More on LoTR Special Effects

sushi writes: "Another LoTR article: this one focusing on the technology used at Weta Digital (the CG shop). Interesting that they are undertaking "major" R&D into running more Linux, and that Linux "delivers about two times the price performance compared to systems running proprietary operating systems". I've been lucky enough to have seen inside this place, and it's cool to see a render-wall of linux boxen. Full story from a New Zealand newspaper." We linked to another good article about WETA a month ago.

Interesting, isn't it?

[Astral Traveller]

Linux has started to become the platform of choice for extremely complex and involved multimedia production, powering enormous render farms and video storage RAID arrays, yet still, Linux falls on its face for mundane day-to-day productivity work. Linux can render the incredibly lifelike texturing and animation exhibited in "Monsters Inc." and "Titanic", yet it can't even open a simple Word document without formatting errors. While delivering superior performance rendering these intensely detailed and hard-wrought movie scenes, Linux stills falls short of Windows when playing Quake. How did we get into this perplexing state of affairs?

I'll tell you why -- good old fashioned ego. Whereas the low end (kernel developers, compiler writers, etc.) and high end (clustering software, 3D modelling and rendering, etc.) of development is led by strong, well-organised teams of well-trained developers with vision and understanding, the middle ground of the Linux is polluted with warring egos that suffer too much from the problematic NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. There are a myriad of competing, mutually incompatible yet separately inadequate office suites (Star Office, KOffice, Applix,...), desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, CDE, UDE, ROX,...), and X servers (XFree86, MetroX, XiG). We can't even decide [cups.org] on a [lprng.com] printing system [ghostscript.com]! I realize that, according to Eric S. Raymond's famous "Cathedral and Bazaar" text, that open-source software is primarily written to scratch an itch and get peer recognition, but this is taking it too far. If all the man-hours poured into KDE and GNOME were combined into a common vision, we would have one perfect end-user desktop, instead of two poor imitations of Windows.

Don't give me the old "competition" argument either. There is only one Linux kernel, which seems to progress just fine without another competing project nipping at its feet and instigating flamewars. The endless KDE vs. GNOME, Applix vs. StarOffice, and other feuds have wasted more productivity than would be gained by and competitive drive.

I, for one, am somewhat miffed that while my operating system powers Hollywood blockbusters and NASA supercomputers, it still can't fully replace Windows on my office desktop. Linux is growing up; its users need to grow up with it, shed their egos and work towards the common goal of creating an excellent working environment.

CGI with Maya on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

With SGI's announcement that they are supporting Linux on the new Visual
PC does anybody know if Alias is going to port MAYA onto the Visual PC
but running Linux ? The MAYA renderer should be easy to port as it
requires no graphics capability.

I am thinking of setting up a MAYA render farm and my preferred
platforms would be the Visual PC running Linux. I am VERY wary of using
NT which has an appalling reputation for unstability, requires far more
support than Linux, is subject to multiple upgrades/service packs and
has VERY poor performance under load. Linux would provide superior
through-put, superb stability/reliability and also integrate very well
and easily into my otherwise SGI dominated setup.

Anybody else interested in a MAYA renderer port to Linux ?

Please do not reply if you are trying to tell me how good NT is - the
growth of Linux in comparision to NT tells me what I need to know - even
with Microsoft spending millions of dollars advertising NT its sales are
only comparable with Linux sales - virtually unadvertised compared to
NT.....

Ironic

[gnarly]

Weta is gathering material from its archives for use in The Fellowship of the Ring DVD release

Weta has a "major" research and development effort under way at the moment into running more Linux-based workstations.

Ironic that Linux was used to make this movie & DVD but Linux users would be prevented [slashdot.org] (in the US) from distributing the software to watch the movie.

What rendering software are they using?

[Ryu2]

The two articles didn't say. Are they using PRMan, or something else? Or are they using their own proprietary renderer, a la PDI/Shrek?

It's big... reliability is important.

[Penguinoflight]

People mess with me because I run token ring at home. I agree that it's probably not the best choice, but hey, it was free. However, on a huge network like this, (did I see 1000 boxes?) Token ring would clearly outperform ethernet, and Token ring is quite reliable. Not to mess with your +2 funny though.

For rendering, the OS barely matters

[Animats]

Rendering farms have no user interface at all; they're like hosting farms. All you need is enough of an OS to run the rendering app and talk to the net.

The main reason not to run a Microsoft OS for a farm of anything is that it's getting harder and harder to turn the resource-wasting crap off.

I just found my own NT application loading Internet Exploder whenever I bring up a file open dialog. As soon as you call for a common dialog, an incredible amount of crap gets loaded and three more threads start up within your app, doing who knows what. It looks like the file browser in the open box uses IE.