[linux-help] [Fwd: Disney Shifting to Linux for Film Animation]

[Joseph L Weaver <jlweaver@xxxxxxx>]

I received this from a friend and thought I would pass it on.  
Larry Weaver

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Disney Shifting to Linux for Film Animation
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:13:05 -0500 (DST)
From: "Don Hawkinson" <dwhawk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "Don Hawkinson" <dwhawk@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "distribution
list                                                                            
      
D.Hawkinson                                                                     
                          
" <dwhawk@xxxxxxxxxx>

Disney Shifting to Linux for Film Animation
June 18, 2002
By STEVE LOHR

http://partners.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/technology/18LINU.html

 The Walt Disney Company, the doyen of animation studios, is
joining 
Hollywood's embrace of a technological upstart Ä the GNU Linux 
operating system.

 Disney's animation division is announcing today that it plans
to 
use  Hewlett-Packard workstations and data-serving computers
running 
Linux for digital animation work in the future.

 The Disney move is the latest commitment by major studios and 
special-effects houses Ä including DreamWorks SKG, Pixar
Animation 
Studios, Industrial Light and Magic and Digital Domain Ä to
Linux, 
which is a variant of the Unix operating system that is
distributed 
free and under terms that allow programmers to fine-tune the 
software.

 Movie animation is a rarefied niche market for computer
technology. 
The studios have deep pockets, legions of technical experts and 
plenty of financial incentive to get just the right look and
detail 
in movies like "Shrek" and "Monsters Inc.," since the payoff for
a 
box-office hit can be enormous.

 Yet the advance of Linux into Hollywood is a sign that a
technology 
once viewed as part of the counterculture of computing is moving 
steadily into the mainstream. "Hollywood is at the leading edge
of 
computing, and it shows what Linux can do," said Martin Fink, 
general manager for Hewlett-Packard's Linux systems division.

 At Disney, like other studios, machines running Linux typically 
take the place of computers running proprietary versions of
Unix, 
like SGI's Irix software. Not only is the Linux software free,
but 
it runs on low-cost personal computer technology, workstations
and 
data-serving computers powered by  Intel or  Advanced Micro
Devices 
microprocessors. "For us, it's a move to less-expensive
commodity 
technology systems," said John Carey, vice president for Walt
Disney 
Feature Animation.

 In animation, Linux made its first inroads a few years ago on
the 
clusters of server computers used in "rendering farms," which 
require huge amounts of processing to render a finished image of
a 
creature or character as it appears on movie screens.

 More recently, Linux has also been used on the workstations
used by 
animators for drawing and modeling their creations, as the
leading 
producers of animation software have tailored their applications
to 
run on Linux. Alias-Wavefront tweaked its Maya program to run on 
Linux in March 2001, after it had been approached by animation 
studios and special-effects houses that wanted to use the Linux 
technology, according to Kevin Turesky, an engineering manager
at 
Alias-Wavefront, a software subsidiary of SGI.

 Linux tends to be portrayed as an archenemy of  Microsoft and
its 
Windows operating system. In the long run, the rise of an 
alternative like Linux will limit Microsoft's future growth and 
market dominance. But in the near term, as the Hollywood
experience 
shows, Linux is gaining at the expense of proprietary versions
of 
Unix.

 "Historically, animation has been a Unix environment," said Al 
Gillen, an analyst at the International Data Corporation. "And 
what's happening in Hollywood is that another piece of the Unix 
market is moving into the Linux space."

 Indeed, Mr. Carey observed that adopting Linux for part of its 
animation was part of its migration strategy to move away from
its 
previous "homogeneous technology environment," revolving around 
SGI's Irix.

 The Disney commitment is the second agreement in recent months
for 
Hewlett-Packard systems running Linux in Hollywood. In January, 
Hewlett-Packard announced a three-year partnership with
DreamWorks 
involving the purchase of Hewlett computers and some joint 
development of technology.

 Hewlett-Packard, to be sure, has a heritage of doing business
with 
Hollywood and Disney. The first product the founders William
Hewlett 
and David Packard sold in 1938 was to Disney, an oscillator used
to 
help produce the rich, textured soundtrack for the animated
movie 
"Fantasia."



Don Hawkinson   
dwhawk@xxxxxxxxxx

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