A Report from Cynthia Wisehart, editorial director of Millimeter and Video Systems magazines

Most trade shows are a blur of appointments and technology,soundbytes and demos. Over-stimulating and fun, they are a chance topig out on technology and see the recent output of clever engineers(and ambitious marketers).

But not this time. I blame the crutches and the torn medial cruciateligament. So here’s what I spotted from the slow lane.

Big Blue Penguin

IBM is already showing off the fruits of their $1 billion investmentin Linux, announcing the IBM Linux Digital Studio Solution thatincorporates IBM’s IntelliStaition M Pro workstation, various IBMserver, storage and networking components, and a render server thatdelivers, according to IBM, 2X performance increases on the Linuxplatform.

IBM avoided any whiff of vaporware by inviting Mortal Combat auteurLarry Kasanoff and company to discuss the success of a worldwideIBM/Linux pipeline for their current project. Red Hat representativeson hand confirmed that they are continuing to offer Linux support forentertainment and media customers and Alias’ Bob Bennett remindedthe assembled that Linux easily supported the complexities of Maya.

So far Linux reputation has been made down on the renderfarm, withcompanies including PDI and Rhythm & Hues making the switch withouta backward glance. PDI’s Richard Cheung told Millimeter earlierthis year, “If you want to survive you’ve got to haveLinux.” Now you can.

Extreme Compositing for a Vicious Industry

Ray Feeney is obviously wearing his heart on his shirt judging fromthe candid new T-shirt slogan at the Silicon Grail booth. But it wasCraig Zerouni’s demo of Rayz that told the rest of the story. Nowin 1.2, Rayz has gained various interface updates, and the first ofwhat should be more Cineon features—including grain and de-grain.A new morphing ability is one of the marquee features.

Rayz picked up on this year’s “it”colors—blue-gray and graphite—and the interface, running onthe Compaq Evo (also in matte metallic shades)—was the mostdesign-y look ever from the no-nonsense folks at Grail. But there wassomething else that ran like a thread under Zerouni’s demo. Heused the phrase “nonlinear compositing”, but you can hearthat phrase all over the show floor. A good trend certainly, but therewas something more subtle at work in Rayz. Maybe it was the way Zerouniwas using it, but I was reminded of how painters work. The computersomehow really did seem more nonlinear, more flexible, like the artistcould work out problems and make decisions in a more personal way. Partof this was because Grail decided to offer at least two ways to doeverything, and by design the program encourages users to exploreoptions. But I wonder if maybe compositing hasn’t finally brokenthrough a barrier on the way to become an artists’ medium likepaint or clay. Obviously it has a long way to go, but companiesincluding Grail seem to be getting closer.

Day Two (Wednesday, August 15, 2001)

Day Three (Thursday, August 16, 2001)