as the software is ported by the vendors, there is no reason to stay on NT.
Most companies being happy with Windows may not be accurate... I think they are more scared of change than pleased to use Windows.
Re:Linux / SGI notes (Score:2)
We are curently VA only on the Linux side, but SGI Octanes (and Octane2's) on the desktop side.
We have no propriatary modeling/animating/rendering software... pure Maya, which has worked well for us. Our scale has been smaller than Shrek, so we have been able to keep our heads above water.
Our feature, Jonah,(due out next year) will be done on Linux render boxes with Maya with SGI desktops (most likely IRIX... don't want to change mid production) with the strong possibility of rolling to Linux on the desktop for the next project.
We are using LSF (from Platform) to do the load balancing and custom MEL and perl to interact with the database, submit to LSF and keep the renders in order.
Our group of programmers also do production support. I, overseeing the render process, get to play wrangler, architect, sysadmin and programmer. Fun Fun.
We use photoshop and a few other tools, but most of the paintfixes we do is with the GIMP.
Good to see that we aren't far off of the big boys.
Back to my misbehaving render boxes....
Tim Toll
Re:Maya is out for Linux now too (Score:2)
A|W is a great company, but part of them moving on the Linux scene was to use a single distro.
The notes say to install on RedHat 6.2, not 6.1 or 7.0 as it can cause problems.
This is understandable. They can only have so many flavors to test on... one of the reasons that software vendors love a "real" *nix, like IRIX. One flavor... you only have patches to watch out for.
I agree it is a win/win situation for rendering and desktops... we are moving that direction ourselves.
The only thing that is skewed is the price of the software vs. the OS. When the NT boxes came out, the price of animation software dropped. One of the good things that came out of the temporary Microsoft and SoftImage marriage.
Now with the box price dropping even more, the software will mostlikely follow, which helps everyone but the vendors.
Also, not as many render studios render on Maya (or at least not exclusively) I imagine the PR RenderMan port made more of an impact with the majors.
I also would not consider production houses a corporate environment... mostly artists and geeks... not too many shirts... but... i agree, a step in the right direction.
Re:SGI? (Score:3)
The industry is not moving away from SGI.
They aren't even moving away from IRIX.
A lot of places are getting SGI Linux boxes in house. With an Origin 3000 server and using an Onyx for video streaming, you can have a nice setup using all SGI stuff.
And A|W is an SGI company, but they support intel boxes with RH 6.2.
Don't compare Shrek and Toy Story 2 (Score:4)
-dan
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Yes, it takes more than merely being able to produce the movie, you need to market it as well. However, modern technology has a cure for that as well. The Internet is the perfect way to inexpensively distribute digital art of any kind. For example, how many of us here on /. have seen CmdrTaco's "Hamster Havoc" (or whatever it is called), and it was certainly not Hollywood material. If your movie didn't have a huge budget, it wouldn't need a huge audience to be successful either. Word of mouth coupled with a web site could easily be enough of a market. You probably won't see something like this in movie theaters anytime soon, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
Most independent movies right now are actually hoping to be bought out by an MPAA member so that they can break into the big time. With inexpensive professional special effects and an inexpensive way to market and distribute the work it might be possible to bypass the MPAA altogether.
Re:Remember DeCSS? (Score:2)
Of course "bad" generally depends on your perspective. It is a very subjective monikker. In fact, many people believe that good and bad are always entirely relative (I personally believe that there is such a thing as an absolute Bad, and an absolute Good, but that's neither here nor there).
I was fishing around for a couple of things that I figured that anyone soft-headed enough to feel that Linux should only be used for medical research would see as "bad." Although, I think that even many Chinese nationals would agree that giving the people in charge of their country supercomputers is not a good thing. America certainly has its share of heavy-handed government, but it is nothing compared to what happens in China.
My point is that Linux is going to be used for all sorts of things, and that can't really be controlled. However, with Linux there is at least the potential that the newest software patch might come as a result of the work of someone you see as "bad." (whomever that might be). That doesn't make the patch less useful, and it might help your causes just as much as it helped whoever wrote the patch.
As for the oil companies using Linux. I personally say "good for them." I happen to think that digging up oil is a useful activity (once again I was just fishing for examples of industries that the original poster might find objectionable).
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Anyone who thought that Linux was some sort of communist type class revolution clearly needs to do some re-thinking. This isn't about wealth, power, or fame, it's about source code availability.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Personally I am glad to see Linux being used by the rich and the powerful. You see, I like using Linux, but I enjoy getting paid as well. The rich and powerful tend to be able to pay for expert services.
Re:Remember DeCSS? (Score:2)
LOL.
I give up. In the future I suppose I am going to have to use examples from popular science fiction. Although I suppose some people would also get offended if I characterized the Vogons as "bad" as well.
What a fscked up world we live in.
Re:Remember DeCSS? (Score:3)
Actually, the movie industry has sponsored at least some work on Linux. I know that Bruce Perens used to work for Pixar. That's the reason that all of the Debian Linux releases have names like Hamm, Woody, Buzz, or Sid (characters from Toy Story).
The fact of the matter is that Linux is useful enough that it is going to get used for all kinds of bad stuff. The Chinese will probably use Linux to build supercomputers, the oil companies are already using Linux to look for oil, terrorists will probably use Linux to encrypt their secret communications. Linux is a tool, and as such it doesn't have any power to say how it is used.
The good news is that the same things that make Linux useful for terrorists also make Linux useful for medical research, and whatever else you feel to be a "good" field of endeavor. The newest patch to improve networking might come from a skinhead neo-Nazi that wanted his hate web site to run a little faster, but it will help your Linux boxes just as much as it helped his.
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:4)
Yes, but on the bright side Linux is guaranteeing that the tools used to make professional movies become less and less expensive. Pretty soon it will be possible to really break the MPAA by making it possible for struggling artists to produce and distribute their works inexpensively.
When it is all said and done this is the only way to break the MPAA. As long as making a movie is as expensive as it is today the MPAA will control the destiny of entertainment (because they will be the only ones able to produce it). Trying to "steal" their works after they have created them is a losing proposition.
See film.gimp.org (Score:2)
Gimp 2.0 will use the GEGL image processing library which has more generalized support for data types and color spaces.
I haven't followed the progress on this in a while (no longer in the industry), but AFAIK development rolls on.
-Isaac
You won't see the linux boxen on the artist's desk (Score:3)
The "Shrek" guys (and damn near everyone else in CG) used Linux to build a large, cheap renderfarm. This isn't new - when I worked at Digital Domain in 1999, their much-vaunted Linux/Alpha renderfarm used for some of the rendering on "Titanic" was several years old. (It also wasn't an exclusively Linux farm, contrary to popular belief - every box was dual-bootable to NT/Alpha to run the Lightwave renderer when necessary.)
SGI and NT still own the interactive (i.e. desktop, as opposed to batch rendering) part of the market for 3D software. Nowhere in the article was it stated that the creators of "Shrek" were using Linux on the desktop.
-Isaac
SGI? (Score:3)
I think SGI is one of the reasons why Linux is becoming populair in the High end graphics market. Isn't Alias|Wavefront owned wholy by SGI?
-adnans
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:Linux / SGI notes (Score:2)
Bruce
This is in the Wall Street Journal Print Edition! (Score:5)
The interviews were set up and pitched to the WSJ by HP's P.R. department. So, we do have professionals doing Linux P.R. I was interviewed, although I'm not mentioned.
Bruce
Preview of the movie (Score:2)
There is enough visual stuff in the movie, to keep children totally wrapped up in things. But I was with a group of 4 adults, and we were all rolling on the floor laughing. There is so much in the movie, that's just perfectly written. Brilliant movie.
Re:Final Fantasy blows this away... (Score:2)
I watched it and was impressed by they way they combined real actors with computer generated backgrounds.
That was until I heard that the whole movie was computer generated!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:Linux / SGI notes (Score:2)
It uses a highly-modified version of Red Hat Linux to pull this off; the results of course is quite spectular, and also well-received by the mass media (most of whom said Shrek will have a boffo b.o., to use the Variety lingo).
"Emperor's New Groove" (Score:2)
Yes, but that was the point of it, or so I tend to think. The whole style of the movie was different from the rest of disney's usual stuff.
'course, that's because they brought in the guy that did "Cat's Don't Dance" (a rather good and yet apparently mostly unknown cartoon movie. Sort of a Gene Kelly musical/dance-meets-classic-Warner-Brothers-cartoo ns kind of thing - I recommend it, anyway) to make it. Mark Dindal is spiffy...
While I'm not planning to line up on opening night to watch Shrek, I get the feeling that it's definitely going to be worth seeing.
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OT: Just struck me funny... (Score:2)
Would it be okay to use God to make Linux?
(I have this sudden vision of Linus Torvalds sending email to the kernel development mailing list saying God just spoke to him, and if he doesn't get 1,000,000 lines of code by next month God will SIGTERM him...)
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Re:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:2)
Is it just me, or do all of the Scientology-"trained" actors have trouble portraying emotions? If you watch their faces from about the nose up, it seems like the whole area stays the same, other than the occasional squint or wrinkling of the brow, no matter what the emotional content of the scene is. It's actually slightly disturbing. It's almost as if you can tell which actors and actresses are into Scientology by watching for the "deadness" around their eyes...
Or am I just "seeing things"? (The "Is it just me?" wasn't meant to be rhetorical, I really am wondering if anyone else has noticed this...)
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Re:Shrek looks great.... (Score:2)
Probably true...and hilariously ironic, in my opinion.
When movies were invented, actors just had to look good, but since there was no sound, they didn't have to sound good. Then they added sound. (Everybody's seen "Singing in the Rain", right?) Now we're working towards getting rid of the "look good" requirement...but the actors and actresses more than ever need to sound good.
A more philosophical person than me would probably make some sort of observation about Tao at this point or something...
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Animation looks impressive... (Score:2)
C-X C-S
Re:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:2)
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Re:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:3)
--
Re:mainstream Linux? (Score:2)
They may be weened on playstation, Windows, and coinop's but I guarantee you the BRIGHTER ones will soon look for more challenging things.
Re:You won't see the linux boxen on the artist's d (Score:2)
Shrek trailer online (Score:4)
The trailer [countingdown.com]
Re:Final Fantasy blows this away... (Score:2)
Angelina Jolia as Lara Croft [countingdown.com]
Re:Animation looks impressive... (Score:2)
Hmmm... (Score:2)
"Ten years from now, maybe we don't need actors like Tom Cruise anymore, because we've reached the stage where we can render them so well," Fink says.
Funny thing is, we don't need actors like Tom Cruise now... or Hugh Grant, for that matter...
As for the reality of it, there are those certain characteristics that are rapidly improving, but still have quite a ways to go: hair and clothing. I've seen some of the longer previews for "Shrek" and they look quite a bit more real than any previous movie effort, but there is just so much that still hasn't been captured. Subtle facial expressions are another thing that are tough to do... after watching the Shiny Things Network (MTV) for so long, many have lost their sensitivity to the more subtle nuances of human expression... the best actors can do a lot with very small movements. Modeling the expressions isn't as hard as figuring out what they really are, and what muscles of the face are involved.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are only a few years away from some amazingly real looking stuff though. With the ever decreasing cost of processing power and storage bandwidth, we can continue with more complex models and really have something to show for it.
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TV Resolution sucks (Score:2)
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Well when you stress freedom it applies to everyone. Even people you don't like. Otherwise its not freedom. So yes film producers are going to be using linux if they think it will help them get their product out the door. Just like many other people.
We do not grant freedom to those people who would use or have used it to take others freedom away. What do you think jails are for? By "our" values, hollywood are guilty of real crimes, so it is not necessarily immoral or hypocritical of us to want to take the software freedoms which we have worked hard for away from them.
Re:SGI? (Score:2)
What's REALLY Important Here (Score:2)
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Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
The cost of software is a drop in the bucket compared to salaries for 250 people working for 4 years (roughly what Pixar or PDI or Disney deploys.) Here's a good guess at the numbers:
Operating system software for 250 computer animators at $1,000 per station is about $0.25 million. Loaded salaries (i.e. salaries plus benefits plus pro-rata overhead) of 250 people for 4 years, at $200,000 per year, is $200 million. Nobody in the business cares what the system software costs. (In fact, the places that don't write their own application software in-house don't even care what that costs -- $25,000 per workstation for Maya and Renderman is still peanuts.)
Linux is taking over because the previous market leader was SGI, not Microsoft. The programmers that write the software are naturally less interested in switching to Win32 than Linux, when presented with the inevitability of an Intel future. If Microsoft were a real player in this market (and, oh do they wish they were!) the outcome would not be so clear.
Re:article won't persuade most potential users (Score:2)
Re:Someone finally understands (Score:2)
- - - - -
Linux / SGI notes (Score:3)
Hrmm Dreamworks could be shifting away from using Irix and Irix based programs on SGI machines, but odds are they're using Linux based programs on SGI hardware. FYI for those who don't know too much about the graphic design/3-d industry, SGI used to make the top of the line machines for the tasks along with Irix running the programs some of which costed over 40k (most of the times it did) so to say they dropped SGI is somewhat false.
Dreamworks and other shops are likely using Linux on their existing SGI hardware as well, since their production machines are not your run of the mill eBay like SGI machines, they're likely highly stacked up SGI boxes, and I'm sure they wouldn't toss them out.
Strata Pro Studio which is actually a kick as 3-d program for Windows may have ported something to the Nix community as well but I'm not sure, its been about 4 years since I worked in the GD/GA field.
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Shakespeare wrote sex and violence enough for 3 or 4 rambo movies. He wrote to appeal to the lowest common denominator as much as possible, he had to write this way because his main competition was bear baiting across the river.
The only reason everyone thinks he was so great is because we still enjoy sex and violence in our entertainment today so his work withstood the test of time. I garauntee that American Beauty will stand that test of time just as well.
Shakespeare was nothing more than a 2 bit hack that wrote crap to appeal to the masses, just like any sitcom writer today, he just happened to do it in imabic pentameter so everyone thinks he's a god...
Kintanon
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
I'm not saying his plays aren't great to read and watch, but they just aren't automatically better than anything the modern world turns out simply because they are old.
Kintanon
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Kintanon
Re:The plot and story line... (Score:2)
Not true, methinks. Face it, most of the Joe Sixpacks in the world still view animation as material for children. Recognizeable names will interest those that would have passed it by, no matter how good the plot and story line looks
Also, your average parent gets bombarded with "I wanna see Shrek!!" or whatever the new pretty animation is. Most of the parental units I know would answer with "huh?" A quick pop to the Net, local advert, or movie poster will reveal 4 very recognizeable adult actors's voices.
Either way, it'll come down to "Let's see that movie with, um...what's her name? Oh yeah, Cameron Diaz!" Not, "Let's go see that cartoon with the ogre and the princess about the fairy tale, etc"
Re:The Software they're using.. (Score:5)
a quote from their website.
About Softimage Co.
Softimage Co., a division of Avid Technology, Inc, is the industry leader in 3-D animation, 2-D cel animation, compositing and special effects software, designed to address the demands of the film and commercial/broadcast and games/interactive industries. SOFTIMAGEÒ|XSIÔ, an integral player in Avid's Make, Manage and Move MediaÔ strategy, is the flagship product offering from Softimage. XSI is the industry's first truly nonlinear animation (NLA) system that gives animators and digital artists the freedom to Make professional animation, visual effects and games - from major motion pictures, to cartoons and commercials, to animated content for video games and Web sites. The Softimage product family is designed to help users innovate, create and collaborate throughout the production process.
The Irony is Killing Me (Score:5)
It's a benchmark (Score:3)
Big Picture Linux (Score:2)
The main selling point of course was the bottom-line. The cost of migrating very large bases of in-house developed software and systems to Windows from UNIX was just too much. Apart from retraining admins (well actually re-hiring then because none of us would stand having to use Windows based systems) and retooling the production pipelines which were often implemented in UNIX shell scripts, perl, C, and C++, Windows didn't make any sense. Has anyone ever succeeded at building a manageable render-farm using Windows PCs?
Another selling point here was one that Microsoft and PC vendors used to push their products over the like of SGI: "The PC hardware is so much cheaper, you'll save so much money." So with this, we were able to add: "But with Linux, the operating system is free, so you'll save even more." The hardware vendors were happy with this. They can still sell their PCs. And we were happy because we were able to use Microsoft's very own selling point of being cheaper to eat their lunch.
In the case of Shrek, I really think PDI should be given the greatest amount of credit for getting Linux in house and in use. DreamWorks was closely partnered with PDI but it was only later, after PDI had begun much of its Linux initiative, did they end up merging with them. PDI's success with Linux in turn help fostered the adoption of Linux being used at DreamWorks... along with, I might proudly add, a lot of pushing from myself and some of my fellow sysadmins--some of whom worked on Titanic at Digital Domain.
Another modest coup for the Open Source movement. The Gimp was no stranger to the DreamWorks digital efx and background departments. Adobe stopped supporting Photoshop on the SGI/IRIX platform, so a lot of our people turned to using Gimp under IRIX for various tasks. It was easier than switching over to one of the Macs to use Photoshop there.
The reality of Linux benefiting independent productions is also real. I'd invite people here to see the website for Major Damage [major-damage.com], an independently produced 3D cartoon. It's a "spare-time" collaborative project being worked on by employees from a number of large and competing animation studios.
Ultimately, I think we're going to find that the movie industry will help legitimize the use of Linux in other business areas. Much of Craig Mundie's recent mud-slinging against the Open Source movement seems rather unfounded given the success Linux is finding in Hollywood.
Re:Don't compare Shrek and Toy Story 2 (Score:2)
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Re:Final Fantasy blows this away... (Score:2)
SquareSoft is perfectly capable of producing an all-around excellent movie. Whether or not they will... we have yet to find out. As I see it, though, the graphics will at least be entertaining.
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Don't extrapolate from PDI/Dreamworks (Score:2)
Other visual effects companies such as ILM and Sony Imageworks use much more off the shelf software so for them to make the transition to Linux is much harder (although they are trying to). Many visual effects companies are happily using Windows - especially the smaller companies that have very little custom software or whose software is generally in the form of plugins rather than entire applications.
--Re:Don't extrapolate from PDI/Dreamworks (Score:2)
And they do pay a considerable price for doing everything in-house.
--Re:Final Fantasy blows this away... (Score:2)
Pleae don't call me Jesus Christ, it's not my name.
And to reply, yes this was a mistake. No, I did not fully process the comment. My bad.
Re:The Software they're using.. (Score:2)
Actually M$ sold Softimage to Avid quite a few years ago, in 1998. At last year's Softimage User Group Meeting at SIGGRAPH 2000, they showed at the end a beta port of Softimage running under RedHat 6.2.
Just check their website:
Softimage Corporate info [softimage.com]Avid Corporate History [avid.com]
Re::( (Score:2)
I fail to see how this is an indication of selling out. A/W is pretty independent. The decision to port to Linux was driven by A/W's client demands as Mark Sylvester, A/W World Ambassador, has stated publicly several times.
Here is a quote from Tippett Studios back from a SIGGRAPH 99 press release, when the Maya and Composer batch renderers were introduced:
IF ILM came to A/W and wanted Maya ported to Linux and would convert a lot of licenses to it, you bet A/W would (and indeed) listened to their customer demands. And besides SGI still has an extended roadmap for their highend MIPS and Irix stuff. I doubt Linux would scale to a 256 CPU Origin 2000 machine (at least not in the near future).Two words: (Score:4)
In 10 years, processing power will probably be some 32-64 times faster (to be on the conservative side of Moore's Law), and that by itself will allow almost unbelievable improvements in detail. I think his prediction is perfectly reasonable.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
Clarification (Score:2)
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Re:This is in the Wall Street Journal Print Editio (Score:2)
Thanks, Bruce, good to hear this news.
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Re:article won't persuade most potential users (Score:5)
Two years ago we ran into a limit of ptys on an older Linux server. We searched the message boards and, not finding a solution, went through the source and found out what we were doing wrong. I'm not sure if we tweaked anything - that was a while back - but we solved our own problem without any acrimony.
Cost is an issue, but, with a little effort, the best benefit of Open Source is opened source. Maybe that's why it's called "Open Source" and not "Cheap Software".
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Re:mainstream Linux? (Score:2)
this situation is going to get worse not better! most of us growing up only had the option of a text-only interface, so when we were first exposed to a *nix operating system (a day i hope we all remember well) it was almost second nature.
flash forward, and every kid today is growing up with some form of GUI. this presents major snags when you try to take these kids and get them to use an interface which lacks big-shiny-clickable "things"
am i wrong? i hope so
_f
of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most
atleast hackers was good for one quote
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Someone finally understands (Score:5)
"Although we're a shop of 1,300 people, we don't have the clout to get Microsoft to change their operating system," says Andy Hendrickson, director of systems development at Industrial Light & Magic. "With Linux, we can do it all ourselves."
It's refreshing to see somone tout the value of freedom.
Yippeee! Mainstream gets a clue! (Score:2)
A non - tech reporter who understands the difference between Free Beerand Free Speech. And in the Wall Street Journal, of all places! This is a great day for Linux -- has any checked the for snowballs in Redmond ^H^H^H^H^H^H^HHell?
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
I agree with you 90%. The only problem I see is budget. Independant film makers have been making excellent films for years with little to no budget. The problem is no one knows about them because they weren't marketed well. Hollywood can take a lame POS movie and make a ton off of it with nothing more than good marketing. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I did go see "Dude where's my car." Don't laugh, the previews made it look good.
Re:Remember DeCSS? (Score:2)
Well, the Humans Off Planet loons would see medical research as bad, so there you go...
Maya is out for Linux now too (Score:2)
This can only be good for the adopting of linux in the corporate enviroment meaning more money and reasearch being put back into it for us all to enjoy =).
Maya will also make this a LOT easyer for the 3D world to change to linux as the interface and command lines are all the same as the irix and Windows versions so it wont require any special training to switch over. Not to mention linux is a LOT more stable that NT/2000 when your rendering and also a lot easyer to admin remotley.
Also the Maya for linux comes in RPM (its made for redhat) so it should be easy to convert into deb's or just use on mandrake ect ect or your current favorite distro.
another Good Thing(tm)
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
CopyRight Issues (Score:2)
That is sort of what has made a movie star or artist important. If there are no copyrights for things like this, then why would anyone want to be an artist?
or do we get to run the acting characteristics of actors of the past 100 years of film history through an OOP randomizer to slice and dice and get whatever we want? Who would own those rights?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:The Irony is Killing Me (Score:2)
The point still stands that without the editing/rendering software AND incredibly cheap hardware, there will be NO competition from struggling artists.
All that aside, I am glad to see Free Software being used the way it was intended to be used. This supports the underlying assertion that Free Software is good for users-- even if those users are corporations. Maybe other big dollar companies will start paying more attention soon.
don't forget! (Score:3)
--Andy Hendrickson, director of systems development at Industrial Light & Magic.
Except watch the movies he makes on DVD! (well legally anyway)
Re:Linux / SGI notes (Score:2)
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 [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 WexlerRe:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:2)
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
Re:The plot and story line... (Score:3)
Really, what is this obsession with gosh-gee visuals, anyway? _The Simpsons_ is STILL more visually interested (not to mention intellectually challenging) than the latest Burger King toy factory flickering at the cineplex.
Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:4)
This has to be the best thing ever to come out of the Linux community.
Here'a a Weird Juxtaposition (Score:2)
While Linux played a large part in the creation of the movie version of Shrek, the inevitable video game version of Shrek will be made exclusively available on the M$ XBox console. Game development is being done at the Canadian studios of Digital Illusions (check out http://www.dice.se).
I don't why, but I find this weirdly unsettling - Linux does the anonymous grunt work and M$ gets the flashy exposure.
The plot and story line... (Score:4)
Re:I'm afraid it's gonna suck. (Score:2)
>I'm sorry about all the Pokemon-fan-mentality
>lusers who modded your post as flamebait.
>Sounds to me you're just telling it like it is.
You sir, are a Mensch. And a fork and a spoon.
And anyway: The counter really does peg at 50, and doesn't care how much more up-modded you get after that, but subtracts just fine. This will at least give me the satisfaction of getting 50 all over again.
--Blair
"Karma whore--with a heart."
Re:Ask this guy to reply to Mundie? (Score:2)
Amen to that.
Microsoft has revenues of $25B/year.
Hollywood--the whole damned feature-film industry, studios, theaters, and all--has revenues of $20B/year (give or take).
Microsoft is a worldwide pariah.
Hollywood is a popular earthly substitute for heaven.
But, if you polled the respective insiders, you'd find that the people who run Microsoft are mostly honest and hardworking (if greedy and arrogant), while the people who run Hollywood are scum and villainy (and greedy and arrogant).
PR rules.
--Blair
Re:TV Resolution sucks (Score:2)
Which is why I gave the clip a bye on rendering quality.
As a friend who actually makes his money making props for outrageously popular TV sci-fi shows says: TV is like catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye while going 60 mph in a rainstorm.
If you ever get a chance to look at a TV prop in-person, try not to laugh. What looks like glossy precision-manufactured technology onscreen is usually just styrofoam that could have been carved by palsaics and painted by the kids at your local day-care center. And if it actually looks like crap onscreen it was carved by drunks as a joke and had to be repainted by the PAs ten minutes before shooting.
...
> The Matrix.
There was only one thing wrong with The Matrix.
You know the part that started right after the coming attractions and ended right before the end-credits? The part with the actors and the sets and the dialogue and the stunts and the story? Yeah, that part. That sucked.
--Blair
The Software they're using.. (Score:4)
Softimage is a wholy-owned subsiduary of Microsoft. I hope Montreal doesn't tell Redmond what they're doing.
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Re:Linux Replaces Tom Cruise! (Score:4)
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It's too bad penguins ... (Score:2)
A lot of digital editing for Titanic (the one with diCaprio) was done on linux.
It would have been funny to see the post-production people for Titanic throw a couple of Tux's on that iceberg though. Just imagine
Also in the WSJ (Score:2)
Another article outline the same info is featured in todays Wall Street Journal on page B5. Zdnet may not reach decision makers but the WSJ sure does, this is the kind of press Linux needs to keep making in-roads with CEO-CFO types.
x86 not a substitute for MIPS (Score:2)