What To Do With An Ultra 60? 51
"We currently use Maya. The students want to use Maya because it makes them more marketable. My boss and I would like to move away from a commercial package so the students would focus more on content rather than software proficiency. Unfortunately, the lab is under a grant which keeps it a Microsoft lab for at least 18 more months. My boss and I have talked about at the end of our software license contract moving the whole lab to Linux and using Blender and gimp as our primary tools. Still it seems a waste to let is sit antoher 18 months doing nothing. We don't need a web server because we don't maintain a web presence right now. So the question is what do you think is the best way for me to use an Ultra 60 in the short term? The follow up being, with 18 months to learn and prepare, how hard/practical would it be to create a Linux/Solaris based animation lab?"
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your students want to use Maya because it helps them get a job, but you want to take that away from them.
You're going to lose students.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
teaching the principles behind something is important, but also do it with software that is current. to me learning to use a peice of software well takes longer then learning the principles of animation.
Dont take away a usefull skill from your students. for the sake of removeing microsoft. (that said maya runs on Mac OS X which is built on bsd unix and runs oh so sweet)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the end you need a good mix of low end platforms where you concentrate on simple animation, modeling, texturing and lighting before you can stp up to physics, hair, particles, etc..the Good stuff that Maya offers.
Also, a lot of shops aren't going to be Maya based, it's fscking expensive for a full production license (even an edu license is pricey) You'll most probably see a mix of 3DSMax, Softimage, Lightwave and maybe one Maya staion so learning Maya just ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Worry about your feet sliding through the floor before worring about learning packages.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Any shop that has fair amount of maya seats won't care whether you know maya or not. They'll take a look at how you draw. If they think you're a good artist they'll teach how to use whatever program they want you to use. Nobody ever got a job because "maya" was on their resume. Especially if the word "maya" means that you used it college.
you can donate it to me ;-) (Score:2)
Re:you can donate it to me ;-) (Score:1)
Re:you can donate it to me ;-) (Score:2)
Re:you can donate it to me ;-) (Score:1)
I was also wrong about the speed. Our box was quite something in its day (at least relative to the other ancient (386) suns we have); I guess things moved on and I didn't notice. I thought it was much faster. Oh well. I checked the spec95 ratings and it's on the order of a 400 MHz PIII.
I guess I was just trying to emphasize that a good portion of the money originally paid for the box wasn't for performance, but for Sun compatibility... it would be a shame just to not take advantage of this feature.
The obvious solution (Score:1)
This and that (Score:2)
Seriously, though, have you thought of installing Maya Studio on it? Expensive, but maybe they'll give you a discount, since you're helping create a user base.
From your point of view, there's not that much difference between Solaris and Linux, so you might as well start learning Solaris now. And all the open-source stuff that Linux is known for runs on Solaris. So for all practical purposes, the Ultra will just be a supercharged Linux box.
One thing you can do is start installing the apps you want for your future Linux lab on the Sun right now. This will give you useful experience, and start you thinking on how your want your Linux boxes configured.
Re:This and that (Score:2, Insightful)
Then install blender and gimp(if you chose solaris), then install vnc and samba
on it(of course if solaris start pulling down GNU software to make it useable). Then install vnc client on the
windows machines in the lab and mount
part of the Ultra 60 filesystem on the
NT machines. Now you can offer those
alternatives(blender,gimp, other) or if that
violates your grant, just become proficient
administrating the configuration. Then
also work on converting your NT maya licenses
to Linux maya licenses, if possible.
Then in 18 months convert half of the lab to
linux on the PC's and either use X and nfs to
access the Ultra 60 or continue to use vnc and
samba. Then eliminate the remaining windows
boxes or keep one around as a reminder of why
you converted the lab linux. I'd probably
continue to use solaris 8 on the ultra 60.
But I have to ask you this, what are the
details of this crazy grant. Is this a grant
of pc's and software from Microsoft or something?
Put Apache and Slashcode on it..... (Score:1)
Then you could have a local tool for sharing ideas about how to do stuff and also to showcase peoples work.
If nothing else you might want to put Samba on it and use it as an fileserver. Also look into WebNFS for kicks.
one more thing, it's a faster stonger box then any PC you have. (Even a AMD XP) If you want to do compiles for animations thats the box to do it on.
64bit vs 32bit
Re:Put Apache and Slashcode on it..... (Score:1, Informative)
FWIW... (Score:2)
I agree with the first poster here, in that if you can't find a good use for your Ultra 60, it isn't that bad of an idea to eBay it (if allowed).
I don't know enough about animation to say what software it is and isn't capable of running, but the first thing you'll want to do is to figure out how good of a video card (okay, framebuffer!) it has. If it isn't that hot, maybe you want to stop right there.
BTW... just something to note. You could install Linux on the Ultra 60, but given the Sparc architecture, you're not going to be as good off as running it on a PC, which most programs for Linux are targeted to, and supported.
A Google Search [google.com] for GIMP and SOLARIS seems to indicate that there is a version of Gimp that'll work under Solaris.
Seems like you have a number of options here.
I'll take it (Score:1)
Brian
Dedicate it to Rendering? (Score:4, Interesting)
The more technical among them will enjoy playing with shader code, and the less technical will appreciate the fact they can simply submit their render while they get on with interactive tasks.
Asset management is another application that is often neglected in 'school', so maybe you could look at buying or building a web-based system to handle storing and indexing tutorials, documentation, thumbnailing textures and animations (i.e. clips are subitted to the system, automatically downscaled and compressed to MPEG4/DivX etc.) so your students can easily browse a large repository and fetch the items without hunting through disks and CD's wondering where those preview renders they did 3 months ago went.
This may be a mid-to-long-term project, but will certainly make that Ultra-60 useful as a server.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
That said, Solaris isn't a bad skill to learn, and it might be worth playing around with for a learning experience. Bear in mind that an Ultra 60 will only be equivalent to something like a Pentium 600-ish (dependant on what kind of CPU or CPUs are installed) for most tasks unless its been optimised for a SPARC based architecture.
SGI's pretty much dead, actually. (Score:2)
Says so here. [pennnet.com]
Besides which... (Score:2)
Even at SGI, they no longer believe that proprietary architectures can compete with commodity boxes in the workstation market. But there's still "visualization" [sgi.com] systems, which you definitely can't do with PC clusters!
Did you sell your last brain cell for beer money? (Score:4, Insightful)
The students want to use Maya because it makes them more marketable. My boss and I would like to move away from a commercial package so the students would focus more on content rather than software proficiency. . . My boss and I have talked about at the end of our software license contract moving the whole lab to Linux and using Blender and gimp as our primary tools.
Are you INSANE? You have an animation lab with software such as Maya [aliaswavefront.com] and you want to switch to Blender and Gimp? Sure, those are decent packages if you're an amature on a low-low budget, but if I were a student interested in computer animation I'd raise a huge ruckus if some open-source advocate switched the lab from Maya to those inferior tools without a really, really, really good reason.
This isn't a troll. A few years ago I was seriously interested in computer animation at one time and got to wet my feet with Lightwave and Alias|Wavefront (before it became Maya). I still play around, even though my object modeling skills have stagnated. I've tried nearly all free and inexpensive commercial 3D packages (including the latest Blender as of about 3 weeks ago) and none can come close to even early versions of Lightwave. Unfortunately that does matter, as inferior tools put a low ceiling on students' creativity.
Re:What to do with Ultra 160 (Score:2)
Uhm excuse me? Solaris is cheap. Media Kits for SPARC cost a mere $75 and only $45 for Intel. Don't bother yourself to the Alpha line since Compaq committed alphacide. If you want to learn a real UNIX platform at least get a SparcStation 5 at 170mhz but if you have some money then a Dual Ultra 2 is yummy.
Learn Unix... (Score:1)
Its a great way to learn some basic Unix, and learn about X Windows. Whatever you learn will be 90% applicable to Linux or any other Unix.
File Server (Score:2)
Check out Sun newsgroups and web boards to see what strengths your machine in particular has, and use it geared to those strengths. I mean, if the idea is to just find a use for the machine, you either want to add functionality or capabilities to your existing way-of-doing-things, or simplifiy and make more effective current way of doing things. It doesn't make sense to duplicate functionality or move functionality to a box that's less suited to the task than some other existing machine.
I am by no means an expert on Sun products and have no experience with Maya whatsoever, so take this howevever you like.
Typical Sysadmin (Score:2)
Isn't this typical of a sysadmin, especially for a university? He and his boss want to do things just for their own purposes with no regard for the students or faculty.
I'm watching one of these unfold right now in another department. Their new IS guy spent a bundle on Microsoft stuff and moved everything (mainly web serving and e-mail) from a functional Solaris server to a clumsy multi-server setup. Didn't even provide POP3 from the Exchange server, so everyone has to run Outlook or not use their university e-mail (which is becoming a popular choice). He can't get IIS configured properly, so all the promised additional functionality of Frontpage/ASP is still missing. And to top it off, the servers have been infected at least once in the past 6 months. Not once through this did they solict any other technical person's opinions and they ignored the unsolicted ones. Now the latest blow is coming. The university wants to consolidate and move all departments to one e-mail server and one web server. So now the department has spent 6 months struggling with this new configuration, plus the expense of the machines and software, for nothing.
Re:Typical Sysadmin (Score:1)
Read slashdot all day, and don't do your job... (Score:2)
Seriously, get a life. You are going to "save the university's money" by buying Sun workstations to run GIMP on?
I hope this article is another troll.
Re:Read slashdot all day, and don't do your job... (Score:2)
> by buying Sun workstations to run GIMP on?
Seriously, get a life. You are going to "comment on Ask Slashdot" without reading the story?
I hope your post is another troll.
SUN == linux + Maya , if you are lucky (Score:1)
Re:SUN == linux + Maya , if you are lucky (Score:1)