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Red Hat Software Businesses

Kaydara Announces FiLMBOX Support For Linux 49

Posted by Hemos from the portin'-time dept.
Chicken can run writes: "Kaydara announced Thursday in a press release the port of FilmBox to Red Hat Linux V6.2. FilmBox is a real-time character animation and motion capture system and was the software behind the groovy slow-motion camera fx in The Matrix. What is interesting is that it is the first such system to be available on Red Hat Linux, opening further the door to major 3D production oportunities on the OS."
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Kaydara Announces FiLMBOX Support For Linux More

Kaydara Announces FiLMBOX Support For Linux

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  • How can the port it to "Red Hat Linux"? Last I was aware, "Red Hat Linux" wasn't an operating system, just a distro. It's kind of funny to see that - until you realize that it will be distributed as RPM's that break on anything else but Red Hat and (likely) Mandrake (and possibly TurboLinux) - no SuSE for you!

    Personally, I think that it's stupid to port this stuff to Linux as long as it sags in the areas multimedia and real-time. This port would be better served for BeOS, where the latency for multimedia operations is much lower (and much more predictible). This isn't a flamebait against Linux, just a statement of the facts. Obviously they're looking for hype first before technological feasability.

  • Does this mean... (Score:4)

    by ERRoR 808 ( 204132 ) on Friday July 14, 2000 @05:04AM (#934307)
    Does this mean that we will see dirty, bearded, smelly, GNU hippies doing impossible feats like kung fu fighting, bullet dodging and absorbing, and jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper?
  • Where is Kaydara's website? If I understand this correctly you should be able to duplicate the efforts by using multiple still cameras placed in a row(circle, incline, etc.) and release the shutters simultaneously. The exposed (or digital) images are then placed back to back to create a seamless movement across the stage, with the actors(and all other motion) frozen. Kinda cool...

  • Hey, now i can render some REALLY cool 3d penguins!
    Where's the warez site for this?
    -Superb0wl
  • ...I have so many sarcastic comments I don't know which one use to use.

    I know! A new poll!

    [ ] This isn't freshmeat
    [ ] Hollywood loves Linux because it saves them money
    [ ] Imagine how many pictures you could take with a beowulf cluster of these thing
    [ ] It runs on a handheld! (150 external cameras not included)
    --
  • No. The Matrix is just a pathetic rip off of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. One of the coolest serials ever.

  • hypothetically, i'm making a movie... (Score:3)

    by tensionboy ( 115662 ) on Friday July 14, 2000 @05:08AM (#934312)
    and the most important thing to me in production will not be the actors, nor the script, nor locations, talent, creativity, or anything else. I'm just excited that I can do rip-off Matrix-like visual effects under LINUX.

    Uh, did SLASHDOT read this [slashdot.org] article?

  • They'll do even more impossible things than that (Score:4)

    by luckykaa ( 134517 ) on Friday July 14, 2000 @05:08AM (#934313)
    We'll see impossible feats like dirty, bearded, smelly, GNU hippies avoiding caffeine and moving teir eyes away from the screen. If the special FX budget can stretch to it, we'll see them eat food that isn't Pizza.
  • Linux is defiantly on the up at the moment,
    Corel soon to release some decent gfx apps,
    lots of games coming,
    good support from DB2,Oracle @co..
    it seems the 'real' world is looking at Linux as being more than a toy for geeks and a cheep web platform.
    if only someone would write a good dtp for Linux (I feel a source forge attack coming on).
    the only bad news in the article is that it used that 'RED HAT' phrase again..
  • With more software like this more people will use linux for Gaming and Film production environments. This will also create a better support for Video Cards so I hope more annoucements like happen so we can see a higher depand for linux video drivers
  • They download a copy of RedHat Linux 6.2. They port their software to RedHat Linux 6.2. They test only on RedHat Linux 6.2. They release RPMs.

    Now that the product is out the door, they will likely test on other distros, doing porting where necessary (different libs or locations, for instance). Anyway, that's what my company is doing.
    --
  • But seriously this is a great step forward to empowering smaller production crews. As 410themovie shows you dont need huge numbers of man hours to create cool special effects, and when tools like this start appearing for linux, and people realise just how cheaply they can have 200 celeron 500 boxes all rendering I think it will make a real impact for smaller studios... of course that's assuming that filmbox isn't too exorbitantly priced..

    Maybe when they say RedHat they mean it'll be bundled in the 2 zillion cd pack :) that they redhat sell for a few $

  • The point is that they're being lazy, and instead of using other, slightly harder solutions to the cross-distro problem (like Loki's excellent installer), they're just going for Red Hat for the name value. If they wanted to be technologically sound, they'd use something like the Loki installer.
  • I can't speak for Kaydara, but I know WE aren't being lazy. We want to use vendor-specific installs for each distro--but that requires work for each one. So the plan is: Do one, release. Do another, release. Do another, release.

    Yes, the choice of RedHat first is based on market share--what do YOU suggest? That they pick "Joe's Linux" first?
    --
  • It's all about support. When a production company shells out serious $$$ for a piece of software they expect it to work. The fact of the matter is that the software should work on just about any distro as long as the required deps are there. The software maker is just protecting their ass by only supporting the distro they designed the software to work with.
    -
  • That you pick Linux, not any distro. Once again, Loki is the example. Loki is not biased towards any distro, its products work on everything from Debian to Slackware to SuSE. In fact, several different distros already bundle demos or limited editions of Loki products (like Debian or Corel). Their excellent installer tool (open source, BTW) will take care of all instillation issues. They could have ported their games to "Red Hat Linux" and gotten name value. They didn't - they made the responsible choice and used a vendor-indifferent implementation.
  • The reason why this is important for linux users is not that we all really need this program. Nor that Linux is the best platform for 3d development (as Beos users would argue).

    This is useful to us because of advocacy issues. It has been a long time since we have given up the elitist atttude to linux. We need desktop users, commercial applications, and we need the publicity. If the commercial apps are crap, we won't use them anyway, but at least we get publicity off them.

    If this release seems to be a bit 'hyped' because they want to be seen as "redhat-linux friendly", then so be it. It can only help linux.

    My two cents.


    _______________________
    .sig not found

  • Cool (Score:2)

    by thedude ( 13214 )
    As someone who has used FiLMBOX on NT before, lemme tell ya.. WOOHOO!!!!! For as much as they claim that the deformation engine is threaded nad should be scaled over multiple processors, the looking I did revealed very little of that.. Though of course its hard to parallelize a deformation that's based on linear time data from a MoCap source. The point is that NT just didn't like FiLMBOX at all (BSOD's, driver crashes, odd OGL glitches) I blame part of it on the threading, part of it on NT and part of it on FiLMBOX.. Now that's it's ported to linux I have more control over the non-kaydera stuff and that makes me happy. Now, all I need is for them to support PVM and get large Beowulf with Myrinet interconnects...(Sorry.. It had to be said)
  • Redhat!=Linux

    What about people who use slackware, or even BSD? Will this program be GPL'd? If not will you bitch and moan and refuse a gift?
  • I'd like a link to more information on the Loki installer, I've never heard of it.

    However, I'll note that it STILL doesn't solve the problem of testing these different distros. No responsible business person is going to tell you "sure, we'll support it on Distro X" without testing it first.
    --
  • Gladly. Loki Setup is here [lokigames.com]. I'm attempting to propose that vendors of Linux applications shouldn't make any claims whatsoever about distrobution support and simply distribute their product in a distro-independent manner, much like Loki does. Nobody ever question's Loki's support of all distros, because they're not written to a specific one.
  • The newest addition to Red Hat's line of award-winning Linux operating systems features more powerful installation, support, availability and clustering capabilities critical to Internet infrastructures

    I see. So it's Red Hat's operating system now. Not Red Hat's distribution of _our_ operating system. Riiight.

    In fairness to RH, since there's no 'about RH' paragraph this isn't a joint press release and RH may not have had a chance to correct the text.

    On the other hand, some might say that this kind Linux^H Red Hat publicity != good.

  • I'm not refusing a gift, because the program ain't free. I'm flaming a commercial company for failing to provide a distro-independent program because they want the "Red Hat" name value.
  • "I'm attempting to propose that vendors of Linux applications shouldn't make any claims whatsoever about distrobution support..."

    Try all you like, it's not going to happen. Example: RedHat switched to glibc before other distros did (at 5.0, I think). So if I released a product for RedHat 5.0, I MEANT RedHat 5.0. It wouldn't work on Slackware 1.2.

    You could argue "well, they should say 'glibc' not 'RedHat'"--and that's exactly what my company does. We say "RedHat 6.0 (or greater) OR any 'equivalent' distribution", where "equivalent" means "libraries blah, foo and bar".

    But that STILL leaves aside testing. One of the absolute musts to do real testing is to have a baseline to compare against. So port your software to Distro X and test it. At that point you might as well release it. Then you can use that release the baseline for further tests.
    --
  • uh... yeah sorry.
  • it might be missing somthing, but how does a RPM break on different distros? like the dependancies might not work but --nodeps and you can be done with that. After that its just wether or not *your* system has the right libs, something you would have to do on any distro. Ive dealt with many rpms on my machine(which is a slakware box) and not had any troubles. So they are ignorant, get over it, Install it, and make a cool ass movie.

    /*
    *Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
    */

  • so, another port (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know much about Filmbox, but it's contribution to the Matrix was minimal. Primary tools for the Matrix were things like Maya, Softimage, Renderman, Cineon, Shake. Maya, Renderman and Shake are already on Linux. Cineon is dead, and Softimage is on the ropes. Most of the tools used to create movie vfx are being ported from SGI/Irix to Linux/FreeBSD/MacOSX since SGI has fallen way behind in the price/performance curve, and Microsoft hasn't been able to make NT the Unix killer they promised.
  • This port would be better served for BeOS, where the latency for multimedia operations is much lower (and much more predictible).

    I suspect if they already have an Irix flavor, accomplishing a "red hat" port would be a simpler undertaking than reworking it for BeOS, assuming that they could find developers experienced in porting apps to BeOS. I don't have a lot of experience with Irix, but wouldn't porting an app from Irix to Linux be fairly trivial. I suspect that the majority of the business cost would be in marketing and packaging, rather than development.

    The market may also play into their decision to port to Red Hat, rather than BeOS. SGI platforms have a fairly good adoption rate in entertainment/media production & HP and other vendors are releasing Linux boxen for content creation [hp.com] to compete with SGI. Is it possible that this port is an attempt at breaking into this market?

  • *THE* software behind the groovy effects (Score:3)

    by Ethelthefrog ( 192683 ) on Friday July 14, 2000 @06:08AM (#934334)
    Just to straighten the record a bit- saying that this was *THE* software behind the Matrix is not telling the whole story. The BulletTime sequences were shot using a large number of stills cameras, fired electronically. Unfortunately, each camera had its own trigger to shutter delay, resulting in hugely jerky images. Before anything could be done with them, they had to be smoothed, and extra frames inserted. This job was done by UK based Snell & Wilcox (for whom I worked at the time), with their technology called FloMo, which can very precisely measure the motion between frames and allow very sharp temporal interpolation. It was this that made the motion smooth, before any other effects, backgrounds, etc. were added. For the geeks amongst us, it is notable that Mr. Reeves' leg would pass through one of the pillars in the subway station if it was on screen at the time.... EtF.

  • Re:so, another port (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think you don`t realize what Kaydara role was in this movie. The software that made all the sequence where the camera rotated around a an action scene while it seemed freezed, much like in the GAP commercial was Kaydara`s FiLMBOX. The problem was that in The Matrix they wanted to have multiple cameras at different heights and it made it trickier to make those scene with other software so they opted for FiLMBOX. Without FiLMXBOX, maybe they couldn`t have made so many cool 360 shots of the action.
  • This guy actually makes a good point. The effects in the matrix include at least tens, maybee hundreds of types of effects technology. Much of it was actually done using meatspace camera techniques such as cables and the 150-camera arrays this chap mentions. One port of one of the many software packages used isn't going to be enough for you to do "matrix like" or "matrix quality" effects. The "slo-mo" effects are actually not the products of a software package, but are done with a 150 camera array and greenscreening.

    Not that this isn't a cool bit o software. Just don't run out and buy it thinking it does things it doesn't.

  • You're right, BeOS is more interesting - but has virtually no marketshare in high-end production (not that I don't wish it did). Linux has a long way to go before it's accepted for desktop production, shure (in fact it was only with v6.2 that we were able to get our threading going the right way). That said, we do have customers interested in it, and we certainly see POSIX compliancy as a step in the right direction.... Dan
  • "I'm just excited that I can do rip-off Matrix-like visual effects under LINUX."

    You can't, at least not by using this software package. It is a mocap-integration package, without much special effects potential on its own. So it does "realtime opengl render".. haha.. opengl render looks more like Quake than The Matrix. The site made no mentin of The Matrix on their brag list. They did make mention of The Weather Channel. We can now do weather-channel like effects under linux;)

    Read all about it at the Kaydara website [www.kaydar...argetblank].

  • ... because Houdini has been available on Linux for a while now. That's a high-class modeling/animation/rendering program that's been used in more movies than you can imagine.

  • For the geeks amongst us, it is notable that Mr. Reeves' leg would pass through one of the pillars in the subway station if it was on screen at the time....

    Screenshot?

    thanks!

    Szo
  • There has been a low-latency patch that enables Linux to match or beat BeOS for quite some time now. Linus wouldn't accept it becase it contained things he thought were too kludgy (and he may be right). At any rate, a new patch by Andrew Morton is being tested right now; it should be acceptable to Linus. It's coming, just be patient!
  • This is a major step forward for anyone who has done film or video motion capture work. The fact that is runs on Linux just makes it all that much easier to bring into a production environment where you already have SGI's, Suns, etc.

    FiLMBOX is a great tool...as with all effects work it's just another piece that makes the whole. You can't think in the box of "one computer/one software package does it all"; use the best of each to make the image on the screen. Use a Mac, use a PC, use a Linux box, use a BeOS box, then render it on an Alpha. As long as it works well, you can spend your time on the creative part of the image...and that's what people will remember in the end, not what you used to make it.
  • >Personally, I think that it's stupid to port
    >this stuff to Linux as long as it sags in the
    >areas multimedia and real-time. This port would
    >be better served for BeOS, where the latency for
    >multimedia operations is much lower (and much
    >more predictible). This isn't a flamebait
    >against Linux, just a statement of the facts.
    >Obviously they're looking for hype first before
    >technological feasability.

    From what I read, linux should work fine. After all, they probably ported in from Irix, which means a linux port is a no brainer.

    BeOS on the other hand has a few problems. First, they don't currently have OpenGL support. That's why I haven't upgraded to 5.0 yet. Second, they are making a lot of media companies nervous with all their talk about BeIA. That's why so many projects are on hold. If I were running a development project for BeOS commercially, I would probably put it on hold to.

    And the business about it being ported to red hat could mean that there are dependencies on the way Red Hat does things. It wouldn't suprise me if the sell the linux version only has part of a hardware bundle at first. That seems to be what most other large media software companies are going to do.
  • How many pieces of hardware do I need to buy to get the software I need? :)

    Secondly, libGL.so is perfectly present and functional in 5.0... if you don't mind losing your hardware acceleration. The new OpenGL is in beta testing.

    Thirdly, people who are getting nervous because of Be's moves towards the IA market haven't been listening closely enough. Be is commited to BeOS as the ultimate content creation (read: multimedia) platform for BeIA.

  • It is redhat's OS. They chose exactly which tools to include, which versions, and what configuration. Same as Slack is an OS, Mandrake is an OS, Suse is an OS, Debian is an OS, ... Linux isn't an OS, it's a kernel.

  • Although, in The Matrix, they did not use still cameras for this effect, which is'nt anywhere near new. They added to it by using movie cameras so that they could pan around the characters as they move. So instead of panning around a frozen character for example, they could pan around a moving character. It looked much better.
  • According to the making of Matrix they mainly used still cameras with a motion camera at the end. But what do I know

  • Linux support for Maya right now is only for the batch renderer (certified for RH 6.1). Starting with version 3.0 you can use across unlimited machines without needing more licenses. This is cool because it was released a short time ago for version 2.5 and they wanted $1300.00 a pop. They are coming out with Maya 3.0 for Mac OSX which should be a killer product too but no news yet about linux. :(

  • Re:It's not the first... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, Filmbox is not a modeler. It's a real-time motion-capture animation package, and it's in 3D, and it's 'high-end' (at over $30,000 US it better be high-end!).

    Anyway, I've -used- Filmbox, so I know what it 'really is'. It's AWSOME! I hope I can get a project that needs it so I can go buy a license.

    Regardless, I still stand on my previous point. Houdini is the first real 3D software available on Linux.

    -Toad

  • Of course, worldwide SuSE has the largest market share. Not in the US of course...
  • That sort of testing is trivial. The developers would know what to test and could run through the all the major distros in a week and a half for anything but a HUGE app.
  • My info is from the making of.

    Define a movie camera.

    They took multiple shots at very short, regular intervals, just like a real "movie" camera, except instead of these shots coming through one lens that pans around the object, they came through many lenses sequentually.

    I was led to beleive it was more than one shot per lens (more than one panning cycle), if so, this is my idea of a movie camera. The frame rate of individual cameras is irrelevent as all the cameras make up the virtual panning camera.

    If it was just one panning cycle, I am wrong.

  • I was under the impression that they were using stills for most of it and using the shots as key frames and animating between shots. they used more or less frames in between to regulate the speed. I need to go back and check it out. I could be mistaken.

  • I have only seen the making of twice, ages ago and may have assumed incorrectly.

    I'm intrigued now. :)

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