I was browsing http://www.cgtalk.com today, reading up on Siggraph 2003 and came across this snippet aparently taken from Maccentral, though I cannot find where exactly:
I'll give you guys the **BIG NEWS** that was announced yesterday at Apple's Shake Users' Event in San Diego.
First, Pixar announced that they're bringing prMan over to OS X and will have a beta sometime in August or September.
Second, Pixar announced that they'll be migrating over to... guess what... the Mac!
They based their decision on issues such as performance, code portability, X11 integration, development culture, vender dedication to the fim industry, app availability, audio/video friendlyness and capabilities.
In 1980 Pixar made its first short on a Vax running VMS. Then in the mid '80s they migrated over to Sun workstations running Solaris. In the late '80s - '90s they were running entirely SGI Irix workstations, and in 2000 they moved over to Intels running Linux. An NT migration would've meant exiting the Unix market. But apparantly they were also having issues with Linux such as universal cut & paste, issues synching sound with picture, I think he said color management and other problems. He (a Pixar VP) said that while none of the issues were show stoppers or significant on their own, and they could all be dealt with or worked around, taken as a whole they presented real problems for the company.
Moving to OS X let's them essentially recompile the core functionality of their entire code base without even bothering with higher level UI development. Once they're settled in, then they could port the UI from X to Aqua.
During his slide show, the Pixar VP of something was about to present a list of why they'll be switiching to the Mac. But RIGHT at that time Keynote crashed out, drawing sarcastic applause from the audience. The timing just couldn't be worse. I think it may have been some kind of data corruption in one of the elements in the frame that crashed Keynote if you went BACK to the page from the next page. So from then on the presenters made sure not to go BACK to that particular frame.
Then a Hollywood-based motion design studio called Yu+Co showed their reel and the type of work they do on Shake. Their projects included The Hulk, Italian Job, X-Men2, and many others.
Then another company whose name I don't remember showed some shots of the sequel to Starship Troopers. This particular demonstration of Shake's expansion capabilities was quite impressive. They exported footage from Maya maintaining all the "DOD" data (if anyone knows what this is, let me know... a buncha visual fx artists from work had no idea today) when they used in Shake to create 3D ambient & spot lights. The guy, who had previously used Shake only on a dual AMD box, created a light which he could position anywhere in the scene, including in front, behind, or within the insect. The light behaved just as it would in a 3D environment! He had control over its color temperature, spread, intensity, diffussness, etc... it was quite impressive. He even made a little comment "I've only used this on my dual AMD, this is the first time I've used Shake on a Mac and it's quick [as he's moving the light around the insect]. Yes, my box doesn't do it nearly this fast."
Plus a nice RenderMan OSX screenshot:
All sounding pretty sweet if you ask me!
I'll give you guys the **BIG NEWS** that was announced yesterday at Apple's Shake Users' Event in San Diego.
First, Pixar announced that they're bringing prMan over to OS X and will have a beta sometime in August or September.
Second, Pixar announced that they'll be migrating over to... guess what... the Mac!
They based their decision on issues such as performance, code portability, X11 integration, development culture, vender dedication to the fim industry, app availability, audio/video friendlyness and capabilities.
In 1980 Pixar made its first short on a Vax running VMS. Then in the mid '80s they migrated over to Sun workstations running Solaris. In the late '80s - '90s they were running entirely SGI Irix workstations, and in 2000 they moved over to Intels running Linux. An NT migration would've meant exiting the Unix market. But apparantly they were also having issues with Linux such as universal cut & paste, issues synching sound with picture, I think he said color management and other problems. He (a Pixar VP) said that while none of the issues were show stoppers or significant on their own, and they could all be dealt with or worked around, taken as a whole they presented real problems for the company.
Moving to OS X let's them essentially recompile the core functionality of their entire code base without even bothering with higher level UI development. Once they're settled in, then they could port the UI from X to Aqua.
During his slide show, the Pixar VP of something was about to present a list of why they'll be switiching to the Mac. But RIGHT at that time Keynote crashed out, drawing sarcastic applause from the audience. The timing just couldn't be worse. I think it may have been some kind of data corruption in one of the elements in the frame that crashed Keynote if you went BACK to the page from the next page. So from then on the presenters made sure not to go BACK to that particular frame.
Then a Hollywood-based motion design studio called Yu+Co showed their reel and the type of work they do on Shake. Their projects included The Hulk, Italian Job, X-Men2, and many others.
Then another company whose name I don't remember showed some shots of the sequel to Starship Troopers. This particular demonstration of Shake's expansion capabilities was quite impressive. They exported footage from Maya maintaining all the "DOD" data (if anyone knows what this is, let me know... a buncha visual fx artists from work had no idea today) when they used in Shake to create 3D ambient & spot lights. The guy, who had previously used Shake only on a dual AMD box, created a light which he could position anywhere in the scene, including in front, behind, or within the insect. The light behaved just as it would in a 3D environment! He had control over its color temperature, spread, intensity, diffussness, etc... it was quite impressive. He even made a little comment "I've only used this on my dual AMD, this is the first time I've used Shake on a Mac and it's quick [as he's moving the light around the insect]. Yes, my box doesn't do it nearly this fast."
Plus a nice RenderMan OSX screenshot:
All sounding pretty sweet if you ask me!
