What makes Pixar Tick?

I was watching some of the Pixar behind the scenes documentaries, and wondered what program they actually used. I knew they had their own team of computer engineers to write their own, but was fascinated to learn that they use a variety of programs (including Maya of course) as well as Marionettte. Marionettte is customized for each Pixar film and thus is almost useless for the average artist using 3D. While there is very little known about the program (if you were on top of the animation mountain, would you give away your secrets?) it is supposed to be more intuitive for 2D trained artists.

But what do the competitors do? According to Flushed Away's supervising animator, Jason Spencer-Galsworthy, "PDI works with EMO and DreamWorks works with Maya, though this will change after Flushed Away, with DreamWorks adopting EMO. This is a tech pipeline whereby your 3D software interacts with a database and other departments, such as lighting. And that was all put together by PDI. Over the Hedge was the first project done with EMO. It handles the way your work fits in with everyone else’s." (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=3064<ype=cat)

While the two different systems are basically the same, some seem to think that Pixar would still be the leader without its upper hand because they take more time and effort into each movie instead of churning them out like other studios. Whatever the case, you can't argue with the phenomenal results.

Hotel 626

http://hotel626.com/

This is just a simple point-and-click flash game i came across randomly, but the presentation was pretty impressive. The game seamlessly switches between actual video footage and 3D rendered scenes, and it's nothing like any other flash games I've seen before.
You are also asked to turn on your webcam and microphone (although this is optional), and also to enter your phone number at one point in the game (also optional). I thought it was a neat way to interact with users.

Meet Emily

Meet Emily, what you think is a video of someone answering questions about the demo. She is the demo. The face is fully animated in 3D. Is amazing that we have gone this far in 3D graphics that, it is almost impossible to distinguish what is CG and what is real. Though, I found the lighting on her right cheek a bit off, but I wasn't sure until I read the description on the side. There has been a lot of break through in the last couple years of crossing the uncanny valley.

Where the Wild Things Are

Next year the film version of Where the Wild Things Are will be released. It will incorporate live action, puppetry and 3d computer animation to make, what looks like, a very stunning picture. While clicking around I found that John Lasseter (director and producer for many of the Pixar Films) while working for Disney in 1983 did a test combining traditional hand drawn animated characters over a 3d background.



To see a test clip for the 2009 film go to: http://www.thebadandugly.com/2008/02/18/wild-things-clip
(I'm not able to embed it)

It's interesting how the two use 3d animation in completely different ways, one more subtly than the other. The one that is more subtle also is the most recent making it more high tech and realistic.

Redgrass

I wanted to find some experimental maya work and found this on youtube:

baldwin storyboard

Review - Second Life Herald

The Second Life Herald (www.secondlifeherald.com) is the first virtual tabloid newspaper, or at least it claims to be. As an online publication it likes to claim many virtual firsts and some of them I'm sure are actually the case. At any rate, it is a source for news and trends in virtual culture, and also includes plenty of images offering examples of how the virtual community is modeling and representing themselves these days.

As a brief background, the SL Herald began reporting in The Sims Online as the alphaville herald. After thousands migrated to SL because of the lack of user created content in TSO the herald migrated along with them. Not to mention the fact that the head writer Urizenus Sklar got permanently banned from TSO servers for writing too many muck-raking stories that held Electronic Arts in a very critical eye. Its a long amusing story that they published as a book with the same title as the newspaper. Now in SL the writers roam around the different sims writing stories that give Linden Labs much of the same treatment that they used to give to Electronic Arts.

I find it to be a good sampling of trends in the virtual community if you're interested where that culture is going. It's especially useful if you're interested but find participating in SL yourself sometimes exhausting and time consuming. It does however have some flaws. They occasionally have a post where they feature an avatar is sexy spread similar to pin-ups in British tabloid magazines which I find doesn't contribute to their goal of creating serious discourse around virtual culture. Its also strange to have an "underground" journalistic voice without an established authoritarian journalistic voice to react against as you might in conventional press. As far as I know there isn't a virtual equivalent of USA Today, but the Herald here functions as a kind of virtual Chicago Reader. I have heard that Harper's has a base in SL but I didn't get the impression that is was that comprehensive, but more like a novelty for the real world. If there are any other SL publications out there that I'm not aware of please let me know.

Livia's Story Board

This is my story board. I think I might be concentrating too much on the top level of my project so I think I'll concentrate on the other aspects of my environment for now I think it's too bare. Ideas anyone?

A piece of Turqoise

I saw this image of a piece of turquoise and said "that looks something I could make in Maya". I'm attracted to it's organic shape and the light that bounces off it's sides uniformly. It looks like you could make it from a type of Phong Shader Material. I find the organic shape most appalling, but i guess that's my preference. The duplicability of something organic is much harder then symmetrical objects. So even when you're trying to remake it it still has a uniqueness!

Turquoise

2-D Cartoons in A 3-D World

Hey I wanted to share with you guys this cartoon a saw a couple of years ago. What does this have to do with Maya and 3-D ? I want to show how even though a cartoon might be in 2-D, I still think it can be relevant in our Industry. Don't worry about the story line JUST LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS. Mind you this movie is pretty old, you can tell it's like a 2-D image mixed with like some kind of 3-d effect. I guess I just think it's sad how now a days People just don't seem to care about a cartoon unless it looks like its popping out of a screen. But I still believe cartoons can be more then as relevant to the technology. I just know if a cartoon done in CLAY ANIMATION (like Nightmare Before Christmas) came out know one would care to see it because the technology used to make it is outdated. It would be good if animation could combine with idea from the past, I think that make a more interesting piece. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w74ZmiznzFk