Page 5 – Cloak Media

Apple Siggraph 2005 Booth

May 3, 2009August 8, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

Apple has historically used Siggraph to announce cool things. This year, on the opening day of the Siggraph trade show, Apple Computer announced its might mouse pointing device. This first ever Apple released multibutton mouse looks like the ordinary elongated apple single clicking device, but has a very small trackball and multiple clicking surfaces.

Also at the booth, Apple featured a fully functional studio workstation setup with full Xsan support and shared rendering and storage resources via Xserve RAID. The majority of Apple representatives work out of the Pro Applications Santa Monica Campus, and for all three days showed nothing but respect and loyalty towards their varied customers.

Luxology Reveals All

May 3, 2009August 8, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

At the Orpheum theater on 2 August 2005, Luxology announced it’s next release of it’s fabulous character modeler, Modo 201. Luxology also divulged how it can generate complex new applications that integrate fully together though an effort they called Nexus. Using the Nexus application engine, Luxology is able to combine modeling, rendering, and in a future release animation. Expect Modo 201 before the end of the year.

Important Mac Dates

May 3, 2009August 8, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

With the recent disclosure, that Apple Computer will slowly transition Mac OS X from PowerPC architecture to Intel architecture, new trade shows and events now become relevant. No longer can the Mac user rely that product announcements will come at Macworld San Francisco, NAB, WWDC, or Apple Expo Paris. Look over the upcoming dates and trade show links for the 2005 and 2006 seasons.

Siggraph 2005 Job Fair

May 3, 2009August 6, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

During Siggraph 2005, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Cloak Media proudly presented its credentials to the visual communications community. This is what I learned:

Los Angeles is still the world center for rich media and visual delights. Be it the video game industry, the visual communication education arena, or just plain visual entertainment, Los Angeles reigns as its fulcrum.

Over the course of two days, The Arts Institutes sponsored a vendor job fair with the likes of Imaginary Forces, Intel, Papaya Studios, Laika, Activision, and Lucas Arts all willing to talk with animators, compositors, pipeline architects, and programmers about contract or full time employment opportunities.

The bulk of studios and design firms also has regular trade show booths to talk with future clients and future employees. Large studios like Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, and Pixar had a extra day on the show floor. From what I could count, at least 100 positions were available, for an applicant pool of over 600 who decided to submit a resume for review. Good luck to all who met with employers and may all find future happiness.

eager job hunters review the credentials

Linux on Power Mac G5

May 3, 2009August 5, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

On Intel white boxes, the structure of the chipset is well understood and documented, however on the Apple Power Mac G5, Linux cannot be fully implemented and has many gaps in service. As of today, neither audio nor Mac-on-Linux work. I do not believe the latest crop of dual 2.3 GHz is supported at all through the GNU GPL, and only through Terra Soft Solutions paid subscriptions to Linux, currently priced at $30 with no manual, or $60 with a manual but without support, and finally $90 with 60 days support, can it install at all.

This makes Linux very price prohibitive to even attempt to run on my test bench. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger costs at retail around $115 on an individual license, and just $180 for a five seat license (just $36 a seat) for a family. If compared to a full blown Mac OS X Server 10.4 Tiger model, then Linux would make a financial difference ($430 each license for 10 client Mac OS X Server). In my analysis, even though the operating system originates as open source, your ability to install and support that OS may make the initial “free” license very expensive. This does not include the niceties of having a multi-billion dollar company further developing the OS and bundling excellent applications for free like iTunes, iDVD, iCal, and GarageBand.

I will stay with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X Server 10.4 Tiger until Linux is fully support on my test bench platform. It was a very short test, that ultimately ended without any experience in the Linux operating system.

Linux on PowerPC

May 3, 2009August 4, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

It may seem odd, but in a high performance computing environments, it sometimes makes sense to run another UNIX variant on your stock PowerPC based Apple Mac. Over the course of several iterations, I will try to install Linux kernel 2.6.10 on a Power Mac G5, along with ancillary tools. I will report back on the results and performance testing as compared to the tried and true Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2 release.

Apple Shake Siggraph User Group Meeting

May 3, 2009August 1, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

To a capacity crowd gathered at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, CA Apple Computer extolled the benefits of Mac OS X in the field of animation, motion graphics, and advanced compositing. Showcasing the latest release of Shake, version 4, experts from South Park animation, Luma Pictures, and the Shake team walked us through the rich feature set.

Apple’s presentation was artfully orchestrated using a full high definition presentation system, which allowed the artists work to shine. Luma Pictures educated the crowd on the ease of deploying advanced PHP web applications to monitor and track visual effect shots for enterprise collaboration.

On 2 August 2005 Apple announced its first ever multibutton mouse, called the might mouse. Expect a full report later on this week on this singular product.