Pixar unveils its new animation tech
At a recent presentation, Pixar’s Finding Dory team revealed new details of the tech we can expect in 2016
Finding Dory is only a month away from its release so we’ve gathered together the key facts that have been revealed to build a picture of what this release means for Pixar and its development of Renderman RIS.
With the new technology available to Pixar and developments in its proprietary software, Andrew Stanton reflects on how things he struggled with on Finding Nemo are now taken for granted on the production of Finding Dory. “There’s one shot I think in Nemo where the camera goes around a bend in the glass of a fish tank in the dentist’s office and you kind of see a refraction happening on Nemo. We get that for free every shot now with this sophisticated software that we have,” said Andrew at a recent talk on the technology behind Finding Dory.
There are also moments when the camera breaks the water surface; it happened once in Finding Nemo, but in Finding Dory, it happens in any shot at any given time. The new technology has enabled Pixar to cope with these technical difficulties easily, and also to create new characters for the movie, such as Hank, the octopus. Using the studio’s proprietary animation system Presto, the animators were able to ‘draw’ Hank’s complex tentacles (see the next page for more details). Andrew asserted that the technological advancements are second to the story; it’s the story that drives the technology. As he explained at the Finding Dory presentation: “I tend to be always pushing that way and that’s where you get your Hank technology and the water technology advancements”. To see the trailer for Finding Dory go to www.bit.ly/209-dory Hank was a big challenge as the character has no bones, but enhancements to Presto made it possible to animate him easily
Using Presto, the animators were able to ‘draw’ Hank’s complex tentacles
Animators are able to control refracted and reflected light in a single water droplet. The result is each shot in Finding Dory has billions of individual light rays per frame, with around 10 reflections and refractions in each ray. The new software is also able to create foam – aeration inside the water – and this adds another 100 plus reflections and refractions into the scene. Just as Renderman is free to download,