The platform and the app and the system are sifferent things of course. That Redhat 7.1 distibution was probably tweaked, and running on an SGI Onyx Vector Supa-Doopa Laserlight Workstation.
I know that that recent film with the animated white mouse and the film Ice Age were donw using our nearest and deares
gimp. Another good raytracer is
povray. Those are the free ones I know of, but I'd be interested to hear of any more.