Linx Non-Technical: Movie "Schrek" and Linux

[ME]

Hello,

You may have heard about a new movie called, "Schrek" that uses a great
deal of computer animation.

According to a "zdnet" article you get the impression that Linux was used
for a huge part of the movie.

( http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2761566,00.html )

A later article on slashdot includes discussion by users stating that it
was only the rendering that was done on Linux based systems while the
modeling was done on/with SGI? IRIX

( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/19/0140242&mode=thread )

(Included user followup quote from slashdot:)
-IRIX for modeling, Linux for rendering (Score:2)
-by green pizza (colin at imaginemail.com) on Saturday May 19, @01:20PM EST (#103)
-(User #159161 Info) http://texan.org
Linux was only used for rendering. The initial modeling, effects, and
final compositing of the rendered material was done on SGI Octane
workstations running IRIX. Audio was done on a Windows NT Protools setup.

I saw it, and found it to be fun. It seems to be targeting the young adult
to adult market more than the kids. Funny, entertaining, was worth it for
me for non-matinee price. Most humor would probably not have kids lauging
too hard. People who have suffered through dating will find many more
scenes entertaining. Don't think of this as a happy Disney movie due to
what happens to characters and certain circumstances. (This gives nothing
plot-wise away about the movie.) If Disney was to make this kind of movie,
it would probably be released under "Touchstone" be made by Pixar, and not
use the Disney label. (They learned this problem for labels from the old
movie "Black Hole")

I am not so sure it will make *lots* of money though. The Theater was
nearly empty for the 9:40m show. Of course it was playing on 4 screens at
the "Pacific Cinemas Rohnert Park 16", so I could have it all wrong with
this guess.

(Another "big" movie that used linux for some of the special effects was
Titanic. However, I think it was stated the Linux cluster was used for the
wave generation for the oceanic special effects and not much more.)