dcinput daily for Sat 8th April, 2006
Computer Graphics World: “This week, Autodesk launched Autodesk Toxik 2007, the latest version of its collaborative digital compositing software for feature film production”.
The interactive overview of Toxik on Autodesk’s website is pretty cool. You can really get an idea of what the product can offer through the tutorials and demonstrations. Having experienced the world of pain you can get into working on projects where not enough attention has been payed to data management and workflow, I was particluarly impressed with the automation, data tracking and collaborative framework that the software offers.
Collaboration and versioning is implemented using a publishing model which sits ontop of an Oracle relational database. I’ve worked in facitlies with a publishing model built into the infrastrure and it sure makes life a lot easier.
I’ve also heard that they are going to release a 64-bit version on Linux, though I couldn’t find this info anywhere in the specs. I’ve been looking for a 64-bit compositing application for a while now. With a filesystem thats well over 100 Terabytes you really need to be running a 64bit OS just to be able to address it and get maximum performance from 64bit render nodes.
Computer Graphics World has an RSS feed…cool! I wish other vfx and digital cinema sites would get with the program and do the same thing. It makes my life sooooo much easier.
CNet News: “Video upload site YouTube.com has received $8 million in funding from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital”. Still no obvious business model though.
Michael Thompson: “I’ve been doing storage here for six years, and I’ve found that people will use up whatever you put out there. We’ll probably be buying more disks this year”. I know that feeling. Interesting article about ILM’s computer infrastructure. If you’re into that sort of thing!