Rendering Software Used In LoTR Goes Open Source

donglekey writes "The software used by Weta to output scenes to be rendered on the LOTR trilogy has been made open source under the Mozilla license. Called Liquid, it outputs from Maya to any Renderman compliant renderer. This is extremely good news as it may quickly become a standard in high end 3D, as well as greasing the wheels for Aqsis, a GPLed Renderman renderer."

Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr

[Karamchand]

Is Aqsis rewritten from scratch or did they somehow got hold e.g. of the BMRT code? If not - what happens with the BMRT code, will it simply be abandonned? If so this would be a sad reflection for our economy. Eliminating knowledge and intellectual property - that's bad :-/

Thanks for any insights you can give me.

Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free

[theefer]

> Cool. We got Blender. Next step, do we have free RenderMan compatible programs?

Nope, first step is to make Blender as good as Maya or at least 3DSM. And this should not be particularily easy ...

Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. We said that 30 years ago about computers playing chess.

We both know that Moore's law has held true and will probably hold true. In 15 years, computers may be 1,000 times faster - or more.

We all know how powerful the human brain is, but, in truth, it's just a computer. Typycal estimates put it at about 10,000 times more powerful than the fastest computers today (although making a comparision is extremely difficult and probably not very reliable).

No, CG is not photorealistic. But neither are paintings (brush strokes, anyone?). Most paintings are far from photorealistic, just because the best way to get photorealism is to TAKE A PHOTOGRAPH. Go watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and tell me that we're not getting close.

Not such a big deal

[sakusha]

I fail to see why this is such a big thing. Most production houses use MTOR, which is bundled with RenderMan Artist Tools. You still have to use Maya and Renderman. This is kind of like having a Ferrari that uses 130 Octane fuel, and you proclaim you've invented a new type of hose to get the fuel from the pump to the fuel tank. But it's still just a hose, and the Ferrari and the Fuel still do all the work.

Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is silly. Have you ever seen a true artist behind the wheel of his preferred software? He can do quite a lot. More, in fact, in my opinion, than the same person with a pencil or brush could do. At the very least, he can do it rememdously faster.

Plus - the goal is not photorealism, it's a method for creation ex-nihilo, my friend, probably as close to the concept of being Bob as is possible.

Re:Not all good news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't bitch about piracy. I think software pirates should be arrested and throwin in jail, just like any other thieves.

Please, please, no more CGI movies

[NineNine]

Rendering software is great and all, but it should be used only when needed. I personally can't stand to watch a movie that's 85% computer generated. It's flat. It's boring. It sucks, quite honestly. CGI is just a way for greedy movie studios to cut corners, and lazy directors to do things easier. The drawback: the look absolutely sucks.

Re:Hmmm

[GigsVT]

Open source and Linux gets the graphic geeks of the apple community on the open source train...

I don't know why you were modded down...

Anyway, what gets me is that Linux and open source are getting all these 3D tools, but we don't even have the 2D tools necessary to operate a prepress environment based on Linux yet.

So we have Gimp and Killustrator (or whatever they changed the name to after the lawsuit)... Gimp can't work in CYMK colorspace... I havn't tried Killustrator, but I doubt it comes close to the similar Adobe product.

We have nothing that does what Quark does... we have a barely maintained OPI daemon, no open source trapping software that I am aware of... etc.

The 2D prepress industry is probably many times larger than 3D... Why don't we have better software?

Re:Pleasant Endorsement

[mojowantshappy]

I wish that I could fully agree with you, but the fact is most of the general populace doesn't even know what open source means, nor would they use such a product like Liquid. This may be fairly positive for open source in the business environment, but for the the desktop user it means almost nothing.

Re:Not all good news...

[phatvibez]

This isn't true, there will always be paid
programming positions.

Even in a completely OSS world the scenerio would work out something like this...

Some Company uses someApp but they need additional functionality, they would hire programmers to do the work -or- use in house programmers to do it.

on top of that there is always going to be company specific in house software, which even if open sourced will be maintained in-house becasue likely it will have little use to the general public or even it's competitors.

OSS isn't the death of the software industry...it's just another way of looking at it.

Look at some of what's going on now...IBM, HP, SGI, Red Hat (and most of the other distro's) have paid programmers working on Linux or other OSS software.

And why does OSS mean fewer people getting paid for IT work? Last I checked runing a network and supporting users wasn't dependent on propriety software? does this mean if all software is OSS networks automatically just work and users all of the sudden no longer need help?

marketers are definetly out of a job! we all know OSS software sells itself!

Re:Hmmm

[Reziac]

Simple answer: 3D is kewl and hip. 2D prepress is that nasty boring commercial stuff.

I know this is a flip answer, but I suspect it's often closer to the mark than some would care to admit.

Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that movies that are 100% computer generated, like Toy Story, Shrek, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc ... suck?

No. The problem you have with computer animation is the way many studios put all of their money into CG and very little of it to finding a decent script and decent actors.

Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free

[HiThere]

Nope. This is a parallel operation. As soon as one part becomes open, those most interested in that start working on improving it. (I'm not claiming this is easy or quick. Merely that it starts happening.)
Simultaneously, the next tool that is needed to extend the chain of tools (possibly more than one) starts being worked on by those who are most interested in THAT.

At some point the chain of tools becomes complete, even though much of them need more polish. Then some people start using the entire chain of tools, so any glitches in the interfaces are worked on.

Then you just keep on improving everything. Well, differnt groups are improving each of the parts ... it's too much for anyone to hold the entire thing in their mind.

This keeps on forever, or until only maintenance is needed.

This whole process can happen faster if commercial entities subsidize it. But the licenses MUST ensure that the entire chain remains forkable at will.

Pixar's house style

[Animats]

What you're really complaining about, I expect, is Pixar's house style. All RenderMan, All the Time can get a bit wearing. Every pixel onscreen is generated by little texture programs written by somebody in Marin. Only Pixar does it that way. Everybody else uses more texture-mapped photos of real surfaces, reserving procedural textures for water, smoke, and such. Pixar also has a house style on lighting. There are no dark corners, unless a dark corner is key to the scene.

It's a stylistic choice. Pixar work is the tromp l'oeil of animation, where extreme detail is the norm. There are other styles. Shrek, a Dreamworks product, was also all-CG, but definitely didn't have the Pixar look. The Shrek team struggled with how photorealistic they should be; they ended up backing off a bit from photorealism. Final Fantasy, all CG from yet another team, had a totally different look from either Dreamworks or Pixar. Sadly, that team broke up after the picture flopped, due mostly to the bad plot.

Pixar/Disney has good stories. If they didn't, the rendering couldn't carry the film. Compare Lucasfilm, where the story and acting are weak, but the production design makes up for it.

Re: Not all good news...

[Black Parrot]

> I'm sure that all of the various programmers, IT people, marketers, etc. working at other companies that make rendering software aren't too happy. Another open sourced product means fewer people will get paid for IT related work. Imagine... a world where *nobody* gets paid for writing software! I don't know about everybody else, but I think that this really sucks.

IOW, "Halt progress because it's going to eliminate my cushy niche!" Nice to know that the Luddite movement is still alive and has an articulate spokesman.

It must have sucked to have been a sailmaker when the switch to steamships came around, too. Adapt or go extinct; the choice is yours, Ned.

Proof of the importance of open source

[Julian Morrison]

BMRT was a great program, Pixar's behavior towards it was destructive (if tactically necessary, from the standpoint of a corporation seeing a free competitor poised to eat their lunches). But in the end, BMRT died because it was not open source, because there was a single point of failiure conveniently avaiable to be attacked.

Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies

[Fembot]

I think it depends on the genre personally. For Sci-fi films cg is generaly good. For horror films, etc CG just doesnt scare me as much at all compared to phsycological effects... CG has it's place, but is no substitue for good actors and directors

Re:Proof of the importance of open source

[robson]

But in the end, BMRT died because it was not open source, because there was a single point of failiure conveniently avaiable to be attacked.

Do you say this because an open-source BMRT would have been open to public scrutiny, forcing Pixar to explicitly identify the infringing source code? Or because an open-source BMRT would have been well-distributed and dispersed, preventing the shutdown of a single distribution point?

I might buy the first argument, but not the second.

Re:povray's still the best

[jason_watkins]

when are you going to learn it's not the tool, it's what someone does with it. people do amazingly photorealistic painting in photoshop and the like all day, without the aid of a renderer simulating light transport. I mean, I'm not trying to say POV-Ray is so good that we can just forget about MR, PRman, Brazil and the like.

What matters is THE GOD DAMN RESULTS, and you can use whatever you want. This guy gets good results with POV-Ray. Far better than the 3 sphere's and checkboard plane crap 99% of people who pirate Maya can make.

Why Do You Think Jack Valenti is so Rabid?

[FreeUser]

I doubt that "the desktop user" is really the audience that the author has in mind.

That is, of course, unless rendering massive feature-film CG effects has become a cool thing to do at home.

That is the crux of the matter. It will only be a year or two before home computers are powerful enough for people to render home-made movies with CG effects to rival that of the latest Hollywood blockbusters.

With GNU/Linux, Blender, Liquid, Aqsis, Wings 3D, Film Gimp, Cinelerra, and other free software packages it will soon be possible for individuals to create feature length movies of blockbuster quality (though likely with much better story lines than much of the tripe eminating from Hollywood), and to distribute those movies on-line either as DVD iso images or xvid (mpeg4) avi files for world consumption.

A popular audio-video culture, where hobbiests create and share movies with one another the way free software enthusiasts do software today.

Suddenly Jack Velenti's rabid approach in trying to make it impossible to distribute content, any content (even your own) via the internet starts to make a lot more sense, doesn't it. They've grown used to the money and power that comes from controlling the media we see and hear, and nothing galls or freightens them more than the thought that we might have the freedom to ignore them and go somewhere else for our entertainment. This is why the RIAA seeks to destroy P2P, and it is why Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti want to turn every home PC into a governance police device (Microsoft's willingness to accomodate this has to do with their desire to displace the RIAA and MPAA as the gatekeepers of modern culture, such as it is, but that is a tangent for another day).