Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How did they make movies and do video editing and image processing ten years ago? And is there anything really "better" about what we're able to do now with the newer machines?

Well, we used these gorgeous machines from Silicon Graphics. They had some very expensive circuits inside and produced results. Indeed, the cost per seat had been ridiculously high in those times.

So basically movies and video were made by throwing a lot of money at the problem. :)

Concerning the part "better" from your question: Have a look at some of old movies and their CGI. It’s real crap compared to todays standards.
 
I ********** hate clients sometimes!!!! :cool::p;)

I actually had a client ask me yesterday if I could remove shadows from a shot of a presentation she was giving in a hotel ballroom...I didn't shoot the thing, but I was still like "seriously?! What the hell!!!?" I told my production coordinator and she laughed her ass off. Glad I was good in company!

I've done this many times albeit on static footage. With the advancement of high dynamic range sensors and algorithms, pretty soon you will be able to do it on moving footage too.

But yeah, in their ignorance clients can have some very unrealistic demands at times. :D
 
Full Bore

I need more really, i have no problem making the beast flex.....
 

Attachments

  • Bore.jpg
    Bore.jpg
    614.7 KB · Views: 241
I need more really, i have no problem making the beast flex.....

Yours looks impressive!

Mine on the other hand, looks very unimpressive, but KILLS machines!

two-dimensional LaGrangian particle tracking of particles dispersed in a carrier phase... see attached
(3-d simulation HAS to happen on a cluster with 40+ cores, or it's just not feasible)

100% across 8 cores and 100% memory utilization... took 3 days to run

time is money, and when 100mhz means hours... you get the point
 

Attachments

  • 267134_894418196929_32809878_42629815_3090554_o.jpg
    267134_894418196929_32809878_42629815_3090554_o.jpg
    42.1 KB · Views: 136
  • Screen shot 2011-07-16 at 4.28.02 AM.png
    Screen shot 2011-07-16 at 4.28.02 AM.png
    110 KB · Views: 114
Last edited:
Yours looks impressive!

Mine on the other hand, looks very unimpressive, but KILLS machines!

two-dimensional LaGrangian particle tracking of particles dispersed in a carrier phase... see attached
(3-d simulation HAS to happen on a cluster with 40+ cores, or it's just not feasible)

100% across 8 cores and 100% memory utilization... took 3 days to run

time is money, and when 100mhz means hours... you get the point

Oh, I forgot to mention, the SS of memory utilization is ONLY visualizing the data... not actually running it

It was a linux workstation (with 8 cores & 32gb ram) that ran the case... it was a mac with 4 cores & 16gb ram the visualized the data
 
Ram Hog

Yeah you really need that ram. If i go high poly i see more maybe 10. I'm interested in a couple of years to get him an identical twin brother, once they start hitting the second hand market.(if funds allow)

I'm interested in the networking capabilities of thunderbolt, i wonder if a card will ever be made for the current mac pro ?
 
It's like a gun, It's better to have it and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it.

Have you hugged your MAC PRO today?
 
I ********** hate clients sometimes!!!! :cool::p;)

I actually had a client ask me yesterday if I could remove shadows from a shot of a presentation she was giving in a hotel ballroom...I didn't shoot the thing, but I was still like "seriously?! What the hell!!!?" I told my production coordinator and she laughed her ass off. Glad I was good in company!

Hilarious. Attached is a vector illustration I did for a client that took nearly 30 hours. Everything in the image was produced in Illustrator, down to the depth of field effect, so it could be scaled and utilized in any medium. They wanted a free-floating flip clock that looked to be counting down. It was going to be part of their logo -- and the referrer that sent them my way sent them to me because of the complicated vector illustration I provided for them (they wanted something that looked like it was designed by Sofa).

All that work and nearly four days later, and they ended up using a logo that took me about five minutes to throw together.
 

Attachments

  • flip-clock.jpg
    flip-clock.jpg
    615.2 KB · Views: 155
Hilarious. Attached is a vector illustration I did for a client that took nearly 30 hours. Everything in the image was produced in Illustrator, down to the depth of field effect, so it could be scaled and utilized in any medium. They wanted a free-floating flip clock that looked to be counting down. It was going to be part of their logo -- and the referrer that sent them my way sent them to me because of the complicated vector illustration I provided for them (they wanted something that looked like it was designed by Sofa).

All that work and nearly four days later, and they ended up using a logo that took me about five minutes to throw together.

I have to ask, why did you do this in Illustrator? 30 hours is an extreme amount of time considering this could've been built and rendered in a 3D application (like Maya or modo) in 30 minutes. You'd have the same scaling freedom as vectors (provided you had used subdivs or NURBS) but also have the freedom to re-light, re-compose as well as animate the logo/scene. (All the while still charging your client 30 hours should you be so inclined ;) ).
 
I have to ask, why did you do this in Illustrator? 30 hours is an extreme amount of time considering this could've been built and rendered in a 3D application (like Maya or modo) in 30 minutes. You'd have the same scaling freedom as vectors (provided you had used subdivs or NURBS) but also have the freedom to re-light, re-compose as well as animate the logo/scene. (All the while still charging your client 30 hours should you be so inclined ;) ).

There was a lot more that went into that 30 hours than just the illustration work -- I didn't elaborate in order to remain concise. And although I do keep a local copy of C4D for doing complicated extrusions and lighting for typographical work it, I am much more comfortable working in the vector environment when I illustrate and, quite honestly, I can't afford the time nor extend the mental capacity to learn modeling any further than what I've learned for my specific needs.

It's taken me years to become a competent developer and illustrator; if I do end up needing something done in 3D, I'd like to leave a little meat on the bone for the guys that have spent years learning NURBS modeling and animation.

A more whimsical answer would be that I love what I do, I love to code and draw pretty pictures; I don't love modeling, and I think my disinterest in the medium from an artistic perspective would end up coming through in my work. I assume some of the other professionals would agree, at some point it's not a great idea to extend the time and resources required to pick up other skills, skills that -- like 3D work in my case -- simply won't be used enough in my workflow to justify that time/mental investment
 
There was a lot more that went into that 30 hours than just the illustration work -- I didn't elaborate in order to remain concise. And although I do keep a local copy of C4D for doing complicated extrusions and lighting for typographical work it, I am much more comfortable working in the vector environment when I illustrate and, quite honestly, I can't afford the time nor extend the mental capacity to learn modeling any further than what I've learned for my specific needs.

It's taken me years to become a competent developer and illustrator; if I do end up needing something done in 3D, I'd like to leave a little meat on the bone for the guys that have spent years learning NURBS modeling and animation.

A more whimsical answer would be that I love what I do, I love to code and draw pretty pictures; I don't love modeling, and I think my disinterest in the medium from an artistic perspective would end up coming through in my work. I assume some of the other professionals would agree, at some point it's not a great idea to extend the time and resources required to pick up other skills, skills that -- like 3D work in my case -- simply won't be used enough in my workflow to justify that time/mental investment

Ah ok... that's fair enough I suppose. Enjoyment in one's work is an important factor and if that's where you are then that's great of course! :)
 
You must be an Obama worshipper to even write this garbage.

And you must be as ignorant as the original poster if you can't see this for what it is - sarcasm. Try reading the whole post before bashing someone.
 
Last edited:
And keep the politics to Fox/ CNN or whatever crap way you get your news from. No place for it here.
 
People aren't any happier now than they were twenty years ago. In fact, it seems to be the opposite.

I'm just playing devils advocate here, and asking some questions that I think aren't asked enough.

So, because you think that people aren't any happier today, then we should have stayed in the stone ages? Technology advances and you can see the benefits all around you. Better medical treatments, ability to do more comprehensive research and faster too! The list is long. On the entertainment level, things that are shown on the big screen today was impossible 20 years ago, and impractical 10 years ago. Go watch any decent special effects movie from the 70's or 80's (maybe look that the original star wars) and then compare that to any of the good movies currently being shown. While the story makes all the difference, you have to agree that what can be done with the technology is amazing. If it weren't for faster computers, the render times on movies from companies such as Pixar would take years instead of weeks or months that it currently takes. Computers are fast today, but they are NOT nearly fast enough for what needs to be done... or for what is coming. And no, I'm not talking about Skynet. :D
 
You must be an Obama worshipper to even write this garbage.

Do you know what a dictionary is? Find one (you might have to go to a bookshop, which means leaving your parents' basement) and find the "S" section (that's after "R", but before "T"). Find a word called "sarcasm". Read the definition of this word in the dictionary and think about how it applies to the post you quoted.

Seriously, how old are you? 12?
 
Yup, the first machine I worked on was an IBM 360/195. RAM was a $1 million per megabyte. We've come a long way.

My father was a tech for IBM in the 80s, when they had the largest storage capacity on disk drives in the world. An entire room of 50'x50' was filled with huge platter disk drives that were over a foot in diameter. All storage capacity combined roughly equaled a terabyte.

We've really come a long way, fast.
 
I acknowledge that there are a lot of specialized computing uses out there. I was just wondering if it's actually possible to use all that processing power. It seems a bit extreme to have a computer with those maxed out specs...I'd be scared to touch the thing lest it become sentient and try to eat me. lol :D

distributed computing will eat any amount of processing power in a heartbeat no matter how much.
 
There is no such thing as overpowered computer.

Just try running Houdini Rigid Objects (lets say buildings) and destroy them with RealFlow (simulated ocean water), dress all that up with some nice shaders and then composit and output in Nuke. You are looking around two digit number of days of just rendering.

We need more power. :)
 
There is no such thing as overpowered computer.

Could not agree more. If only we had 36-cores.... 72 Virtual Threads would make rendering actually feasible on a local machine and not what I do (Vomit it out to a pile of XServes), might mean I would have to replace my lowly Mac Pro though...
 
We've really come a long way, fast.


Indeed we have. Twenty years ago my Mac LC had a huge 128MB, yes MB, hard disk drive with a massive 8MB of memory. What an improvement over the earlier model with 2 x floppies and no hard drive with 2MB memory!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.