Linux in Special FX Research and Development

J.P. Lewis

www.idiom.com/~zilla

who is this guy?

  • Computer Animation and Immersive Technology Lab, IMSC/USC
  • Formerly Director of Software R&D, Disney TSL,
  • worked at Dream Quest (Mission to Mars), Centropolis (Godzilla), Industrial Light and Magic (Forest Gump, ...), Interval Research; algorithms used in several commercial packages
  • mathematical limits to software estimation (Slashdot: nov 01, jan 02)
  • Using Linux since 96, slackware v3.
  • 60% guy, 40% biscuit

assorted topics

  • FX culture, FX programming
  • FX shops transition to linux
  • Example of FX programming project
  • Virtual actors
  • Linux politics

Special Effects Culture

  • Business: going out of business, all the time.
  • Work hours and culture: 70hrs/week, like startups, but with little respect.
  • "FX programming must be cool": 95% of the work is file format translators
    • This year: algorithm published by academic group
    • 3-10 years from now: algorithm implemented by commercial software package
    • after that: FX programmers write translator to convert to/from the data format required by that algorithm.

Why Linux?

  • All "major" FX and animation houses except ESC are using Linux (or Linux+OS/X)
  • FX: Historically Unix
  • high-end graphics applications already available (Maya, softimage, houdini, renderman, mental ray, shake).

Computation

FX is one area where computer power is actually used.
  • Hour/Frame
  • Performance increase since 1980:
    • Moore's law: 2^(20/1.5) = 10085
    • Mflops ratio: current(100) vs VAX(0.1) = 1000
    • MIPS ratio: current(500?) vs VAX(1) = 500
    Overnight render vs. the IRS
    • N Shots, each 3-4 seconds => 100 frames
    • Each frame 2K x 1K pixels => 2 million pixels
    • Each pixel: shader code, several thousand instructions
    • : 200 million X 2000 instructions
    • IRS (guessing): 200 million people, 2000 instructions average for tax return.

Godzilla, Queue

Xfiles

Dalmatians, Virtual Actors

Three things I don't like about Linux

  • (What I like about linux: open, free, unix, rapidly developing)
  • Fanatical/hypocritical members of the community
  • Mission: 1985. 30 different window managers, but 0 attempts at a quicktime or realplayer clone (Linus: ~~the OS that owns the desktop owns it all~~?).
  • FUD, Don't know your friends.
    • Java
    • OS/X "Then last week we put OS X on a Titanium laptop. It blew our minds." - Searls and Simmons, Linux Journal