Tuesday, 10 October 2006

The unique relationship between Hollywood Movies and Linux

Quite often, we speculate about Linux grabbing a major share of the desktop PC market. But it seems the film industry are heavy users of Linux, and applications that run on Linux which include both open source and closed source custom made software. Take the popular hollywood movie 'Scooby Doo' for instance. It was created at Rhythm and Hues studio and the whole movie was rendered and touched up using custom made software which ran on Linux.

And the fact that Linux played a part in the making of this movie is not an accident. Rather, it is more becoming the norm. If you do a search on the net, you will find many more hollywood movies which are made using applications which run on Linux.


Robin Rowe, a writer and software designer working at Hollywood has put together a collection of software - both open source and proprietary - which is being used by various movie studios to touch up the movies. Robin is also the lead developer of the free software project CinePaint (formerly known as Film Gimp) which - quoting from the site - is a collection of free open source software tools for deep paint manipulation and image processing. CinePaint is used for motion picture frame-by-frame retouching, dirt removal, wire rig removal, render repair, background plates, and 3d model textures. It's been used on many feature films, including The Last Samurai where it was used to add flying arrows. It's also being used by pro photographers who need greater color fidelity than is available in other tools.

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