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Animux used in Blender Booth at Siggraph 2009

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Animux used in Blender BoothMark Puttnam writes:

Animux (designed to be an animator's operating system which is a customized linux distribution) was used to run the machines in the Blender Booth at Siggraph 2009. We thank Ton, who gave us this opportunity and made suggestions to fine-tune Animux to meet the needs of animators around the world.

Animux used in Blender Booth

Animux used in Blender Booth

At the booth, Animux Version 2.0 tremor 64bit (Beta) was installed on the HP Z600 series machines with NVidia quadro video cards which where used for the duration of Siggraph. We are looking for testers for the Beta version. (mailto: info (att) animux (doott)org). The Animux V1.0 Genesis stable is available for 32bit/64bit. Animux is also available for the old mac. PPC architecture.

Some of the key features of Animux

  • Animux available in 32/64 Bit architectures. It is also available in old mac PPC version.
  • Boots right into a render-farm
  • Has most of the tools needed in an open source animation pipeline.
  • 8 renderers, 3 renderfarm managers, 60+ animation centric tools (aiding or supporting the Blender pipeline). Blender 2.49a included.
  • Easy to use Installers
  • Has been successfully tested out on various Blender projects. (Mancandy, Oversaturated, Prince Harming to Prince Charming)
  • Core development principles in-line with animators needs
  • Design and Implementation of the absolutely free Animation Digital Asset Manager (ADAM) in-progress.
  • Tools for mass deployment and mass configuration tailored for an animation studio needs

This is the 2nd year Animux has been at Siggraph. We had a good BOF this year, where we premiered the preview of our short "Prince Harming to Prince Charming" (http://ph2pc.animux.org/). We also showed Oversaturated (http://www.handturkeystudios.com/) a 5 minute animated short directed by Jason Van Gumster which was done in 48hours with a global team of animators. We used the "easy to build"Animux Caseless Rackmount Renderfarm using just the Animux liveUSB (animux installed on a USB stick) to set up the render farm.

Pictures from the Animux BOF

Pictures from the Animux BOF

Bassam Kurdali, Jason VanGumster, Paula Decanini addressed the gatherings on the demands & identified the opportunities for an animator using an Open Source Pipeline.

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Bassam, Mark, Jason at the Animux BOF

13 Comments

  1. Animux OS?

    Perhaps it would be good to carify this is a Linux Distro? That you have added some nice additions and also many applications available for most Linux distros, like Inkscape, Sunflow, K3B etc etc.

    It's not like a complete new OS though is it?

    Looks nice and I'll give a live CD ago.

    Thanks

  2. I have to believe a lot of hopeful adopters will be coming from Windows as the live usb option is attractive. Unfortunately, the site includes this rather important instruction :

    1. Download the Animux_32Bit.zip from the download page

    when in fact the zip version of the distro is actually nowhere to be found.

    The devil is in the details, as they say...

  3. I think clarification is the word of the day here. This is only a live linux distro with a bunch of the best open source tools thrown together. They are not integrated in any manner more than they are alone, like some of the discussion might cause you to think. The LiveCD is really a LiveDVD. In the current distro, booting as render master or render slave seems to operate the same. No differences on the surface. I'm not sure where the ease of use and setup comes in from the hype. I also think that the acronym "OS" should be dropped. There's nothing new with the OS.

    Thanks for putting this all together guys, but lets clarify and drop the hype until there's something worth it.

  4. I believe the DVD is a misnomer - it registers as 795 MB, not 1-2 Gigs as a dvd would.... possibly they intend to eventually pack more into a dvd .iso. And for the record, if it is a linux distro, then it can be considered and OS since it will take the place of Windows for me instead of working inside it as a set of programs.

    Kudos to the developers, nice package and I look forward to trying it out :)

  5. Craig

    Linux kernel plus a shed load of other tools with various licenses generally GPL LGPL is the operating system.

    What Animux then put with that in terms of applications and additional tools is what Animux is.

    Animux OS suggests it's a brand new operating system. It's misleading and unnecessary.

    I'm surprised they don't get asked can it run windows or mac applications can it run 3D Max etc.

    It's a Linux distro plain and simple, the 'OS' bit should be dropped imo.

  6. Further clarification for the above comments. I work with these guys on Animux, pretty much making sure that Blender to Renderman is properly implemented, including help build scripts that ensure Mosaic exports render in DrQueue, debugging shader tools, as well as testing out developmental versions of Aqsis. All of this done either remotely or locally on my system.

    Animux has been around for a few years but only recently has gotten enough development to be considered public.
    It is not JUST a LiveCD, you can install it on your hard drive just like any other operating system.
    It is also called just "Animux", there is not OS attached to the distro, that was added by mistake it seems.
    It is Debian based, not Ubuntu based (which itself is Debian based).
    Yes it is a DVD, simply because it CANNOT fit on a CD, there is not enough space.

    However after going to the site, trying to find a link to the ISO or usb image is painful and will let Mark know that this needs to be changed asap.

    I am quite surprised though coming to this site and seeing this entry. Nice job! Good long article. One thing that was not mentioned is that Ton is the chief adviser for Animux and that is reason it was used for SIGGRAPH this year.

  7. I'm happy to read the comments and see it's Debian based, it's more familiar to my very fresh Linux experience around Ubuntu/Linux Mint and will be easier if I plan a migration.

    As installing a Debian from the ground still look a bit difficult for a fresh Linux adept as me ; I'm happy to see a distribution that's look clean and efficient.
    Big plus for 2D artist if Animux roadmap plan to have Mypaint + Gimp patched "Gimp-for-Painter" & Tool set Gimp Paint Studio already packed , and of course with Wacom & tablets hot plug. In this case , I would totally keep it as my "preeeciiouusss" live CD !

    I keep a big open eye on it, Good job , and the site look clean & efficient too ;) Great job !

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