Very Computer

Around Feb 10, 1998, Altavista.Digital.com's main page showed a
newsflash about the use of Alpha hardware for creating special effects
in the movie 'Titanic' (done by a company named Digital Domain).  The
link pointed to an article discussing how Alpha was the fastest
hardware to run their rendering jobs. There was very little mention of
the software, but at the end of the article there was a table like this:

        Hardware           Software               OS
        DEC Alpha       (..don't remember..)    Windows NT

Curiously, clicking on the NT link brought up a Digital Unix page.

I (and many others) wrote to the webmaster at Altavista pointing out
the factual inaccuracy, referring them to an article by Darryl Strauss
of Digital Domain (http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue46/2494.html) describing
how Linux was their main platform, and requesting that a mention of
Linux be included on their page.

Frankly, I didn't expect much of this, but _LO_AND_BEHOLD_ the next day (Feb 12)
their main WWW page said:

  Movie blockbluster "Titanic" special effects owe it all to Alpha and LINUX.

Yay, I said, and saved the page. Good thing I did, because it was gone
sooner that you could say "New Technology". I have a proof, though (the
above is a cut-n-paste from my copy).

Clearly the corporate PR decided (maybe even with help from Redmond)
that this would be too much exposure for Linux, and took down the
page. Now there is no mention on Altavista of Alpha's role in 'Titanic'
production, whatsoever. A pity, because SGI got quite a lot of mileage
out of the role they had in production of "Jurassic Park"; it seems that
DEC PR decided to bury it because of the inconvenient Linux element.

This story's echoes of Orwell's '1984' are uncanny---Ministry of Truth
changed the reality again.

        Greetings
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                        .. and for spam extractors, FCC Commisioners' email is:

More than likely, the "software" used was NewTek's LightWave 3D, the
same software used on Babylon 5, Hercules, Xena, and now even Star Trek:
Voyager. It has been getting to the silver screen lately as well.

LightWave 3D runs under Alpha NT, as well as Intel NT/95, SGI, Solaris
2, and PowerMacs. Since rendering is a CPU-loaded application, the
Alphas provide the most power (in terms of rendering frames per second).

It does NOT run under Linux. I have no idea what Digital Domain uses
Linux for, but they _do_ use LightWave.

--
======================================================================
Brian O'Neill - Director of Computing, Computer Science (978) 934-3645

Acting Postmaster

: Movie blockbluster "Titanic" special effects owe it all to Alpha and LINUX.

While this may have been closer to the truth than the original web page,
it was still incorrect and therefore a candidate for removal. Both Linux
and WinNT were used, it was not all Linux.

Tony
--
------------------
Tony Tribelli

[But then again, had they all been NT, the still wouldn't have "owed
it all" to any single effects house. Digital Domain was "selected to
produce a large number of extraordinarily challenging visual effects
for this demanding file." (LJ 2/98) Even a "large number" is not all,
nor even necessarily close to it. Still, it does say much for both
Linux and Alphas.]

This would not be a good .advocacy post without some paranoid hypothesizing:
perhaps this reflects on Compaq's dedication to Alpha. Maybe Compaq's hardware
folks are out to kill what they see as competition from the Alpha camp --
goodness knows I have not been impressed with the Compaq i386 + NT
servers I've had to deal with. ;-) Also note that folks are hyping the value
of DEC's consulting business (see the UNIX/NT "gears" ad in the trade mags)
yet the f/x shop made a huge cluster and used it with some SGI/IRIX and
NT boxes w/o any help from DEC. I get the impression that even the machines
in the cluster were clones, not AlphaStations. So the only folks at DEC that
look good here are the CPU/mb designers. No pitches for Digital UNIX (quite the
opposite) and info about how to build an AlphaServer-kill for fairly little money.
Did I mention that one of the hyped values of DEC is its clustering expertise?

-Peter

----------------------------------------------------------------
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-        Technology is only as good as the good it does.       -
----------------------------------------------------------------

This doesn't tell the whole story. People seem to assume that because Linux
was involved, that it was the only product in the entire production.

In fact, there were a number of different companies involved in the
production of "Titanic": Digital Domain, Blue Sky/VIFX, POP Film, Banned
From the Ranch, Matte World Digital, Cinesite, Light Matters Inc., Vision
Crew Unlimited, Hammerhead Productions, Donald Pennington Inc., Rainmaker
Digital Pictures, Todd Ao Digital Images, Perpetual Motion Pictures Pacific
Title Digital, Digiscope, The Post Group, Title House, House of Moves, CIS
Hollywood, and Industrial Light & Magic were all involved.

Lightwave on NT was used, and Softimage too. Since Softimage is available
only for NT and for SGI, I guess Linux wasn't involved with that. I'm not
sure what Linux was actually used for, but there are many components to SFX,
including the creation of the effects, rendering to frames, and compilation
of the frames to motion picture, so Linux could have been used in aspects
other than creation of the FX.

Incidentally, the movie that is considered to have had the most special
effects ever is Starship Troopers, and the bulk of the SFX was done on
Softimage...

Graeme

I'm surprised that someone hasn't already pointed this out to you.

rr

Quote:>>  Movie blockbluster "Titanic" special effects owe it all to Alpha and LINUX.

>>Yay, I said, and saved the page. Good thing I did, because it was gone
>>sooner that you could say "New Technology". I have a proof, though (the
>>above is a cut-n-paste from my copy).
>>it seems that
>>DEC PR decided to bury it because of the inconvenient Linux element.
>What seems odd is they could have rewritten it to take the OS information
>out entirely -- did SGI ever mention IRIX? Well, OK, that's all the purple
>boxes could run... but DEC could push this as pure Alpha hype and pacify
>both Redmond and the Linux users by ignoring the fact that DEC's and MS's
>OSes were not up to*for serious clustering.
>This would not be a good .advocacy post without some paranoid hypothesizing:
>perhaps this reflects on Compaq's dedication to Alpha. Maybe Compaq's hardware
>folks are out to kill what they see as competition from the Alpha camp --
>goodness knows I have not been impressed with the Compaq i386 + NT
>servers I've had to deal with. ;-) Also note that folks are hyping the value

It would interest me very much to see some concentrated documentation
of this Titanic-Linux case.

There are quite a few parallel cases at the moment:  

* the Unix *ism of SGI, whose programs natively compile on Linux
but are not allowed to see the Linux world because SGI has signed a
deal with M$.
* Siemens rudely pushing NT, by requiring subcontractors to use it even in
places that are of no concern to Siemens.  This is politics, and in return
for this they get cheap service guarantees from M$.

In all these cases, two companies, one of which is M$, each improve
their position at the expense of third parties, who have to pay in
order to adapt to the unpublished proprietary standards pushed on them
by the deal of the big players.

What other cases of this type are known?

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                        .. and for spam extractors, FCC Commisioners' email is:

: >
: > : Movie blockbluster "Titanic" special effects owe it all to Alpha and LINUX.
: >
: > While this may have been closer to the truth than the original web page,
: > it was still incorrect and therefore a candidate for removal. Both Linux
: > and WinNT were used, it was not all Linux.
:
: The Linux render farm was, by definition, 100% Linux.
:
: I'm surprised that someone hasn't already pointed this out to you.

Bad interpretation, a name used to describe a farm could merely describe
the most common component, it does not necessarily suggest a "pure"
environment. The Titanic render farm does not appear to be a pure Linux
render farm. I know how you hate to read things that don't cheerlead Linux
twice so I'll condense this quote, I just posted it to another thread in
this newsgroup if your interested:

    The rendering for Titanic was primarily done on 187 Carrera Alpha's
    mostly running Linux and some running Windows NT.
    For Linux ...
    On Digital Unix ...
    For the Windows NT portion ....

    Bruce Faust
    Founder
    Carrera Computers
    and "Honorary Render Farm Roadee of Digital Domain"

Tony
--
------------------
Tony Tribelli

Quote:>same software used on Babylon 5, Hercules, Xena, and now even Star Trek:
>Voyager. It has been getting to the silver screen lately as well.

>LightWave 3D runs under Alpha NT, as well as Intel NT/95, SGI, Solaris
>2, and PowerMacs. Since rendering is a CPU-loaded application, the
>Alphas provide the most power (in terms of rendering frames per second).

>It does NOT run under Linux. I have no idea what Digital Domain uses
>Linux for, but they _do_ use LightWave.

Anthony D. Tribelli <a...@netcom.com> wrote:

[ watch the posting date, and consider that _still_ how much FUD is being
  injected ...]

also note that the whole Linux installation/support thing was apparently
done by a single person, wondering how many NT people that would take. Not
to mention that he also has found a bug in the Linux/Alpha kernel and has
fixed it on the spot. With NT i fear they would have missed this year's
Oscar nominations ;)

-----Forwarded message from Daryll Strauss <daryll>-----

Message-ID: <19980107185209.60060@jolt>
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 18:52:09 -0800
From: Daryll Strauss <daryll>
To: alph...@listserv.mke.ra.rockwell.com
Subject: Digital Domains use of Linux on Titanic
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.85
Organization: Digital Domain

I felt like I needed to address some of the comments Grant has made
about our Linux Alpha cluster. I'm trying to avoid this becoming a flame
war and instead just concentrate on the facts of the case.

                                                        - |Daryll

From:  Grant Boucher <grantbouc...@earthlink.net>
Sent:  Tuesday, January 06, 1998 5:57 AM
Subject:  Re: ALPHANT Digest V1 #431

GB> uh, as the person who recommended, supervised, and implemented DEC Alpha
GB> at Digital Domain, I would like to clear up a few matters....

Grant was digital artist at Digital Domain. The official decisions
about the purchase of the systems were made by our director of
technology. I did the installation of the cluster and implemented the
Linux portion of the cluster.

GB> first, half of the 160 Alpha render farm was Windows NT 4.0.  Only half
GB> was linux.

Half the machines were Linux originally, until they (the Titanic crew)
found that the NT boxes really weren't as useful. The 105 machines I
quoted in my article was the configuration roughly one third of the way
into the project. 40 machines were converted from NT to Linux.

GB> Unlike the Linux machines, the NT machines and the Digital Unix servers
GB> NEVER crashed, routed IP packets automatically (just hit the check box
GB> under Network config for NT) and basically rang rings around the Linux
GB> machines for ease of use, installation, and reliability. It took
GB> days of kernel recompiles just to get the linux boxes to even
GB> barely work and they NEVER properly routed packets (an NT machine was
GB> configured in 15 minutes when they finally gave up on Linux).  

First, the NT boxes did crash. The systems administrator for the NT boxes I'm
sure would attest to that. Unfortunetly, they don't report their uptime,
and were silently rebooted. So, there really isn't a measure of how
reliable the NT boxes were. I do think they remained up more than the
Linux boxes for reasons I've explained later.

Second, we run a slightly unusual network. I did have trouble with the
FDDI card under Linux. We opted not to use it because of the problems,
but also because we could spare the NT boxes (they weren't being heavily
used) and it was a solution that minimized downtime. We were very busy
and it was the expedient solution. The other problem is that the NT box
did route packets, but not very quickly. The overall performance was not
very good for the speed of the link.

Third, I did describe in my article the troubles we had with that
version of the Linux kernel. They weren't minor, but we did manage to
resolve them relatively quickly. As I mentioned, I believe most of them
would not be true for current users.

GB> The Linux farm was unreliable and problematic for weeks when compared
GB> with the NT farm, and this was the SAME hardware, network etc.  I am
GB> sorry to disappoint all the Linux fans out there, but in a production
GB> environment, Linux was found to be seriously wanting when compared to
GB> NT.  NT was the ONLY operating system during Titanic that did not crash
GB> the servers at all...EVER.  Irix on the SGIs and Linux on the Alphas
GB> both crashed DAILY...sometimes more than a few times a day.  

I'm not sure where Grant got his numbers about downtime. Perhaps he is
extrapolating from the initial setup. Once the machines were up and
configured they worked very reliably. The machines are still in heavy
use and have an average uptime of around 60 days.

The most common cause for crashes was environmental
conditions. Unfortunetly, we under equipped the air conditioning in the
room, and the outside air temperature approached 110 degrees in some
places. A few of the processors that were being used in that area died
(quite understandably). In one of those places a couple of the Linux
boxes died, the NT boxes in those areas stayed alive. That was because
the Linux boxes were being heavily used while the NT boxes sat idle.

The other crash that was more serious for Linux was caused by bugs in
the NFS implementation. When a Linux box was being actively used and the
SGI server went down. This caused the NFS implementation on Linux to
hang. This was a serious problem for us, that sometimes required
resetting the machines. This was also a fairly infrequent occurrence. I'd
estimate once every couple weeks. Again, I believe current versions
would not have these problems.

GB> since these were simple Command line renderers, with simple parameters
GB> passed to them, your comment makes no sense whatsoever...again, ONLY the
GB> linux and irix boxes crashed during the production of Titanic...the NT
GB> boxes were the most reliable on the production...period.

The problem with the NT boxes is that they never got a reasonable NFS
implementation. The NFS on the NT Alphas was extremely slow. The lack
of support for symbolic links made using our disk space effectively very
difficult. The limitation of 26 mounted drives was insufficient. We
avoided this problem in the most expedient way possible. We dedicated NT
file servers and moved all the NT data to those file servers, that way
they didn't have to interconnect with the rest of the NFS
environment. They could remain their own isolated NT solution.

Linux is, of course, a freely available operating system. Having source
allowed us to fix problems we encountered that we could not have done
with a standard commercial OS. Of course, we would hope we don't have
problems to fix, but frankly that never happens. There are bugs in every
OS, and our environment stresses the operating systems.

GB> big mistake...Windows NT is a totally different animal than Windows 95
GB> and Titanic would not have delivered without it.  I suggest you take a
GB> closer look at it.  Linux is a shareware version of an antiquated OS
GB> from the 1970s...nothing more, nothing less.  :}

Well this is obvious bait. So I won't address much. I agree Window95 and
WindowsNT are entirely different animals. Linux is a very modern
operating system and many of the technologies are very current in
operating systems.

GB> LightWave was the ONLY software running on the NT farm and NT
GB> workstations. The choice of linux for the other farm was merely a
GB> convenience for two programmers (the ones who wrote the article), who
GB> could have easily ported command-line code to NT as well as Linux.
GB> This, and other similar decisions, cost the facility (and actually Fox)
GB> a fortune in time and lost productivity as every time the linux machines
GB> bombed out, dozens of compositors were left in the lurch (every one of
GB> them being paid very high rates per hour mind you). The only problem
GB> exhibited by the LightWave/NT machines came from the render control
GB> software, which we just replaced when it became clear that the control
GB> software was "found wanting".  This problem was not the least bit OS
GB> related.

Lightwave was used on the NT systems.

The choice of Linux was made for a number of reasons. The primary one
was integration into the rest of our facility. The ease of porting our
applications did come into play. Our distributed rendering system and
compositing system were much easier to get running under Linux than
NT. Since then we have ported those applications, as it makes the NT
systems more productive.

Not having an effective means of distributed rendering on the NT boxes
was a serious problem. That was not the case for the Linux boxes.

GB> In fact, one of my favorite Linux moments was one of the authors of the
GB> article asked the NT sysadmin "how many OS related crashes do you get a
GB> day?"  The answer was, of course, "None" because neither of us would
GB> have recommended NT machines on a production like Titanic if they
GB> weren't 100% reliable.  Perhaps he was trying to see if the hardware was
GB> to blame.  The author, puzzled, decided not to tell us how many times
GB> per day the Linux OS was crashing.  :}

As I said before we definetly had ...

read more »

He also clearly stated that the 40 nt boxes were upgraded to Linux, as nt turned out
to be not all that useful.

I know this stuns and confuses you, but please go back and read the article.

rr

<snip>

Quote:>-----Forwarded message from Daryll Strauss <daryll>-----

>We have no way to measure the reliability of the NT stations as they
>don't record their uptime. They also don't record their usage, which

As a moviegoer, what impressed me the most about "Titanic" was not the
graphics, but the set construction.  

JCS

rr