Industry of Change: Linux Storms Hollywood

A little over-dramatic. The industry change to Linux isnt nearly as kinetic as people want to make it sound. Sure - Maya, Shake, XSI, Houdini, etc. work in Linux -but where are the plugins? Where is all the support software we use on a daily basis, namely the Adobe software and countless others.

This article implies that we as an industry had just a slight brush with NT but decided we hated it and moved on. As though everyone started on Irix!

There are NUMEROUS visual effects houses in 'Hollywood' (the industry worldwide) who use NT and Windows 2000 religiously for visual effects because it works, the software is there now, and it's still a hell of alot cheaper than SGI.

Sure - I would prefer Linux, but to get the work done NOW we have to stick to alot of cross-platforming. The studio where I am a technical director uses 50 or so Macs, 20 NT machines for 3D, all Linux for the renderfarm, and all irix for servers / high end compositing (Inferno). This article reminds me of the expose' style article making it sound like a sweeping change. Watching Linux move into the industry from the front lines has been about as much fun as watching grass grow, I can attest.

Also - one correction - this article constantly refers to the "Softimage XSI Compositing Package"

What?

Softimage is 3D software - as old as Alias. XSI 2.0 has integrated some compositing facilities- but it is by no means a compositing package. This is well known by anyone who actually works with this stuff. This simple error makes me worry about the credibility of the article. And did Ray Feeney mention that his company's (Silicon Grail) compositing software - RAYZ has barely ever worked? It's great that someone is developing for Linux natively now and I am happy to hear it, but it has a long way to go. Rayz is a buggy piece of crap 2 versions into it.

In truth the industry has changed very little over the last several years. The big players like Dreamworks, ILM, Pixar, Rhythm and Hues, etc. have the privelege of using vast amounts of proprietary software all written in some flavor of UNIX. If Rhythm and Hues wants to move their animation package to Linux, they just tell the software development department to do so. It makes perfect sense for all of them to switch over - but for the MAJORITY of the industry, that is the rest of us who are not doing Star Wars Episode 2 and the next Pixar film, things are not moving so quickly - because we rely on third party vendors.

Also- did Pixar mention that they render on Sun with Solaris? and that they always have and continue to? They dont even use Linux on the back end - hard to use them as an example of the 'sweeping change'.

Check your sources next time and try to avoid being sensational. Dont hold your breath for things to change overnight.

SGI has supported Linux a lot and they have some of the best hardware out there, it's too bad that SGI should suffer as Linux makes a win.