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Sad news for CGI historians
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Sad news for CGI historians // Roundtable
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 9:11am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Title says it all really, these guys did a lot to further the CGI we take for granted today:
http://www.examiner.com/x-3974-Game-News-Examiner~y2009m4d2-Silicon-Graphics-goes-out-of-business |
Post by v3rd3 // Apr 2, 2009, 9:24am
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v3rd3
Total Posts: 388
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Sad day indeed. :( |
Post by TomG // Apr 2, 2009, 9:53am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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It is sad in some respects, yet in another it has happened due to something that is good. As the article notes, this has come about primarily because graphics hardware has got cheaper and cheaper - in other words, people like you and me with machines that we can actually afford are now able to produce amazing graphics, without the need of dedicated machines costing as much as the houses we live in.
I for one am glad that technological change has happened, and that 3D hardware is now so affordable that it is accessible to the man and woman in the street.
It definitely shows that times are changing, and you have to adapt and change with the times. You can't stay looking at the old ways of doing things and imagine that will go on forever. Instead you have to look at how things will alter, how there will be new ways of doing things, and how things will generally become more and more accessible to more and more people. Exclusivity will die away.
Since I am one of the people who have benefited from this change, as there is no way I would be involved in 3D graphics if it still required a machine like those Silicon Graphics were renown for, I cannot say I am entirely sad that this has happened. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be able to do 3D at all. I'd be on the outside looking in at all those exclusive people able to afford the hardware needed to take part in the 3D world.
Of course, would have been great if the company had changed with the times and moved into new fields and approaches and technologies, then they could still be with us. Perhaps that is the part that is sad.
Tom
PS - was the choice of the dinosaur image for that article meant to mean something I wonder? |
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 10:09am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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All good points Tom, but would CGI be the industry it is today without their pioneering work in bringing the medium to the mainstream? Ergo would it be an industry you would even know about. Hell, would it even be an industry at all or simply hi-tec research? How much of CGI history has been written on a SGi machine for you to subconsciously channel into the creations you produce on a home computer?
Potential for a good debate here and one that no one would 'win'. Their contribution would be perceived differently by each individual.
And lets not forget the influence the Nintendo 64 had on 3D gaming; a media even bigger than movies nowadays...a custom Silicon Graphics chip was the heart of that machine...;)
And did I mention OpenGL? |
Post by prodigy // Apr 2, 2009, 10:23am
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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Seems the Technology is very unstable, on day you are pioneer creating graphics for Jurassic park and the other day you are searching for a job in a bookshop..
:cool: |
Post by TomG // Apr 2, 2009, 10:23am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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No denying the company forged much of the CGI industry today. Square Enix was the world's largest users of SGI machines for their movies and pre-rendered footage in their games. So many ground breaking CGI movies made on these machines. I remember always wanting an Indigo, I believe it was. SGI was a name to be drooled over!
It is a shame though that the company didn't move with the times. I'm not sure how they could or should have done, but with companies like NVIDIA putting amazing GPUs in machines, and the chips from Intel and AMD getting up to amazing speeds but still being affordable by us home user types, the playing field really did alter dramatically.
Was a time where no 3D studio could run without these custom machines. But then the dogsbody PC just kept getting better and faster and cheaper until these custom machines were no longer the best bang for the buck. It was cheaper to build your render farm out of "regular" PCs, and cheaper to have your artists working on regular PCs too.
So for me the sad part is they didn't move with the times and keep themselves relevant. No argument at all on what they did in the past! Also though I can't say I would want things to have stayed as they were which would have kept SGI in business, as it would have excluded me. So my wish remains that SGI had reinvented itself and kept itself part of the very different field that is 3D today.
It does just emphasise though that "the times they are a-changin"!
Tom |
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 10:30am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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You are right about them maintaining high priced equipment but have you considered this fact though?
"Once inexpensive PCs began to have graphics performance close to the more expensive specialized graphical workstations (which were SGI's core business), SGI concentrated on its high performance server capabilities, offering servers for digital video and the Web. Many SGI graphics engineers have left to work at other computer graphics companies like ATI and NVIDIA, contributing to the PC 3D graphics" |
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 10:33am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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A look over this list (which is not exhaustive) should be interesting:
http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/movies/index.php |
Post by TomG // Apr 2, 2009, 10:45am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Again, no denying their past contributions. However its what a company contributes to tomorrow that keeps them in business, rather than what they contributed in the past.
Also one wonders why the engineers had to leave SGI and go to ATI and NVIDIA, rather than SGI itself keeping up in the transforming marketplace.
There's a thing they could have pioneered, if they were working with fast servers for sending data across networks, something like the new Onlive service, where the idea is that the graphics for your real-time are rendered on a remote server, and the finished image piped to your display, rather than having your hardware do the rendering. This would let you play Crysis on your netbook for instance (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7976206.stm ).
It is a shame they didn't jump into some brave new frontier that could have kept them afloat, kept the engineers with them, pushing forward the frontiers of 3D again like they did before. That will need to be left to others now, unfortunately, and SGI are indeed now left as a legacy who helped get us where we are, but won't be part of taking us where we are going :(
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Breech Block // Apr 2, 2009, 10:53am
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Breech Block
Total Posts: 844
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Yep, it always a sad day when a "founding" company bites the dust. Makes you wonder if we will be saying the same thing about ILM in a decade or two.
Intresting debate Splinters/Tom; I could spend all day reading this kind of stuff.
...but with companies like NVIDIA putting amazing GPUs in machines...
It's also intresting, that on the day Tom says this, Nvidia enable Ambient Occlusion in their latest Forceware drivers. Sign of the times or what? |
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 11:23am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Potentially a great debate to be had here. You only have to read the thread I just posted 'Sgi changed my life' to see just how much I was affected directly by SGI and that doesnt account for the indirect influences.
Pretty sure this will encourage lots of healthy debate and, possibly, a bit of nostalgia.
Where we are going is the most important thing but we must look at where we have been in order to move forward. |
Post by marcel // Apr 2, 2009, 2:55pm
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marcel
Total Posts: 569
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Maybe tomorrow we will not need a computer to render cgi movie. we can use services.
I found this info:
IBM Announces 3D supercomputing visualization for On-Demand users
more than 56 terabytes of storage and 13,000 processors based on the latest technologies from Intel® and IBM®
“With the Computing on Demand facility, Microsoft and IBM are delivering supercomputing performance to companies that could previously not afford it or never had access to it,” said Vince Mendillo, director of HPC marketing at Microsoft Corp.
I think most of the soft will be free if they bring enough money through the services offered.
Technology is obsolete so fast that it is better to focus on the quality of his work.
Today, there is no interest to work without originality to expose a new technique.
Tomorrow, we will not remember sgi computers but we will remember the work that has been made with these machines. |
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