[rescue] SGI

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 01:52:35AM -0500, Kevin wrote:
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> I guess, although there are very few "small" studios
> relying on SGI anymore, and even fewer who pay SGI
> legally. I am all for a company being compensated for
> their work and product but guys like us help them much
> more than hurt.  If i remember correctly (and perhaps
> this has changed since then) but SGI announced some
> time ago that they would not be supporting IRIX after
> 2006, in favor of Linux.

They don't currently show any signs of really intending to stop Irix
anytime soon.

As two small studios, it seems there are a number of fairly small
studios that have a Flame or Inferno, and those are usually extremely
expensive machines.

I guess in some sense they might not be that small as far as budget
though.  

If I could run my own studio my own way, texture painters would be
running on Octanes (preferably VPro, but even SSI and SSE would be
decent), lighting would be done on either VPro machines (expensive
still) or an Onyx2 (not nescesarily so expensive), modellers and
animators would probably run mostly off the shelf software on Macs.
Some compositors might use Octanes, others Macs, and editing would
happen on the Mac.  TDs might run Onyx1s and Onyx2.  File servers would
either be Suns or SGIs (SGI has appeal, but Suns would probably be far
more cost effective), and the computer far would be either Xserves or
some efficient Suns (after extensive testing).

Basically, SGIs would be used for areas that need extra color definition
or something that would thread over a large number of CPUs well, like
lighting and dynamics simulations (what better way to tweak it than
interactively?), and Macs would be used for the rest.  Probably would be
something like Aqsis (RenderDotC, whatever, evaluation would be needed
since PRman is clear too expensive), Maya, Final Cut Pro, Combustion,
FilmGimp, some of the hammerhead utils, and lots of custom code (I am a
programmer after all).

But I dont... Yet.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd