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written
by: Dani Rosen ©
2000
Basic
Unix for beginners
For animators jumping into the Unix environment for the first
time!
Introduction
This article
focuses on basic Unix commands, the Unix environment, and helpful
commands for beginners. Although many CG artists use PC machines
(IBM compatible) these days because of their popularity, and some
use Macs; there often comes a time when an artist is faced with
the Unix environment.
Most CG companies that use a variant of Unix use IRIX - which
is the Unix operating system of the Silicon Graphics Machines.
Except for graphic-specific commands found on IRIX, most Unix
commands work almost the same on all types of Unix. However, by
the time you read this, Maya might have already been ported to
Linux as well as many other CG packages. Every day new Unix commands
are written to make the work flow of the artist a little easier.
IRIX is filled with commands to manipulate images and movies,
which these days - most compositors and other external GUI applications
can handle much better and with more control. It would be a waste
of time to go over those command, however, feel free to explore
the /usr/sbin directory for those commands.
This article
will not go over the history of Unix (there are plenty of those
on the Net), as well as in-depth explanations. This is merely
a jump-start for animators who have never used the Unix environment
before (or need a tune-up). I am taking into account you know
how to log in and open a shell. If you don't know how to log-in,
speak to your system administrator and ask about entering your
username and password. A shell in IRIX can be obtained by clicking
(or running) "winterm" The next article - "Intermediate Unix and
Unix scripting for animators", will cover some more advanced Unix
commands and some useful Unix scripting (release date is unknown...).
So let's jump right in....
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on to the Unix Environment>
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