Digital Domain was the lead house for the visual effects in Jim Cameron's Titanic. The production of photorealistc visual effects, such as those for Titanic, creates high demands on computing resources. This paper discusses those demands and how they are addressed at Digital Domain. In particular, it focuses on the descision to purchase a large cluster of Alpha based systems running Linux and the issues involved with configuring and installing the cluster.

Daryll Strauss is currently manager of software development at Digital Domain. He has a BS in applied mathematics from Carnegie Mellon and an MS in computer graphics from the University of Southern California. He has been working on Unix systems of one variety or another for the last 15 years, but he gets the most enjoyment out of computer graphics. He has spent the last five years working in the film industry doing visual effects.