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Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

thisanimatedlife.blogspot.com

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Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#41

Post by [deleted] »

joshuak wrote: post #30
danielweber wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's awesome how they thought something was too hard, and so they faked it to be "good enough." I'm going to have to look more critically at Pixar movies now, knowing that the old ones didn't have actual calculated light sources.

Actually light sources have always been the only thing 'traced'. We used to use them to trick ray tracing in the early days of RenderMan (put an image in the lightsource so you can 'reflect' it). It's surface to surface and other GI effects that where late to the party. Nevertheless we often faked that with massive light counts. For the opening shot of Armageddon with the astroid hitting earth I used 20,000 point lig…

[deleted]

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#42

Post by Jabbles »

grecy wrote: post #38
jarrett wrote: post #31

For a bit of background: The article talks a lot about global illumination. Here's what that means. First, you have to understand the cheaper alternative, which is called local illumination. With local illumination, for each pixel, you figure out what object you're looking at, and where on that object. You take into account the normal (direction of the surface at that point) and the optical properties of the object a…

> So it's understandable that Pixar, which has to render a huge number of frames at huge resolutions, did not traditionally use it much. Do we have any ball-park estimate of how long it takes Pixar to render a single frame of a movie like Monsters U? EDIT: Many people are mentioning it's done massively parallel, which I meant to include in my question. So, what I mean is, how long does it take to render a whole Pixar…

11.5 hours on average for Cars 2

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20068109-52/new-technology...

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#43

Post by aidenn0 »

newgre wrote: post #2

An article about a new dimension in rendering quality, and they're demonstrating that quality with two images the size of a stamp...WAT?

Comparing raster graphics from 12 years ago to ray-traced graphics from today isn't a fair anyway. Part of why raster has persisted against ray-tracing for so long (despite numerous predictions to the contrary) is that raster graphics techniques are constantly improving.

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#44

Post by berkut »

38leinad wrote: post #8

Anybody knows how other companies like universal's animation department (ice age, despicable me, ...) stand technology-wise? From the visuals, i always assumed pixar is setting the standards but now knowing that they just start to use unified raytracing, the gap might not be that big...

Pixar's generally ahead in terms of story, animation (they hand-animate everything) and look (shading and lighting), but in terms of pure tech, other companies like Weta, ILM and SPI are generally ahead of them as they work on multiple shows at once and per year.

SPI have been using full GI pathtracing with Arnold renderer for the last 5 years, and Blue Sky (studio which did Ice Age) has their own GI raytracer they use as well.

Also, Pixar don't actually have that big a renderfarm - they don't need it. Other places like Weta and ILM have renderfarms that are much bigger, but are used for multiple productions at once, and for doing things like compositing and fluid/cloth/physics sims.

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#45

Post by [deleted] »

Jabbles wrote: post #42
grecy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's understandable that Pixar, which has to render a huge number of frames at huge resolutions, did not traditionally use it much. Do we have any ball-park estimate of how long it takes Pixar to render a single frame of a movie like Monsters U? EDIT: Many people are mentioning it's done massively parallel, which I meant to include in my question. So, what I mean is, how long does it take to render a whole Pixar…

11.5 hours on average for Cars 2 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20068109-52/new-technology...

[deleted]

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#47

Post by jballanc »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #7

I was surprised that ray tracing in Pixar was historically a clunky, haphazard process. I always thought of it as this smooth, polished machine like something you would see at an Apple store. Life inside the sausage factory never quite looks like what outsiders would expect.

So very true! In fact, having worked at an Apple store, and later on the products sold at the Apple store, I'd venture to say that Pixar's process is probably precisely like the process behind something you would see at an Apple store!

Re: Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University

#49

Post by aidenn0 »

Jabbles wrote: post #42
grecy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's understandable that Pixar, which has to render a huge number of frames at huge resolutions, did not traditionally use it much. Do we have any ball-park estimate of how long it takes Pixar to render a single frame of a movie like Monsters U? EDIT: Many people are mentioning it's done massively parallel, which I meant to include in my question. So, what I mean is, how long does it take to render a whole Pixar…

11.5 hours on average for Cars 2 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20068109-52/new-technology...

They must do them heavily in parallel then; otherwise it would take 170 years to render the movie.
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