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Ed Catmull : Pixar's Creator Extraordinaire!

Ed Catmull : Pixar's Creator Extraordinaire!.

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Ed Catmull : Pixar's Creator Extraordinaire!

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  1. Ed Catmull : Pixar's Creator Extraordinaire!

  2. Edwin Catmull began his career after getting a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science as well as a Bachelor of Science in Physics at the University of Utah. He first become the director of a Computer Graphics lab owned by George Lucas in 1975. He advanced over the years by inventing different programs that enhanced the way that computer animation was perceived and how the movie industry would use computer graphics in the future forever. He had gotten more prestigious awards for his achievements then some people would ever dream of. A little bit of background on Edwin Catmull

  3. Back when Edwin was in university completing his degree for computer science, he created what's called a Z-Buffer. The Z-buffer is “an image-precision algoritm, meaning it operates at the pixel level rather than the object level” (De Goes). Unfortunately Ed hadn't patented his program, which is now placed into every hard drive of majority of computers. The “Z-Buffer”

  4. After Star wars was created George Lucas, the director of the Star Wars trilogy, decided to take a different direction in the world of cinematography. He decided to go towards the more futuristic view that computer science had to offer. So to achieve this George Lucas hired a team of computer scientist, including Edwin Catmull to create some new programs to be used on the big screen. The beginning of digital animation

  5. “The Pixar” • “The Pixar” was one of the most revolutionary computers that changed the way that animation was created. This was basically a very early version of what would soon be known as the RenderMan. Before Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith's first animation computer program it would have took an unimaginable amount of time and money to create even a small one minute animated clip. The Pixar decreases the cost, time, and money by dividing “the computational task among four parallel processors: three to control the red, blue, or green washed onto each pixal; one to control the pixel's transparency.” (Elmer-DeWitt).

  6. George Lucas terminated Ed Catmull and his team of animators after he didn't have the money for them to advance their technology. After that Ed Catmull and his crew began their own animation business and named it after their first digital program “Pixar”. After about a year of waiting for an investment, Steve Jobs (co-founder of Mac) invested in their business and in the long run helped them become the most successful animation studio known world wide.

  7. Luxo Jr • The first project they made was to show Steve Jobs, one of their main investors in their animation studio, was to “show him what they were made of”. So they created something made with geometrical shapes (because since their program uses small triangles as the basis of creating their shapes (sort of like Pixels) it would make it easier for them to make something that would be more geometrical). Pixar animation studios now use the Luxo lamp as their logo sign

  8. The creation that started it all • Renderman is the program that Pixar uses for their animated movies, shorts and commercials. The algorithm that is used in their program is the main reason as to why this program is such an original innovation. REYES (render everything you ever saw) is the algorithm that “processes the geometry for RenderMan renderer” (renderman.pixar.com). There are a number of steps that Catmull had created within the program of RenderMan.

  9. Steps to Rendering • Reyes would determine the size of the primitive boxes (this is known as bounding). “Primitives are half-way in and half-way out of the mouth must be split into smaller pieces” (renderman.pixar.com). Then all of the primitives are split into smaller and smaller “sub-primitives” (which is known as splitting). Before the sub-primitives are sent back to the renderman program, they are then split up to even smaller pieces of information through a process known as dicing. After this process the micropolygons are known as grids.

  10. Steps to Rendering continued... • The small grids are then “diced into small, pixel-sized micropolygons. The grids of micropolygons move further into the stomach and get shaded together” (renderman.pixar.com). After they are tested they are “then sent to the screen to make pixels (via sampling and filtering steps)”. The pixels are then divided into groups which are known as buckets. RenderMan moves bucket by bucket to make it more efficient.

  11. This image shows which step happened where and what each step is doing to create the animated image that you are trying. In the slitting it splits pieces into large 'primitive' pieces. The 'primitive' pieces are then split into even smaller pieces and then they are what they are called displaced. Everything is then transferred into pixels and the animated image is created • (Image from renderman.pixar.com)

  12. Effects that add to the Experience • RenderMan have a few more effects that add to the movie experience and make Pixar's animated movies, shorts, and commercials seem more realistic. The variables that would take time to master and add to the movie experience are... • Motion Blur • Fur & Hair • Displacement These all play a vital role in making the animated image of RenderMan seem more realistic.

  13. Motion Blur • Making the illusion that things are moving due to something running by a camera is one of the things that make the animated characters seem more realistic. RenderMan can imitate the different types of exposure (slow shutter or fast) so it looks like there's an actual camera that is recording something and it's not just being created on the scene.

  14. Camera imitator • RenderMan also imitates the depth of field that video cameras experience. “In the real world, when a camera focuses on a close object, the background can go blurry” (renderman.pixar.com). RenderMan imitates this affect that is known as depth of field and can even control it. “RenderMan provides us with several options to control how our virtual camera behaves” (renderman.pixar.com).

  15. Fur rendering: • In the past people thought it would be too complex for hair and fur to be animated because of the complexity of it. “Pixar's RenderMan has a feature called Sigma Hiding” (renderman.pixar.com). Because a tip of hair is basically about a pixel in diameter, hair is rendered in pixels that are broken up into smaller units. Another problem with fur and hair is having to shade every strand of hair.

  16. How the shading of Hair/Fur is perfected • To get the desired shading look there's a Pixar characteristic of RenderMan called riCurve. “This allows fur to be rendered along with the rest of the geometry in a scene (i.e. Fur is not a post-process” (renderman.pixar.com). This allows for the fur to be perfected along with the rest of the shot by applying lighting affects to it as well as motion blurs so this doesn't look like a different object in an animated shot all together.

  17. Displacements • Displacements add a little more detail to a scene. Either to the scene or the object/person being focused on. This makes the scene look more complex. For example, instead of a lone robot on a plain white surface, you can make it seem more real by adding a scene, like garbage around it. Instead of animating every single piece of trash and putting it in the scenery, you can have a displacement shader do the work. “Once it's created it very easy to add it to any scene that requires garbage” (renderman.pixar.com)

  18. Displacements Continued... • “One parameter can be adjusted to control the density of the garbage in the ground.” (renderman.pixar.com). You can adjust the density of the displacement shader to create the scene, put them on top of one another and so on.

  19. Ed Catmull created this project not knowing that it would be such a success and not thinking that it would then be the major program used in animating. He didn't realize that it would be used in majority of movies, even if they aren't animated films. Ed Catmull has won multiple awards over the years for his work in advancing animation and it is one of the major advances in today's technological and Computer Science fields.

  20. Bibliography: Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. "Computers: The Love of Two Desk Lamps." Time Magazine September 1st, 1986: n. pag. Web. 27 Jan 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962202,00.html>. Math Makes the Movies: An Interview with Edwin Catmull Steve Kennedy Math Horizons Vol. 9, No. 2 (November 2001), pp. 5-7 Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678336 De Goes, John. "Games ++: Games and Game Programming." N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan 2011. <http://www.gamespp.com/graphicsprogramming/informationOnTheZBufferAlgorithm.html>. "The Pixar Story 1/9 - 9/9." Youtube. Web. 28 Jan 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUuwOl8CZw4>. "Renderman." Renderman.Pixar.com. Pixar, 2011. Web. 1 Feb 2011. <https://renderman.pixar.com/products/whats_renderman/2.html>.

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