Linux and 3d...
ngon master
so i've got my new rig built, but i'm kinda thinking of experimenting with it. i've installed OSX on one of the hard drives for audio recording.
for my other hard drive, i'm debating switching from windows to linux. i've heard great things about the stability and niceness of linux in comparrison to windows. but i'm worried that i won't be able to use the programs i've been using on xp in the past.
3dsmax, apparently, won't run on linux. what about zbrush?
would this be a good time to move into blender territory?
photoshop, too, doesn't work, but i've heard good things about GIMP.
does anyone here use Linux, and if so, what do they use on it?
for my other hard drive, i'm debating switching from windows to linux. i've heard great things about the stability and niceness of linux in comparrison to windows. but i'm worried that i won't be able to use the programs i've been using on xp in the past.
3dsmax, apparently, won't run on linux. what about zbrush?
would this be a good time to move into blender territory?
photoshop, too, doesn't work, but i've heard good things about GIMP.
does anyone here use Linux, and if so, what do they use on it?
Replies
wine is improved -> photoshop could work,
but there is "Pixel" which is really good, but costs fricken 30 bucks lol
and then wings3d and blender work on linux
If you want 3D on Linux, it is best to go with one of the existing solutions. Blender is the first choice, and actually comes with several Linux distrobutions. If you prefer the extrusion / subdivision method of modeling, Wings 3D is also Linux-friendly and is optimized for that modeling process. These programs are developed and optimized for Linux, you will get the performance and stability you need.
If you have the time and patience to commit to learning these programs, then by all means, go ahead. I use Blender as my primary modeling and animation tool, and am quite pleased with it. But please note that I am an amatuer. I do this as a hobby, not for a living wage. If 3D modeling is your bread and butter, it might be a better idea to stick with the more industry-standard software on the more industry-standard operating system. Blender and Wings diverge greatly from the more traditional modeling programs. Advances that you learn in them will not necessarily transfer over to the major packages. Indie studios might be keen on having a Blender modeler on board. But bigger studios with bigger budgets (and likely bigger salaries) are going to want to see experience in industry-standard toolsets.
Maybe you could go the way Foreverendering went. I don't know how it turned out but he was looking for a legit winXP64 some time ago. I think that would be quite close to your needs as far as 3D goes - compared to all the tiny little loose screws Vista would throw at you constantly. You could also experiment with some restore point stuff ie having one perfectly clean 3D oriented install you could always revert to once crapwares start to mess with your pc (google and apple autoupdate running wild aso)
You could also try to resort to slightly older versions of some apps to make stuff fast and responsive (for instance CS2 as opposed to CS4). Also recent free or cheap programs are a delight to work with - this could be another way to go : Silo, SAI, Xnormal, you name it!
Let us know!
but:
stability on windows xp is WAY better than linux ... at least the distros that i had gnome and kubuntu.
maya comes with a linux version on cd in the box but the user interface is really broken and it eats your mouse cursor O_O
wine works surprisingly well and i got photoshop 7 running pretty much flawlessly but copy pasting images via clipboard from lets say firefox/google image search into photoshop is not working
bottom line stick with windows
i have to say, OSX is holding bloody good! i'm running leopard, 64bit mode, and oh my god! it's friggin amazing! so smooth, for audio it's the best thing i've ever used, it's just so responsive!
i installed Ableton Live! onto the windows HDD too, and then the soundcard, and the ASIO drivers, and even that doesn't come close to the Mac OS.
3d wise, i've stepped back to photoshop CS3, i liked some of the new features in 4, i liked tweaking the seams on any uv maps i was working on with such ease, but it's still too unrefined...
on a less OS related note, how does blender fare against 3dsmax, or softimage? i've tried jumping from max to softimage and i've never gotten used to the UI (i know it's a more powerful tool... but i just couldn't get on with it...) i'm just trying to broaden my horizons a little
ubuntustudio
http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntustudio
Ubuntu Studio is a variant of Ubuntu aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. The distribution provides a collection of open-source applications available for multimedia creation.
ArtistX
http://artistx.org/site2/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artistx
ArtistX is a Debian-based bootable DVD containing many free multimedia software packages for audio, 2D and 3D graphics, and video production. The goal of this project is to showcase the variety of multimedia software available on the GNU/Linux platform and to enable creative individuals to accomplish their tasks with the help of Free Software.
others:
dyne:bolic
http://www.dynebolic.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=dynebolic
dyne:bolic is a GNU/Linux distribution running from a CD and able to recognise most of your devices and peripherals: sound, video, TV, network cards, firewire, USB devices and more. It is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creative individuals, a practical tool for multimedia production. You can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, all using free software!
check their sites for live-cd's most should already include Nvidia and other proprietary drivers for multimedia creation.
i think i need to buy a third hard drive and have one of each OS xD
Here http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software is a table with the linux's equivalents of the Window's programs ( sightly old but valid ).
About 3D and linux I think most of the 3D programs are ported(Maya,XSI) or being ported. With the time all the applications will be ported and they will mature. Notice also NVIDIA and ATI are working hard to release stable and optimized drivers for linux.
On the other hand, almost all the big Hollywood's studios use linux for their rendering farms... that's because linux is free so it allows you to save tons of $$$$ per-node.
We're in the middle of an economical crisis. I don't know in other countries but here Windows Vista Home Premium non-oem costs more than 300€... MacOSX costs 105€ or requires special hardware(min 600$ of a MacMini...). Both of them requires also very complicated and hardware-floating-licenses to upgrade(Windows Update, Mac update, online activation, etc ).... while Ubuntu is completely free and very user friendly... so the choice is very clear for me.
All that aside, it's certainly possible to successfully use it for 3d, but you'll spend more time troubleshooting things for yourself, because there are less people who paved the way for you, and therefor less information about it online. This might be fine for a lot of people, but for big game-developers, I can't see Linux being a very valid choice right now. And I do wish it was, mind you.
I'm a bit of an OS-agnostic, though. I'll use Windows as long as it runs the most of the software I like and prefer with the least amount of hassle. No one OS 'sucks (lol)' or 'rulz (lmao)', and if you claim otherwise, odds are you're an irritating fanboy, and you need to see a doctor immediately.
Here are a few amusing comments I found in a thread about Linux and 3d:
I think jogshy has a good point,- if you consider a rendering farm or something that requires multiple computers Linux might be still a very good option. For a technical artist python should not be the challenge,- and its present on quite a few linux distributions- that way it should be already possible to port some tools.
As for Maya, Maya 2009 runs on Linux, see:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9683256
Red Hat Enterprise 4.0 U6 64-bit, Fedora Core 8 64-bit
thats sweet 64 bit
XSI 7 runs as well on linux:
http://www.softimage.com/support/xsi/system_requirements/v7_x.aspx#lin64
I assume that for booth MentalRay will also work on Linux,- not sure however about the network rendering part via satelite or how it is called in MentalRay- it propably needs the mentalRay standalone.
And yep, perhaps Maya and XSI aren't very mature on non-Windows systems yet but they'll be improved with the time. Other good question would be to know Adobe's plans for linux.
- Acrobat Reader
- AIR (Flash/ JavaScript/ HTML engine standalone engine)
- Flash Player 9/10 (64 bit!)
- FlexBuilder (AS3 / Flex applications)
sadly only flexBuilder as development tool so far for linux and only because its based on IBM's Eclipse OS project. But the AIR part is really interesting as it lets you create either FLASH, HTML/JS/PHP,..., FLEX based software to run on Mac,Win and Linux without the need of a flash player or Browser on the system. Air wraps it all up into 1 single AIR file or with some extra tools into a single self executeable file.
Within Air you even have binary, text, image, ... write mechanics so that you can easily create images from your scripts or custom files. It might not be as powerfull as some python scripts but for a GUI driven tool its perfect.
also see this
Google pays Wine for Photoshop CS2 on Linux
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Google-pays-Wine-for-Photoshop-CS2-on-Linux/0,339028227,339286095,00.htm?feed=pt_software
actually, maya on linux should be good to go. it has been used in film pipelines on that OS for the better part of a decade now so it must have matured well and since it was originally developed for a very similar unix environment, the port must have been comparably easy. as long as the hardware is supported by linux rather well, there shouldn't be a disadvantage to running it.
heard XSI on linux is a mess tho, running some sort of windows emulation at it's core. linux version to please linux based film houses, so to speak. just like 3ds max, this one has been developed with windows in mind (development was initiated when MS took over the formerly unix-exclusive softimage) but unlike max it doesn't depend so much on windows specific things, so there's at least a port in existence.
houdini is another linux based 3d app - and one you'd expect to be pretty mature. and totally not game-relevant, too...
also worth mentioning - most expensive graphics apps on linux are only supported on very specific distributions (usually red hat enterprise something), so don't wonder if something fails on your tuned ubuntu seppuku edition and the app support won't help you out.
anway, the logic of choosing your OS first and THEN looking for what you can do with it escapes me completely.
I honestly can't help myself; I'm always reading comments, even on youtube!
Oh man, I really need to start looking into this more seriously. I built my own Linux box about a month ago, but haven't had the time to really do anything meaningfull with it. And I'm already into FlexBuilder development on Windows and Mac. For small graphical applications AIR really could be a great cross-platform solution.
Very true. You should always consider what you want to do with it first.
The biggest reason most people have for considering Linux is because its free, and its stable. They don't normally look at it until after they have started having issues with an OS they are already using.
For instance, I already have a Windows box and a Mac Box. But I recently built my own Linux box, and installed a Debian distribution, because I wanted my own LAMP server. I wanted to have my own server, and the cost of installing a Windows-based one was prohibitively high for my budget. (also, I wanted it to be totally legit, I wasn't going to pirate any software for it) For me, my existing boxes weren't cost effective or stable enough for a web server. So I turned to Linux. It's been running great.