51–60 of 75 posts
Being in that business, I think I remember them working on a goofy sort of film recorder. Didn't they have that shop in Richmond in a bad part of town?
Wondered what "the whiteboard incident" was.... “One day at a board meeting, Jobs started berating Smith and other top Pixar executives for the delay in getting the circuit boards completed for the new version of the Pixar Image Computer. At the time, NeXT was also very late in completing its own computer boards, and Smith pointed that out: “Hey, you’re even later with your NeXT boards, so quit jumping on us.” Jobs w…
While the Pixar people are probably not aware, they were actually in a race. There was a small group in Brazil using computer graphics for TV commercials that decided to do a full length movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_(film) They had very limited resources and were using commercial tools instead of building their own like Pixar. They cheated by having their characters be aliens who were mostly blobs…
The film was completed much earlier. But distribution company held it for reasons nobody know. /insert business conspiracy theory.
It was very amateur. 3ds-max-4-like program on dos, called topaz (never saw it after that). and render "farms" were just using the animators (486?) computers at night.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> your presumptuous and uninformed conclusion about them being bad studios they were abusing their workers rights in a surreptitious manner - not sure how that's a "good studio"
> they were abusing their workers rights No they weren’t. The C-level staff of the parent companies named as defendants in the lawsuit were, and the parent companies are all still in business. The studios that closed were pawns, just like the employees.
One corp owning another isn't some arbitrary thing, they control that subcorp, are liable for its action, and so forth.
The inverse is true. They're one thing. The separation is only legal, not moral.
Back in 2017 a "Humble Bundle" package included the Lawrence Levy book "To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History"[0]. I got the book there and really enjoyed it. Levy was brought in, by Jobs, as CFO of Pixar prior to the IPO and the book is concerend with more of the business side of Pixar pivoting from hardware company to studio. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I attended WWDC 2018, one of Pixar's lead lighting engineers gave a high-level presentation on the intertwining of math/physics/art to shade animated scenes in their movies. I would love to walk through one of their internal scene files and inspect all the polygon's on Woody's shirt. It's a fascinating intersection of programming not many people relate to.
Sounds interesting. Do you know any link to this talk? Edit: I could not find similar to here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2018/
https://asciiwwdc.com/2018/sessions/111
The engineer's name is Danielle Feinberg and she did a similar TED talk two years before WWDC (even the titles are similar).
Wondered what "the whiteboard incident" was.... “One day at a board meeting, Jobs started berating Smith and other top Pixar executives for the delay in getting the circuit boards completed for the new version of the Pixar Image Computer. At the time, NeXT was also very late in completing its own computer boards, and Smith pointed that out: “Hey, you’re even later with your NeXT boards, so quit jumping on us.” Jobs w…
I'm glad someone stood up to Jobs, what a complete and utter asshole. Nothing says job security like telling your boss that their demands are "bullshit"
If you worked with Steve, you were going to be challenged. If you cowered, gods help you. But if you knew what you were talking about, you'd be fine, in the end he'd respect you more.
www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-michelson/one-lesson-from-steve-job_b_1100331.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You won't find a lot of polygons, but you would find many interesting surface textures, shaders, lighting effects, simulations and more.
Correct, Pixar is notorious for using fairly low detail SubD surface control cages for almost everything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds interesting. Do you know any link to this talk? Edit: I could not find similar to here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2018/
It looks like Apple didn't offer that video after the talk. https://asciiwwdc.com/2018/sessions/111 The engineer's name is Danielle Feinberg and she did a similar TED talk two years before WWDC (even the titles are similar). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1R1z9ipFnM
Back in 2017 a "Humble Bundle" package included the Lawrence Levy book "To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History"[0]. I got the book there and really enjoyed it. Levy was brought in, by Jobs, as CFO of Pixar prior to the IPO and the book is concerend with more of the business side of Pixar pivoting from hardware company to studio. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2…
Dealers of Lightning has an interesting chapter about Pixar's PARC roots in the SuperPaint group. There's also a very good article somewhere on the web (I can't find it now) about the NYIT years; the NYIT lab was a very strange arrangement. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnpqnm/the-1970s-graphics-pr... is short and OK.