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Graphics Software

Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat 152

Posted by timothy from the "you-said-your-names-was-NT-what,-again?" dept.
Several readers pointed to the announcement that 3-D Graphics tool Maya will be ported to Linux. Darkfell quotes the release : "Responding to demand from leading studios worldwide, Alias/Wavefront will deliver Maya on Red Hat Linux in early 2001. story at biz.yahoo.com" The high-end graphics world has sure seen some strange convergences and redirections in the past few years, what with the prematurely announced death of the Macintosh, concerted marketing efforts to replace UNIX with NT, and now ... welcome to the turn of the century, guys.
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Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat More

Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat

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  • You can download CorelPaint 9 for free (Linux version only) from the Corel site.
    Works great, except a little slow and I wasn't able to get batch processing working without the program crashing..

  • I'm betting that the development of Maya for MacOS X paved the way to doing a full (li|u)n[iu]x port.

    Actually, IIRC, an IRIX port brought Maya to UNIX, before Mac OS X was even announced.

  • newtek's lightwave6 uses opengl for most of the gui, so it shouldnt be a problem. i dont think it would require changing any of the actual code, so it would be much easier to do than porting to alpha nt. i guess i'll have to say something while i'm at siggraph...
  • Most likely Redhat cut some Business Development deal with them to make such an announcement in exchange for help in porting or something. This is the kind of PR "spin" that comes out of businesses. It's not about what is the whole truth or waht makes sense, it's about business perception.
  • Man, my kids would kill for me to work there.

    Well, if you want to work there, then go hit the careers area of their web site [bigidea.com]. They're hiring -- if you don't mind moving to Chicago.

    --willdye

    P. S. It just occurred to me that there's something really appropriate about using Linux boxes to do an animated series about space-faring penguins [bigidea.com]. I guess it's only a matter of time before Tux the penguin [lwn.net] makes a cameo appearance. Maybe even a Tux-like regular character? Hmm. They should at least give him the appropriate accent. Remember, Big Idea, it's "Leenus", not "Liinus". Think pickled herring, not Peanuts. :-)

  • Maybe cos as at this moment, MacOS X is still *vapour*.

    Not at all, in fact I understand that it's been in wide beta testing for the last half-year. I assume you were being facetious, but I wouldn't want anyone to get the impression MacOS X, though a while off from release, is mere vapor -- after all, it seems Alias|Wavefront certainly has a functional enough copy...

  • Another *excellent* package from the Amiga days is beating them (and alias) to it :) As far as I can tell, it's the best 3D package out there, and the port to Linux is complete (in internal beta right now). They have screenshots, too. Check it out... Realsoft's home page. [realsoft.fi]
  • I work for a production studio. Traditionally, all we've had for our 3D animation and rendering were SGIs running Alias and now Maya.

    Because running it on a PC was less expensive, it enabled some of the animators here to buy some NT workstations to run at home (make no mistake, Maya is expensive - but if you know people and work in education or a corporate environment that buys lots of licenses, your salesman will usually cut a deal).

    We recently had an influx of new animators. To save money, we bought some NT workstations. Now it's a nightmare going back and forth between the two platforms. To add to the mix, we use 2 four processor linux boxes as renderers. Why? Because you can't log into NT boxes remotely without a lot of extra configuring and extra software. And you can check your render using an X program to display and you can see it on your SGI. It's a bit more work on the NT. Oh, yeah...these animators are pretty saavy, too - they like writing shell scripts to automate some of their work. All the animators who are familliar with Unix are having a nightmare of a time going between Unix and NT. When they run their render scripts on the Linux box, however - no problems.

    We'd love to see the modelling and animation portions ported to Linux - and when they are generally considered to be working as well as the Irix versions, I guarentee we will be changing all but one of the NT boxes to Linux. The hold out will be running some Adobe tools - hopefully they'll be ported, too.

    Our engineering department, those that know Unix anyway, greatly prefer Linux (or anything) over NT. Unfortunately you've got to work with what you've got available. It took me five years to get a couple of Linux boxes in the mix - hopefully it won't take that long to get rid of NT (or whatever MS is calling it then).


    ----------

  • Oh come on. Have you ever used an Intergraph machine? Where's this impressive power? Why are they going out of business? Why did they sell the graphics business to 3D Labs?

    The Nvidia chips blow away any Intergraph solution - even the ones that are thousands of dollars over priced. The Low end PC graphics market (i.e. gaming market) has all but gobbled up the mid-range market. People buy $10K Maya to put on their $3K NT machine, why not a linux machine? I do agree that maybe this is a plan by SGI to move more Linux boxen. Maybe they should just throw in the box with every Maya purchase. THat'd give Linux some momentum. Doesn't SGI own some of Red Hat anyway?

    SGI is reeling. This might be some of the death throws to spawn off Alias like they did MIPS. Their 330 machine is the only machine that comes out of the box OpenGL hardware ready. Even with that niche they still are having trouble making money. This doesn't bode well for Graphics on Linux, nonwithstanding all these new announcements of forthcoming releases. The Fact of the matter is that OpenGL is standing still while Direct X is providing features that developers want. Linux's survival, as a desktop, will depend on whether or not the OpenGL ARB gets off the ass or not.

  • RPM [rpm.org] is the standard package system - used by everybody but Slackware (doesn't really have a system) and Debian (deb) (OK - not everybody, but at least the major ones: Red Hat, SuSE, Turbo and Caldera and derivatives (like Mandrake)).

    RPM is also the system specified in the current LSB draft [linuxbase.org]

    The problem with compatibility is not package formats, but libraries, file locations etc - binary compatibility is much better than what it used to be, thanks to glibc, but is still in need of improvement.

  • Well, at least this means a 3d app that won't crash. I've tried most of them (apps, I mean) on whatever OS, and inevitably -- hang, crash, here we go again... I was kinda hoping Strata [strata.com] would release a 2.x or 3.0 of StudioPro for OS 9 (hell, I'd be anxious as ***insert proverbial thing here*** if only they said "hey all you users, we're going to release an upgrade once OS X is out"), but ever since C3d bought them, there's been no news. btw DuesEx [aspyr.com] ala G4 rocks.
  • I was looking around the Alias/Wavefront site and found this Taste of Maya [aliaswavefront.com] thing, an evaluation verion of maya. I wonder if they'll offer this for linux? Also, does anyone have any screen shots of this program under any platform?
  • The last I heard, SGI wasn't planning to drop IRIX anywhere near now. The story I had was that they were going for a slightly bifurcated market -- with Linux on the lower end and IRIX on the higher end. As Linux is capable of handling the higher end, they're (supposedly) intending to let the market scale with it.
  • OT: the reason for the change was that the irony no longer applied when they detected the truth quark. The irony was that "truth" was hidden while "beauty" could be seen.
  • I forgot -- SGI isn't just a prime partner of Alias/Wavefront, anymore. They're now the friggin OWNERS! [sgi.com] All the more reason to follow the SGI lead into the Linux(RedHat) world.
  • Well, I can't wait until not only will the product run on Linux, but they ship the Linux x86, PPC, Alpha, and Mac, and NT (why not?) versions in the same box. Hybrids rock.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • If you don't mind the question ... how much do you think it will be on Linux?

    D

    ----
  • You must not do much coding to be this naive about porting something that large.

    -Jeff
  • Maya on Linux
    The time has finally come
    Customers rejoice
  • our fucking idiots? do you have them?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The point I took the original poster to be making was that Linux is not much used in the graphics industry, not necessarily that it has a pretty interface. I was pointing out that, in fact, Linux is used in the industry, and its use is on the rise. Irix's GUI isn't any better than Linux's, but you'll never hear someone complaining about SGI stuff not being "graphical."
    -Vercingetorix
  • Have you checked with Mesa-3.3 (Mesa-3.2.1 final)?
    It passed all OpenGL conformance tests except for antialiased line.
    This algorithm would be rewritten, soon.

    DRI mature all day long...

    -Dieter

    BTW I do V5 testing and 3DNow! Glide/Mesa optimization/bug fixing

    --
    Dieter Nützel
    Graduate Student, Computer Science

    University of Hamburg
    Department of Computer Science
    Cognitive Systems Group
    Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30
    D-22527 Hamburg, Germany

    email: nuetzel@kogs.informatik.uni-hamburg.de
    @home: dieter.nuetzel@myokay.net
  • As on Feb 7th 2000, Maya Batch Renderer ver : 2.5 is qualified for RedHat 6.0. And its about time

    Ref : http://www.aliaswavefront.com/pages/home/pages/sup port/pages/qualification_charts/QUAL/may a_linux_2_5.html

    Could this be the killer app to get Linux on the desktop. wait and see. As for Maya, I saw it on the GDC 2000 and my jaw simply dropped at the awesome visuals. I guess its about time Linux came on to the art/gaming market and captured a fair share. Makes me wonder whether MS would ever release a DirectX version for Linux now :). Who knows, they might..
  • Surely, you are thinking of Corel, not Caldera. And that is basically Debian with a better installation and a customized KDE-derivative. As I mentioned, RPM is also the packager used in LSB. As for rpm not having the functionality of deb - not the case. The functionality of apt and up2date are not that dependent on the underlying package formats.
  • Or are you going to demand 3DS Max on Linux before you switch. :) All I can say is (ObAOL): "This is cool!"
  • It find it interesting that nobody thought it was news when it was <A href=http://apple.com/macosx/applications/maya/]po rted</A> to OS X a short time ago.

  • When stories like this are not so big... (Score:4)

    by systemapex ( 118750 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:34AM (#914053)
    I can't wait when a company announces a product and it is just assumed by everyone that it will run on Linux because it does and because that is what the market wants (the same way its assumed today that it will run on Windows). Maybe then, the actual software will be the story and not the fact that it runs on Linux!
  • but anonymous cowards post by default to 0. if you're like me and read with a -1 threshold then you expect these things. if you have less time to waste than you can set your threshold to a higher level thereby ignoring all the first posts.

    while i have no doubt that most first posts are trolls, i don't see why they need to be moderated down, just browse at 1 or 2 and you won't be bothered by them, plus your page will probably load a lot faster too.

  • Hell when I talked to @home with AT&T customer service, and told them I'm running a linux masq gate... not only did she have no idea what I was talking about, but she asked me if I had called linux to see what the problem was.

    The problem I was having had nothing to do with linux by the way.

    How do you call linux??

  • If anybody is going to do a good job of porting GL code, it's going to be SGI -- given that they're the original creators of GL to begin with (with OpenGL being the Open Source version).
  • Uh, IRIX was the original....then NT, then MacOS X, then Linux.
  • Just don't tie those NT boxes into a burlap sack and toss them into a river. Be humane about it, see a vet and have them put down gently with an injection.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • not that alot of linux users will benefit from this port

    But, look at it from the other perspective - it will benefit a lot of Maya users, because they will be able to run it on Linux. Maya users will become Linux users, not the other way around. With SGI/IRIX boxes no longer a practical option (and too expensive to begin with), it will be a welcome relief to be able to run Maya on an Intel-based platform without that meaning running Windows NT - especially in a multi-user/multi-system environment like I work in.

  • Hey... can you drop me a line... I am interested in talking with others strugling with the multiplatform hell and Maya.
  • This makes me wonder. Does Redhat have extensions so that that product only will run on it?. What about the other Linux dists? People should say they release "for Linux", not for "Slackware Linux", "Debian Linux", "Redhat Linux". Some stuff for thought.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I manage a computer lab at my university which is heavily into 3D, both for CAD and film/video. Since things are Mac-heavy, the OS X port was very welcome. A port to Linux is fantastic, since I can inexpensively set up a server farm for both the rendering and a "sub lab" of cheap PC's for learning the basics (leaving the high-end machines for more accomplished workers).

    Good news!

  • SGI (Score:1)

    by intrico ( 100334 )
    SGI, the pioneer in graphics workstations, is now making Linux workstations, so one would think that this is only natural.
  • Guess I won't be using this if it's only Red Hat.
    It would be much better to see developers produce needing libraries that forced distros to give them vs. distros forcing users.
  • Maybe cos as at this moment, MacOS X is still *vapour*. There was a story about this on Slashdot a while back anyway, if i recall correctly. At least i can buy and install RedHat 6.2 on my computer today. Plus the knowledge that the port of Houdini to Linux from IRIX took 5 developers about 3 weeks. Maya could be available on Linux, at least within the industry under NDA, in that kind of time-frame... I doubt we'll be seeing Maya on MacOS X at least till MacOS X ships, which, given Apples track record for releasing new OSes, could be anytime within the next decade.
  • I guess they won't go open source :*)?

  • Linux (Score:2)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    If you use it, apps will come.

    --
  • -I just program here... how am I supposed to know?
    What a strange directory to put include files in...

    (Yes, I know the spaces would prevent it from being parsed that way, just chuckle for a second and move along...)
  • damn that was moderated down fast.

    note to moderators: read the guidelines and try to promote stories rather than waste your points marking first posts as trolls.

  • Rendering farms (who are the only ones who have the $ to buy Maya anyway) are not going to convert en masse to using Maya. I think it's impact will be minimal at best. Alias|Wavefront announced Maya for the Macintosh OS X will be ready roughly at roughly the same time, and I would suspect the creative professionals are more likely to be familiar with a Mac than with Linux. On top of that, Linux has not been a hit with IT people to the same extent NT has and on top of that, the Linux user base is not very graphically oriented. I really see the impact of this announcement to be very limited for Linux.
  • Dunno about how easy the port is.
    We are talking about a port from an IRIX box with GL extensions and optimizations. That is much harder than porting standard POSIX code.
    Maya is a large package and it has its own scripting language. The UI is writen in this language. Having all of this work together as well as the hardware and software render portions of the Maya core is not a small undertaking.

    UNIX (IRIX) != Linux (well... not without a bunch of work).
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ....that Apple was dead in the graphics market. And yes, I've heard constantly that there was no need for Apples anymore for doing graphics.

    The people saying it were wrong, but hey, nothing new there.

  • (grr, nothing here)
  • You're with Big Idea, home of Veggie Tales?? Man, my kids would kill for me to work there.
  • Is it already a port or is it GOING TO BE PORTED. It would seem to be the later. Bleh, Slashdot posters have mastered the art of misleading headlines. Also, even Linus's quote in the press release is in the wrong tense.

  • Re:they are already here... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think that sometimes when a company is going to invest hundreds of thousands or more dollars in something, they'd like to put a corporate face on it instead of just a couple of guys working on a hobby. Seems logical in the business world. Somebody needs to be accountable, and Redhat is the best choice at this point.
  • No... Most companies just don't want to support the umpteen hundred varieties of Linux and therefore choose to say that they'll only suppor their product on one distro, and since Red Hat is the most popular, they choose Red Hat.

    Even if their software won't install on a stock Slackware or Debian box, it's only a matter of downloading a few libraries in order to make it work...

    It seems rather insulting and even conceited to complain that "so and so ported such and such to Red Hat Linux, but they're too dumb to realize that there are other LInuxes out there", when the case is more likely that they just don't want to try to pretend to understand all the permuatations that a Linux installation can take...
  • does anyone have any screen shots of this program under any platform?

    Have a look at http://www.highend 3d.com/maya/tutorials/charcterSetup/setup_1.3d [highend3d.com] as well as some of the other tutorials on this site.

    -deane
    Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya

  • Not all OpenGL implementations are created equal! Today if you want to do *nix GL, IRIX is the platform. There are many many efforts to bring good (meaning fast) OpenGL to Linux. DRI is the free one. Xi has the most cards. Nvidia+sgi are working on one. None of them are finished. None of them run A|W without serious bugs. That statement is a guess based on the fact that I maintain the Linux OpenGL for an A|W competitor, and they shure as hell don't run MY app without bugs!
  • I have requested numerous times. I've even indicated that if there were ever a Linux port of Lightwave, they would be receiving a large sum of money from me in terms of purchases. The response I've always gotten from them is a very cold "we have no plans to ever port to Linux."

    I guess Lightwave is getting kicked from the machines and will now be learning Maya.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • I think those nifty Evans&Sutherland cards are supported, but check their website because I don't know if it's their entire product line or only a few cards...
  • Doesn't [Red Hat] use a tweaked version of the kernel. What do the tweaks entail?

    Sure we do (but the source RPM including all patches we're using is publically available - if they depend on one of the patches, you can apply it everywhere.)

    The patches are mostly driver updates and additions, better support for Pentium III processors and some feature additions (large file support for the Enterprise Edition and such).

  • Re:"Redhat Linux" (Score:4)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Friday July 21, 2000 @01:50PM (#914086) Homepage
    Does [Red Hat] have extensions so that that product only will run on it?

    No. That would be Microsoft strategy. A vendor saying they release something only for Red Hat Linux usually means they compile it on Red Hat Linux, so they'll require the library versions we're shipping (stuff like glibc 2.0 vs. glibc 2.1, libstdc++ 2.8 vs. 2.9 vs. 3.0).
    Installing a couple of compat libraries will usually permit you to run it on anything else (just don't count on getting support if you do that).

    We're all for LSB support - we wouldn't play any tricks to create Red Hat Linux-only software even if we could. (And we can't - since we release everything we do under the GPL, someone could just "abuse" the code easily).

  • Re:"Redhat Linux" (Score:4)

    by styopa ( 58097 ) <hillsr AT colorado DOT edu> on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:42AM (#914088) Homepage
    One reason is that there are minor differences in the different distributions. These differences are at times large enough to cause a product to act erractically on one distro, while working perfectly on another.

    Companies find that it is easier to test the product using only one distribution and then release it saying it works using that distribution. By doing this, if they say that it works on Distro A and then someone using Distro B comes along saying that it doesn't work the company can tell them that they didn't test it, which is why they didn't say it would work with Distro B.

    Today the Linux distribution that has the spotlight is RedHat, so companies use it to test with.

  • Re:Big freakin' deal (Score:3)

    by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:42AM (#914089) Homepage Journal
    You couldn't be more wrong.
    We have 50+ SGI seats of Maya and like 5 NT seats of Maya. We have 40 Linux boxes for the render farm. We are looking at the move to linux to replace the SGI boxes in the future (well... before we put NT boxes down). With an app like Maya, the people don't need to know the OS, only the app. The TD and IT groups need to know and support the OS so a more UNIX solution, the better.

  • Re:they are already here... (Score:4)

    by Phexro ( 9814 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:44AM (#914091)
    these announcements really underscore the need for a standard linux base [linuxbase.org] or something similar.

    but from what i can tell, the lsb only determines what libraries and such should be installed. perhaps a better solution would be to create a meta-package format, which could be cleanly converted into .deb, .rpm, .tgz, .slp (or whatever format) with some supplied tools. then a software vendor would only have to create a single package, and either convert it, or offer the meta-package which the end-user could convert.

    in any case, until there is a standardized linux base/package system, this sort of thing is going to continue. it's no different than software houses developing for msft; they are the market leader in terms of number of users. similarly, redhat has a higher percentage of users than any other linux distro. it's all about getting the biggest market possible for their software.

    =--- - - .
  • "Liiiiiiiinux! Where are yoooooooou!?!?!?!?"

    Think "Scoobie Doo Where are you?"
  • They can't support every distribution. By saying it works on RedHat 6.2 they are giving you a tested platform to compare against. Will it work on other distros? Most likely. If it doesn't you know you can always see what's different between your distro and RedHat as a possible cause of the problem.

  • One of the arguments against porting apps to Linux has been, "Why bother supporting an OS with a customer base that selected the OS because they didn't feel like paying". The logic is inescapable. The fact that somebody uses NT or MacOS is proof that they will buy software.

    Now, if this proves successful for AW, many others may follow. Naturally, if it proves a flop many others will stay away.

    I hope AW doesn't price the Linux version any differently than for other OS's. That will make this a fair test. Also, if they priced it lower, people who view it as their killer app would start migrating to Linux for that very reason, thus decreasing AW's profits.

  • No, people buy $10000 maya to put on their $7000 (the price of a high end Visual Workstation) NT workstations. The Intergraph WildCat series is that fastest 3D hardware available on PCs. It outperforms SGI's VisualPC hardware by 126% (according to a MaximumPC review) in awadvs (a viewperf test) In real world rendering, the Intergraph machine could handle complex scenes in MAX that the SGI simply choked on. If you look at the tests on intergraph's website, you'll see that the WildCat consistantly outperforms the Quadro based Elsa card by 40-100% plus has 256 meg of memory, a number even the new SGI VPro cards can't touch. Even Carmack loves Intergraph. Second, Intergraph seems to be doing quite well. Since when did they sell off to 3D Labs? Third, I agree that SGI and the ARB have to get off their ass. Direct3D is coming and seriously whopping OpenGL in terms of core features (and soon speed. Direct3D 7 comes close and D3D 8 may just go over the top.) However, my point wasn't about that. The VisualWorkstations failed at the high end and midrange of the NT workstation market. Maya is definately a high-end product, but as it stands, the supporting technology around a Linux-based SGI machine would be mid-range to low end. (GIMP in place of Photoshop, not as many high-end support tools, lower power hardware, etc.)

  • Re:Don't code to a moving target. (Score:3)

    by khadzia ( 48907 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @02:11PM (#914103)
    You know the reason that this is happening has mainly due to the fact that there are a lot of things on Linux that need to be standardized still like library locations, etc. That is the real problem here. Specifying exactly where libraries go does not hurt the "diversity" of the distributions, but it sure makes it easier for application vendors to port their product to "Linux" as opposed to Red Hat or Suse. How long is it going to take for RH, SUSE, Caldera etc. to realize this?

  • This is great for many reasons (Score:4)

    by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:51AM (#914105) Homepage
    I wish more companies would do this. I saw on a Lightwave (another 3D app) newsgroup someone said newtek (the company that makes it) would never make a port of lightwave to linux, linux people aren't the type to buy lightwave. But with software like this, everything else revolves around it, the OS, the hardware, input devices etc. So the question is, not will linux people run lightwave, but will lightwave people run linux? I think the answer is yes, because of many different factors, especially memory management and stability. I hope this encourages many companies to do the same thing, then many hardware vendors may jump on and make drivers for linux to support video capture, graphics tablets and a host of other stuff ( not even to mention better 3D support which everyone wants!). This could really be where linux picks up quick if the right people want it to.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong (but be damn sure I'm wrong), but doing OpenGL on IRIX is just like doing OpenGL anywhere else; You include the includes, link the libraries (Which on Win32 are DLLs and on UNIX are .so, but other than that...) and then call the standard OpenGL 1.2 functions.

    Considering that there ARE OpenGL implementations on Linux (last I checked) how is this a difficult port? They'll have to make any changes necessary for threading and/or libc variations, but the OpenGL code itself should come over just fine.

  • .. then there are some other steps to overcome.

    One thing is clear though. Linux is gaining ground in the game area, and, after all these years of hacking kernels and nifty unix clone tools, it is in fact a surprise that it's beginning to happen only just now. Maya will certainly boost game development under linux, but let's not get over-excited here.

    The big question will be whether this comes a bit too late or not. Microsoft practically converted the PC into a game console with it's X-BOX specifications, and though I think that was a most remarkeable, if not hilarious marketing push (one wonders why MS should reserve the rights to be the only one to build X-boxes), they're betting on a safe horse that's even an easy target for most game companies.

    But then the even bigger question is: who will buy an X-box, which is in fact an overly expensive functionally degraded PC with multimedia cards on steroids ? How long-lived is the X-box concept, given that the step-up factor of hardware in general is very high ? Will it perhaps freeze the general consumer markets chip evolutions as we see them today ? Or can I stay with my linux/nt box instead and have close to the same perfromance ?

    Maya as a tool is cool. Giving it breathing space on a linux platform is a logical thing to do. Whether it can give games and multimedia an extra push remains to be seen, and how linux benefits from this, other than receiving a bit more aknowledgement for it's valuable features, is an intirely different question.

    Nevertheless, this is some impressive new player on the linux horizon!
  • I fail to see why someone wasted time moding this down, I thought it was funny.

    But sorry, I actually don't know my gf's father's email addy. And he knows my opinion of him....... Nano Micro Serf!
  • on top of that, the Linux user base is not very graphically oriented.

    Ah, this no doubt explains the miserable failure of the GIMP to gain any users. And the absolute dearth of eye-candy window managers.

  • Oh come on, you think they're going to port to a different platform and toolkit at the same time?

    Of course it will be Motif. But don't worry, you can always use the "Notif" theme for GTK and everything will match.

    "Free your mind and your ass will follow"

  • yasb-frirwwthsgtiadko2. Sounds like some linux software package.

  • Don't code to a moving target. (Score:5)

    by Jeff Mahoney ( 11112 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @12:19PM (#914127)
    Why choose one distro? Because it's not a moving target. Many of the people that are the first to bitch about how Slackware, Debian, SuSE (I'm a SuSE user) aren't supported probably haven't ever used an application of this class.

    Anyone that's every put any time in a *production* environment, not a maw-and-paw ISP, knows that major application vendors support a very small subset of the possibilities.

    I've supported A|W products on SGI, as well as Oracle under Digital UNIX and Solaris - the two products' purposes have nothing in common - but why don't you check out either vendor's support site. On the sites you'll find that not only is a specific version of an OS supported - but *only* with a specific set of patches installed. If you're not running *exactly* the specified rev level, you can kiss your tech support goodbye until you're matching their spec.

    When you have something this large and complex, you can't be coding for a moving target. Even smaller applications can be bitten by this. I recall trying Linux Mandrake a while back, and finding that the library set it shipped with was horrid. Netscape would crash just about every time I tried to send a message. I switched to SuSE, and everything worked peachy.

    While I'm not a huge Red Hat fan, the reality is that RH holds a dominant position in the Linux world. They've got the capital now to handle liability issues, and they've got the clout to throw around to get things like this done.

    I, for one, am thrilled to see Maya ported to Linux.

    Can Slashdot ever post some good news like this, and not get a crowd of fucking whiners?
  • Newtek won't make a port of lightwave for Linux?

    Bzzt! Wrong answer!

    I cannot tell when they'll release - but trust me on this one - they are already doing something about it (and I cannot give details)

  • I have to agree with Linus (Score:3)

    by phlake ( 107104 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:21AM (#914131) Homepage
    from the article:
    ``Maya is the most complex and powerful 3D graphics application ever to run on Linux,'' said Linus Torvalds, the Creator of Linux. ``This is a historical day for the Linux community.''
    not that alot of linux users will benefit from this port -- maya is rather expensive -- but with the recent advances in linux clustering that we've seen, and the price of intel hardware being as low as it is, and site licenses for linux being what they are (ie, $0), render farms will be cheaper than ever.
  • I doubt they care. Only porting to one version of the OS is something that these companies often do. For example, SoftImage even has a list of cards that they certify to work with it. They won't gaurantee that it will work on other cards. When you're laying down $10K for a product, most people just go out and buy a machine custom made for that product.

  • Re:"Redhat Linux" (Score:3)

    by nuintari ( 47926 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:21AM (#914133) Homepage
    I think most vendors are just ignorant, the windows world has one company running the show, I think a lot of people just assume Red Hat runs the Linux world.

    Hell, when I explained that Linux was not owned by Red Hat to my girlfriend's MS lovin, stick up his ass, father, he wondered why I hadn't contacted the proper authorities.
  • Yea, the whole desktop will look ugly;)
  • They have versions for NT, IRIX and Mac

    Which raises an interesting question: if SGI is dropping IRIX and switching to Linux, won't everyone who make IRIX software need to port it over, and thus make it much easier to port from SGI-Linux to other Linux distributions?

    Or am I missing something?

  • Not, that is a very UNIX-ism. The sheer fact that applications even load libraries by filename is a stupid idea pioneered by those crazy UNIX weenies. (As you can see, I'm slightly inflamed for having to make a zillion symlinks to install the NVIDIA OpenGL drivers.)
  • Maya won't do much for game development. Historically, the premier game development platforms have been 3D Studio MAX and Softimage. Maya is more used for 3D animations and such, rarely for game modeling.

  • they are already here... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:24AM (#914141)
    I expected the first thing I read to be "how come it's not ported to every other distribution and platform too?

    and that's exactly what I saw.

    How can people be so dense as to not understand the needs for standardization, and the reason behind not porting every program to every single platform and distribution?

    Why won't anyone discuss this instead of crying that anyone who releases a linux application should produce, support, and test 175 different versions of it?

  • The above comment was moderated down to -1, Flamebait. As the page refreshed for my reply, it's now at 1.

    Can the moderatorS justify why the comment was moved down twice? Should it be as easy to moderate DOWN as it is to go UP? Moderate downs should be reviewed a lot sooner than the MetaModeration stage.There are trolls smart enough to get moderated up, and then they're eligable to be bad Moderators, and do their Troll damage that way.

    If anything, the above comment is somewhat informative.

    Adding to the authors comments, Adobe also has a UNIX Photoshop for SGI that could quite possibly be ported to Linux, although I suspect Adobe is afraid of good graphics apps on Linux due to their cash cow Photoshop, already cloned by GIMP.

  • Alright, here I go starting the holy toolkit wars. Does anyone know which toolkit they will be using on Linux? I believe they use SGI look and feel Motif on IRIX, I wonder if this means they will be using Motif on Linux (I sure hope not, it would look ugly.) Or are they using GTK or QT? Would be nice if it integrated with the Desktop Environments. Just wondering if anyone is in the know.
  • I think oxygen cards should be supported soon (no official word yet)

    Meanwhile - Intense3D writes a dri driver for XFree 4 for their Wildcat cards
  • Side Effect's [sidefx.com] Houdini is SHIPPING for Linux. Each package has it's own strengths and weaknesses. A|W is particularily strong in modelling; Houdini's strengths include a powerful scripting language and the drag'n'drop "visual procedural interface" (really COOL if you ever get a chance to use it). And of course the most important strength is Linux support today (and not just the renderer).

  • A killer app should have widespread use. This is not a product for joe schmoe average. This is an expensive commercial package with a limited market.

  • Wow... (Score:3)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @12:05PM (#914152) Homepage
    Now, there *is* a reason for such a thing as Linux software piracy.
  • Why choose one distro? Because it's not a moving target. Many of the people that are the first to bitch about how Slackware, Debian, SuSE (I'm a SuSE user) aren't supported probably haven't ever used an application of this class.

    Funny thing is, I've had better luck installing RPMs to SuSE than to RedHat...

  • About time, but better late than never (Score:4)

    by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:27AM (#914158) Homepage Journal
    I come from a studio [bigidea.com] of 50+ octanes and 40+ VA Linux boxes and we use Maya exclusively. This announcement has been expected, but it has been a long time in the waiting. I figure that A|W should have done this earlier, but I would rather wait for a stable product than get an earlier release with bugs.
    SGI has had a box to support this for at least a month, yet no good products to use on it. This will be a welcome addition to our studio as I am sure to studios everywhere.
  • Actually, many modern systems don't require that the filename match. They load libraries by library name, which can be embedded in the actual library.

    Try moving libsomething.so to liboldsomething.so, and then doing an ldconfig. It will find the liboldsomething.so as libsomething.so.

    ...and as a reponse to the question above about library locations, the linux ld.so finds all the libraries for you, as long as you've placed the directories in your /etc/ld.so.conf. The location, so long as ld.so can find them, is irrelevant. What *is* relevant is the different compile options and versions that different distributions use in their install.

    -Jeff

    % man ld
    /-soname
    n
    -soname name
    When creating an ELF shared object, set the inter
    nal DT_SONAME field to the specified name. When an
    executable is linked with a shared object which has
    a DT_SONAME field, then when the executable is run
    the dynamic linker will attempt to load the shared
    object specified by the DT_SONAME field rather than
    the using the file name given to the linker.
  • Still, this approach is sort of hackish. A central registry would not be simpler and more elegant, but more powerful. Say, for example, an application says "I need libjpeg, version 2.3" He requests this to the central registry. The library server looks at the request, and analayzes the currently registered libraries. libjpeg is not installed, but because the author of each library is required to list all the libraries and versions his library is compatible with, the server knows that he can use the functions in libgraphic.so.3 to fufill the applications request.
    PS> Some programs DO load libraries explicitly by name. For example, Quake loads the OpenGL library explicitly, and gets pointers to each function as needed.
  • My point exactly. SGI is using the ZX10 line to fill its high-end NT workstation position. Also, look for Linux support for the Wildcat to come soon. (Yea, I've got SGI ALL figured out ;)
  • Or, it could just be that RedHat is SGI's choice of Linux distros... that's what their ProPacks run on.

    -Chris

  • And where is NewTek's LightWave???? (Score:4)

    by chalsall ( 185 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:29AM (#914164) Homepage
    It continues to blow my mind that NewTek [newtek.com] still appear to have no plans in place to port their amazing LightWave [newtek.com] 3D rendering system to Linux. I hope this latest move will perhaps light a fire under NewTek.

    They have versions for NT, IRIX and Mac, and with a completely custom interface, porting would NOT be a problem. No "which GUI shall we use" type problems, since Lightware does all it's own UI.

    I encourage everyone who loves Lightwave to take this opportunity to write to NewTek and politely request a port. If you're in a buying position, point this out. They've always ignored such requests in the past, but they can't hold out forever.

  • It's not stupid at all. SGI has been a prime partner for Alias/WaveFront since at least the early '90s (when I first dealt with them). SGI's LINUX servers are coming pre-installed with (you guessed it!) Red Hat.

    This is a completely sensical path for both companies. SGI's been eaten away at the low end by Linux boxes, so they run with the GNU stampede that threatens to trample them. Alias is creating a port for their prime high-end partner. Expect Maya to be heavily GL based

    BTW: For those who don't remember, the Linux stance isn't SGI's first foray into the low-cost market. Back in 1990 , when they first released the Personal Iris, some people concluded that: if you bought a PI, threw the $3000 moniter out the window and paid for the window you still had the best CPU/$ ratio in the Unix market.

    That's what (accidently) launched them into the server market. Up until then they were Graphics Workstation gurus. The speed was just needed to run the display. The new market surprised their top engineers who were heard to mumble:
    "But, why would anyone want a headless SGI???"

  • Re:I have to agree with Linus (Score:3)

    by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:30AM (#914175) Homepage Journal
    Maya is already ported for linux with the render portion. So the render farm aspect is already there.
    Advances in linux clustering won't help much though. The way the renderer is writen, it won't scale well across multiple machines, only multiple procs on the same machine.

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