movie=two-towers: saw it last night; thumbs up...way up. as i'm sure
all of you know, linux played a big role in the LOTR. here is a brief
article of interest:
Linux: Lord of the network
Breaking news
Today's top networking news.
By Phil Hochmuth
Network World Linux in the Enterprise Newsletter, 12/17/01
When you’re at the movies this week for the premiere of "Lord of the
Rings: Fellowship of the Rings," keep in mind that your favorite open
source server operating system played a big part in bringing J.R.R.
Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to life on the big screen.
That’s because Weta Digital, the New Zealand-based special effects
company that worked on the film, used a cluster of 200 Linux servers to
carry out the most compute-intensive tasks, such as combining computer
animation, special effects and live-action footage into a single digital
video image.
The Linux machines at Weta are dual 1GHz Pentium III boxes running Red
Hat 7.0. Special software developed by Pixar - the special effects
studio which made "Toy Story" and "Monsters, Inc." - divided large video
image files up frame by frame for the cluster of Linux machines to render.
Weta chose Linux over rival machines from Silicon Graphics (SGI), a
longtime leader in high-end graphics and animation software, because of
the 10:1 price ratio the Linux systems offered, and the comparable
performance, said Weta CTO Jon Labrie.
Weta also use Linux PCs for artist workstations - machines on which the
actual animation and special effects were added into the film. Linux
again replaced SGI workstations, as well as desktops from Apple, another
longtime-supplier to the graphics and post-production industries.
SOURCE: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/linux/2001/01156783.html
here is another article of interest:
http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=pageone&article_no=1344&page=1
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Received on 12/19/02
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