SGI: Discussion

BLAiSE wrote: People have to use these computers with these well written, optimized and reliable software. With just collecting them, we cannot save them. We have to use them, without it they will become only rusty boxes and fading memories.

You have a very good point there, but it's still invisible to the general eye. I love my Octanes (and used to love my O2, but it's kinda dead), but I don't use them in the same sense that most people should be using SGIs. I'm basically using my Octane along side my RPi and NetraT1 as server (my love has more to do with the IRIX backend then it does with the desktop). I think visibility is important and often overlooked.

Also, availability of good software is lacking. I know there used to be a lot of IRIX software, but getting it can be troublesome. I had Photoshop on my O2 (and used it quite often), but the license information is lost and trying to get Adobe to even understand that Photoshop ran on IRIX seems to be pointless from other people's accounts - they just say that versions that old are not supported and you need to buy an upgraded copy.

BLAiSE wrote: I think lot of "old" software are capable to do serious work.
...
The system and the software was almost flawless so I can't imagine at the time, what will be the next step, because with Toonz you were capable to do everything what was needed for traditional animation work. The software had all the features what we needed, it was well written optimized code, the workflow was fast and efficient on those 200-300MHz computers.
So they fucked up the whole thing, just as the XSI. (Although this was an independent coder division in Italy). Toonz 5.0 was a totally new ware with pure Windows only codebase, new user interface and full Flash support. It was slow (even with 1000 MHz processors), buggy, it had lost a lot of features (they added them one-by-one, slowly in the following ten years). This was my first encounter with the new era: the 21th century software development.

this is a great summary of what unfortunately happened way too often and still does happen.

the primary problem is that the companies need to continue selling stuff so when something has reached a state where it's just good as it is they can't just stop but have to find other ways of getting the bucks. often the next steps in such cases don't change things to the better.
also to blame however at least to some extend are the users. most people want something new regularly for no actual reason and the software companies fuel that of course by telling everyone that only the latest is the greatest and if you don't have that you suck
many times i've seen how people react if a certain program or hardware has reached its eol. some even panic and immediately start to frantically search for an alternative. if asked whether there's an actual need for an upgrade or whether there's something wrong with the current version they hold on for a second, start smiling and admit that actually there's no need right now

Awesome work!
What software did you use? How long did it take you?

Thanks! Took me one evening in Maya.

you should call him woody

EDIT: actually, i could just as well join this "made with an sgi" show off thread
a while ago the legendary resident evil 1.5 has been released and some time later autodesk dumped softimage. so i figured i could combine both (since capcom used softimage for the resi games) and make a related scene. i picked the lobby where the game starts and what has also been one of the best known screenshots over the years.

Wow! Really nice work guys, you are truly ar teests...

BLAiSE wrote: Hi all!

Not a recent work (I graduated in 2009), but I used my SGI Visual Workstation 320 to create my graduation film at the university.
Parental advisory explicit content! :D

Hilarious! Thank you!!!

Some weird stuff:

a more complex work: Maya+Elastic Reality+Shake

foetz wrote: you should call him woody

EDIT: actually, i could just as well join this "made with an sgi" show off thread
a while ago the legendary resident evil 1.5 has been released and some time later autodesk dumped softimage. so i figured i could combine both (since capcom used softimage for the resi games) and make a related scene. i picked the lobby where the game starts and what has also been one of the best known screenshots over the years.

That looks really cool! well I like it!

Kinda shows that SGI's are still capable machines even today!

Also sorry for reviving a dead thread...

I just used an O2 for a work task for the first time in a long time. I needed to do a lot of text file comparisons. Normally, I use BBEdit on the Mac or UltraCompare on Windows (also available for OS X and Linux), but I started missing IRIX XDIFF. I moved the files to the O2, opened pairs of files in NEdit and XDIFF simultaneously, and it was like putting on a comfortable pair of old jeans. I felt like I was moving much more quickly on IRIX than I would've been had I used my normal Mac/Win tools! The other tools may have more features, but the XDIFF and NEdit UIs are so much more comfortable.