gfxfr33k

I was watching the Extra Behind the scenes in the making of the Sci-Fi movie Contact with Jody Foster.

I was curious as to why they used Linux (unix) machines and used Houdini, maya and Softimage XSI along with Renderman and some of their own tools.

I did notice they they had to save time and I saw that they used a 128 processor machine to do all the rendering.

So using a linux OS or Mac OS vs Windows XP is more efficient in rendering your projects?

Rendering for a couple of simple objects in Cinema 4D or even Bryce takes a while about 30 seconds for a simple Terrain, light source and sky background. Of course that includes the alaising time as well.

Anyhow any one familiar with Houdini, maya and Softimage XSI and why they chose to use those applications instead of 3D studio max or Cinema 4D or any of the other equivalent 3d animation software in Windows instead?

My last question is does Windows XP 3D animation software run more efficiently in Windows and Linux versus Mac OSX? That question might be redundant sorry. This might have something to do with OpenGL maybe being more supported in Linux and windows not sure? I know the rendering times are speed up with Multi Core Multi Processor systems and linux seems to handle them better than any OS as far as I know?

Sorry about all the questions but this particular forum seems to be one of the largest visited so I wanted to post my question here.

Last question, what chance is there in a OSX version of Houdini? If its made for Linux , I don't understand the reason why an OSX version cannot be coded for?

Also which version currently is more efficient the linux or Windows version? Render times and stability.