Originally posted by MasterX (OSiX)
That's the most relivent reply I've ever gotten. I agree in most parts, and rather than do a point by point I'll try to comment on the key things I recall.
Thanks. I'll take it as a compliment.
The Apple Graphics Card would need to still appease gamers and the like. So the 'consumer' version would need good graphics performance. Since they would be using a simmilar GPU in the pro card it would share the powerful real tiem 3D performance it and OpenGL (ideally 2.0 or nVidia's Cg) would have. Also have you ever seen Pixar's workstations in action? They use relatively low detail while animating, if Apple's GPU could provide a polygon render for some of PRman's ray trace functions (cloth physics for example) that would be a good reason for Pixar to invest in such a thing.
I agree 100%. If we're going to be realistic about this here Apple has to use the trickle down theory for the consumer card if they don't want to go belly up on this little endevour. Gamers will spend dollar upon dollar on framerate so it's good if there's the possibility for them to jump on.
As far as Pixar is concerned, part of the reason that they animate with such a low level of detail is that it's important for them to focus on what's really important for the task at hand. So if one of the TD's has set up and IK chain that he needs a walk cycle on, it's very unlikely that the animator needs to see the eye animation (which another animator further down the chain will handle anyway). He just needs the skeleton as well as rough mesh approximating the body. Also, not to split hairs but renderman isn't a raytracer or a radiosity renderer either. It's a raycaster. Very different animals. Also cloth physics tend to be dynamic simulations which aren't very render specific, unlike hair and lighting. Where graphics performance is important here is that during simulation you can rip more triangles to the screen and increase your "frame rate."
Another thing is that given Jobs position in both Apple and Pixar I doubt that Pixar will pay for any apple equipment that might fall into their laps. As someone pointed out earlier Apple needs renderman support for the xserve's to make any kind of sense. I'm not 100% sure but I think that BMRT (A free renderman compliant raytracer and radiosity render) is being ported from Unix to X which is a start. Let's face it the render was writen on unix for unix, was ported to Nextstep, was ported to Win32. It's already running on X...just not openly yet.
As for rendering and whatever a "2K 10bit log file" is Apple doesn't claim to be leader in that feild at all. If apple made a computer for a render farm it would probably be a G5 with 4 cross bar CPUs in a parallel or quad config (8-16 CPUs per system) and as we know the G5 is far away.
Maybe the log comment was a bit obscure. 10bit log just refers to digital film formats like Cineon and DPX. 10 bit refers to the bitdepth of the file and log refers to the fact that the colorspace in the file is not linear, but logrythmic mimicking the "S" shaped exposure curve of when an iris opens and closes. Cineon and DPX are the standard file format for digital effects and online work in high resolution.
My point was that if apple wants to become a leader in this field they need to be able to supply the market with a system that is capable of certain requirements. One of those requirements is the ability to playback highresolution film sequences uncompressed and in real time. This is mainly a bus issue for Apple which I tried to point out. Also I don't think Apple need to be a leader in rendering. Let's face it Intel and AMD aren't exactly going to go away and Apple's current position on Linux and open source is "happy co-exsistence" so why not render on ultra-cheap PC hardware and do the artist work on the artist's machine?
As far as multi-processor machines is concerned I say bring it on but Apple needs to be looking at IO issues. IE how much can I push through the pipe at one time. Mem to GFX thresholds - stuff like that. As I said before it so important for apple to realise that the machine is currently like a funnel. We have a huge number of taxing calls we're making on the systems and everything get's funneled through a pipe a quarter as small as it should be. Think of trying to push a tennisball through a straw.
Final Cut Pro is not in the same feild as Shake so Apple does have what you could consider a 'pro' tool there. Once the high end compositing and special effects are done, FInal Cut makes an excellt tool for finishing your project, although I'm sure compared to Cinema Tools there are much better things. Final Cut was really born for lower end movies and for higher end TV producitons. Look at something like StarWars Episode II for example. That could've been edited in Final Cut, except for the fact that they made it in high-def cinema which is some insane resolution only Pixar, ILM, and Skywalker Ranch want to deal with.
Well FCP is a post tool and a LOT of people want to say that it's going to be the next Avid... and they're probably right just not yet. But it's still a machine that you use to edit or "offline" a show before you do the effects and finnishing which is commonly referred to as "online" or in case of features "Digital Intermediate." I don't really agree that FCP was born for the low end. I think Apple saw that there was a hole in the mid to high end editing market and is trying to fill it.
Yep EP2 could have been edited in FCP with no problem, and actually it doesn't really matter that they shot the whole thing in HighDef because if they did want to edit in FCP for example they could have downconverted the tapes to DigitalBetacam or even DVCAM and edited in that resolution. Then when they had finalised the cut they could have reconformed the source material from the HDCAM tapes using Final Cut and the Cinewave HDIO card and taken in everything in 1920x1080_24P and pushed it out to the 3D workstations. So in theory and practice it was totally possible. And it's not just the Lucas people that work in HD. I work in HD every other day and it's a joy.
The fact of the matter is that FCP is offline. For 90% of Muisc Videos, Commercials, Features and whatever the finnishing touches are put on in an Inferno/Flame/Fire or IQ/Henry/Editbox or in a Linear suite. FCP is regarded as an editing tool although some do finnish on it - just not in my business.
As for SG and NR's products going to Apple I think we'll just have to wait and see what they do. From your information I can guess that they're update the 2 apps, as well as a cross-complience system for Final Cut (allowing for project sharing of course). Later I would think Apple would Macintosh-izize the products, as they did with DVD Studio Pro.
Nothing real was really close to finnishing up an Uncompressed finnishing system based on Shake called "Tremor" that was soley based on Wintel equipment. The major missing parts of Tremor IMHO was a timeline interface for tweaking the edit while you were working on the effects. One super cool alternative would be if Apple finnished off this work on Tremor making it an Apple only tool with realtime HD input/output as well as background rendering via Xserve or Linux and combined most of the nicer features from Rayz into the package with hooks to FCP for editing. Could be really killer.
But I think you're right we'll just have to wait and see.
Chris
