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Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

pixarinabox.org

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Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#41

Post by hueving »

dman wrote: post #39
gdubs wrote: post #38

I brought a computer graphics textbook into my high-school math class and asked my teacher if he could help me figure it out. His response was that I needed to pay attention to the current lesson plan, and would need to get through trig, then calculus before we could approach the book. What's amazing about this video series is that they have actually captured the elements that _can_ be taught to kids of various ages…

You are younger than you will be two years from now.

Not relevant to what happened to him in high school.

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#42

Post by merpnderp »

drewblaisdell wrote: post #6
britcruise wrote: post #2

Hey HN! My name is Brit Cruise and I'm the lead content developer on the Khan Academy side of this equation (working alongside Tony DeRose from Pixar...plus a village of others), if you have any specific questions about this project I'll be happy to answer as best I can.

Not a comment about this specifically, but I'm a big fan of your other courses on Khan Academy. They changed the way I think about the world. I can't overstate how grateful I am that you created them. Everyone should check out these lessons: Journey into cryptography: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/crypt... Journey into information theory: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science…

I can't believe you just posted this. I had a 5 hour drive this morning and listened to nearly all the cryptography lectures during it.

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#43

Post by harywilke »

Keyframe wrote: post #22
ginko wrote: post #8

It's interesting that the Rendering chapter only covers ray tracing, while most classic Pixar movies were actually mainly rendered using the Reyes algorithm, which is a form of rasterization.

REYES is now one of in newer PRMans for quite some time.

REYES (Render Everything You've Ever Seen) has been the basis of PRMan since the start. Recently PRMan has shifted away from this approach and towards more ray tracing. see the following for descriptions of REYES: http://renderman.pixar.com/view/reyes-renderman-under-the-ho... or the 1987 paper by Cook, Carpenter and Catmul http://graphics.pixar.com/library/Reyes/paper.pdf

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#44

Post by tbabb »

wyldfire wrote: post #40
tbabb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixar movies from Finding Dory onward will be exclusively raytracing, FWIW.

You sound pretty authoritative here, so I'll ask a semi-topical question: are the creative teams the ones driving this kind of development? "We need better fidelity/IQ because I would like this film to look more impressive that previous ones." Or is it more along the lines of Pixar demonstrating industry leadership?

It's both. Each new movie will generate new technical challenges, and the tech side of the studio will be prompted to rise to the new creative demands. Finding Dory, for example, is a natural choice for using path tracing because of all the refractive surfaces-- In a movie that's set in the ocean, it's pretty important to have water that looks realistic and natural (and frankly, using older technology might be more difficult to work with in the end). Finding Nemo-era technology would not really cut it these days. It makes sense that Pixar should put in a lot of effort to get this right.

On top of that, it's important to stay on the cutting edge, both in terms of keeping RenderMan a competitive product, and in terms of keeping the internal challenges interesting and fresh-- which is necessary for attracting top talent and preventing the company from getting into a rut or a routine.

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#45

Post by prezjordan »

ausjke wrote: post #23

Love Khanacademy, I wish I can bookmark course like this for later viewing, could not figure out how to do that yet. I'm a coach there but like to bookmark course for myself once a while.

Start watching some content and it'll appear on your homepage next time you visit :)

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#46

Post by anjc »

tomvbussel wrote: post #33
anjc wrote: post #31

It's odd that people in the comments seem to think this is for kids. It surely isn't intended to be for children, right? Great lessons.

I think this is aimed at middle/high school students. It probably can be interesting for adults, but I'd really recommend picking up a book such as Fundamentals of Computer Graphics by Shirley and Marschner [1]. [1] https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~srm/fcg3/

Yeah it seems to be aimed at teens, but this is so far beyond most excellent high school students. They're dropping in terms and concepts which you don't touch on until the final years in an undergrad, with a focus on graphics.

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#47

Post by Keyframe »

harywilke wrote: post #43
Keyframe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REYES is now one of in newer PRMans for quite some time.

REYES (Render Everything You've Ever Seen) has been the basis of PRMan since the start. Recently PRMan has shifted away from this approach and towards more ray tracing. see the following for descriptions of REYES: http://renderman.pixar.com/view/reyes-renderman-under-the-ho... or the 1987 paper by Cook, Carpenter and Catmul http://graphics.pixar.com/library/Reyes/paper.pdf

Indeed, and it's now one of several rendering methods in PRMan - newer one is RIS: http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risOv...

Sidenote, you could have always done raytracing in PRMan, even with REYES. You just bring your own trace(). BMRT was often used as a trace() engine, until they came up with Entropy and Pixar sued them out of existence (NVidia bought them).

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#48

Post by comrh »

merpnderp wrote: post #42
drewblaisdell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a comment about this specifically, but I'm a big fan of your other courses on Khan Academy. They changed the way I think about the world. I can't overstate how grateful I am that you created them. Everyone should check out these lessons: Journey into cryptography: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/crypt... Journey into information theory: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science…

I can't believe you just posted this. I had a 5 hour drive this morning and listened to nearly all the cryptography lectures during it.

Interesting I've been doing podcasts during my drives but never thought about Khan Academy. You can get away with not seeing anything they put on the screen or draw on a whiteboard? Have you had success with just listening to all the courses?

Re: Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy

#49

Post by Animats »

gdubs wrote: post #38

I brought a computer graphics textbook into my high-school math class and asked my teacher if he could help me figure it out. His response was that I needed to pay attention to the current lesson plan, and would need to get through trig, then calculus before we could approach the book. What's amazing about this video series is that they have actually captured the elements that _can_ be taught to kids of various ages…

That reflects a high school math teacher view.

To understand basic 3D computer graphics, you need some linear algebra, matrices, some analytic geometry, and some trigonometry, but not much calculus. Once you learn what a 4x4 matrix multiply can do, you have most of the key ideas. You need that to use OpenGL effectively. Actually, you only need about 10% of each of those areas of math, but you do need that 10%. "Graphics Gems" has some good background.

(Physics engines, though... I used to work on that, and struggled through two-volume books on nonlinear differential equations.)

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