New Zealand Herald: Lord of the Rings [movie] realism moves up a step [w/Linux & SGI]

Aug 22, 2000, 01:06 (8 Talkback[s])

[ Thanks to Paul Petricevich for this link. ]

"Wellington-based Weta Digital's ability to process work on the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy has just dramatically improved - with big savings to boot. Weta has bought 16 dual-processor SGI 1200 servers running the Linux operating system."

"The servers will convert object, environment, and motion data into photo-realistic images and blend them with live action for final scene production - a process known as rendering."

"SGI account manager Scott Houston said the Linux cluster created for Weta is doing work which previously required multi-processor Unix servers costing over $1 million. "It's high performance with low overhead and low cost. It's all about bangs for bucks. ...[Weta chief technical officer Jon] Labrie said being able to run this on Linux drastically reduced the costs involved, and was a watershed for the animation industry."

Complete Story

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