New 3D Animation Software For Linux Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New 3D Animation Software For Linux Released

The Swedes from Gothenberg that run Craft Animations have announced the first-ever Linux release of their Craft Director Studio software. Craft Director Studio, which is an advanced real-time 3D animations tool, is now officially supported under Fedora Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzkxMg

[zoomblab]

What??? Software for Linux that is not Open Source AND costs money?
</sarcasm>

Good news actually!

[Louise]

Sure. http://www.varicad.com/

is a direct AutoCAD competitor, but this is for Linux as well, and maybe 100 times cheaper than AutoCAD.

[thefirstm]

What??? Software for Linux that is not Open Source AND costs money?
</sarcasm>

Good news actually!

What? Your post fails W3C validation. You closed a tag without opening it.

[Adriano ML]

What??? Software for Linux that is not Open Source AND costs money?
</sarcasm>

Good news actually!

This is not an exception. It's becoming the rule. Since Titanic the movie industry has been using linux from giant (enemy crabs) rendering farms to powerful workstations. Autodesk Maya, CinePaint (GIMP fork) and Softimage XSI are just some pretty popular programs running under linux.

But still, it fails for the mainstream desktop user...

[droidhacker]

The mainstream desktop user doesn't need anything not included for free with ANY major linux distro. They're just too ignorant to bother trying.

Ask yourself this; of all of your "regular"-user family, friends, etc., HOW MANY of them actually use anything beyond a word processor, web browser, and IM client? And maybe the odd weird thing like google earth (which is available for linux), photochop/gimp type image editor, etc.? The answer is *not many*.

Here's a little bit of fun info re general desktop users;
Recently, my sister needed a new computer. So while finding something for her, I decided to grab one for myself as well. The nature of the machine is irrelevant since they're both identical. I decided to frustrate her by leaving windoze on it until she screams at me to give her a real OS... (and she IS screaming at me for it )

Right away I wiped mine and loaded it with Fedora 12. Everything works perfect, no weird configurations needed, etc.

Hers; switch it on, and it's got some DEMO version of msoffice on it that keeps trying to sell a full version, and this worthless msie web browser that renders everything wrong. So first step is to download and install openoffice and firefox. Ok, got a web browser and word processor, not too bad.

Now of course comes setting up the printer. She's got an old HP4050TN plugged into her network. Scratch our heads for half an hour trying to get the win7 junk to find the printer and give it a driver that works with the printer. Now of course, its compatible with standard postscript and pcl languages, but for whatever reason, win7 has NEVER HEARD OF IT, and has to be configured manually. Fine. Eventually got through that nonsense and have it working on a driver for an HP4300. Right, that's not even the same printer.

And then of course comes mine with F12 on it.... which without doing ANYTHING, already knows about the printer and has itself configured to use it, just by being plugged into her network. Talk about brainless setup! Similar thing happened at my place, where I have a piece of junk samsung usb laser printer plugged into my desktop computer with CUPS configured to share the printer with the network. It also *just works*. Wow.

Anyways, she's real frustrated with how win7 is just impossible to use (she's also been having trouble getting it to connect to wifi in the various places she needs to), so in a couple of days, she's handing over the machine so I can set it up with a real OS.

[fhj52]

Craft Director Studio can be added to this fairly* long list: http://www.linuxmovies.org/software.html
(*not as long as it needs to be to be dominat ...)

...

But still, it fails for the mainstream desktop user...

Why? Really. ...

Years ago I would have agreed automatically but the only reason I know now is that "made for windoz" software does not run natively in Linux. That's been the main reason all along, primarily for graphics & (FPS) games. However, now, except for FPS games and other fast 3D | 2D action one just runs a VM like VirtualBox OSE(free) or VMplayer(proprietary but free) on the desktop. I even watch Netflix downloaded movies using a VM(even in that resource hog of hogs, Win7).
The DE's these days have plenty of eye candy ...more than Win7. ( Some of us would say too much candy and not enough meat recently. )

So, why do you think "it fails for the mainstream desktop user"? Inquiring minds want to know ...

[Adriano ML]

I'm not saying linux is bad for desktop.

I'm just saying that it still fails to take on those people who go on the store and buy a computer. Be it Microsoft lock in, Low adoption by vendors or linux distributors failing to sell their fish broadly.

There are problems in the "linux desktop software ecosystem" front, but the ultimate deal is to convince people to buy desktop with it. If the masses want Linux, every retail, every assembler will ship it.

Although hard, some killer apps would do the job...