[rescue] PIXAR Box...

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005, Paul Hortiatis wrote:

> It does use a host machine, I found the site again, the front end system
> was a Sun 3/150, but i'm sure you could use diffrent machines. It looks
> like it uses one of the large DD50 connector to connecto to the host
> machine which is connected directly to the PIXAR's back plane, i wonder
> if it uses scsi to communicate with the host or if it use some special
> interface card.

Yes they need to be attached to some sort of host, but most importantly
you need the software running on the host. The PIXAR is just a
co-processor that implements the renderman spec in hardware, I have seen
those machines used with the original SGI Iris 3XXX series. They were not
just a frame buffer, but an actual render box... Alias or Wavefront,
seemed to sell a turn key system that was made of a SGI Irix + PIXAR all
tied up with their software (again I forgot if it was alias or wavefront,
I have to dig the docs...) The SGI was for the interactive modeling, and
the PIXAR took care of the final RenderMan rendering.... which could be
dumped to either a monitor, a film recorder, hardcopy or whatever.

That is how most early P*I*X*A*R films were developed BTW, the Luxo Jr.
Red's dream, et al were all redered using those boxes :)