__/ [ The Ghost In The Machine ] on Wednesday 21 June 2006 16:00 \__
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, John Bailo
> <jabailo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:19:13 -0700
> <nqmdnT-ZdvdsbwXZnZ2dnUVZ_qudnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>> Linux in high-end production work...
>>>
>>> Challenging Special Effects Drive Pixar's 'Cars'
>>
>> Talk about advocates being wrong...aren't the MacMorons and Windiots
>> always touting something that will make them the "next big thing" in
>> Hollywood.
>>
>> Yet, year after year, the block busters use Linux.
>
> I suspect this is a back-end server rendering effort,
> aka Beowulf-like cluster, or merely a rendering farm
> structured on reliable, standard server software.
>
> The desktops don't need nearly this much reliability,
> but they do need to talk to the backend. :-) Either
> Windows or MacOSX would work in that effort, along with
> Linux desktops, of course, for those few (unfortunately)
> who wish to use them.
That is actually quite true:
,----[ Quote ]
| Like many other users, Brandeau and his team found salvation in a SAN.
| Pixar eventually opted to replace the NFS with a SAN based on an EMC CX700
| box, linked to Dell Linux servers running parallel file system software
| from startup Ibrix.
|
| The new system, which was deployed last year, has helped cut Pixar's
| rendering times to their previous levels, while keeping hardware costs
| to a minimum. "We only have eight little Linux boxes that are serving
| up that data. We believe strongly that commodity hardware with lots of
| heads is the way to solve this problem."
`----
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=92075
This doesn't mean, however, that in due time, Pixar will refuse to integrate
the front end with the back end. They do, after all, need to get some
previews while modelling, before the high-resolution, brute-force stages
begin. Linux on the desktop has matured sufficiently. And Blender 3-D (as
well as Ubuntu Linux, The GIMP and so forth), if not a binary port of Maya,
have been demonstrated by the Blender team in Elephants Dream.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
4:35pm up 54 days 21:49, 12 users, load average: 0.43, 0.59, 0.51
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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