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Big Blue to take on Pixar?

Posted by michael on from the bit-battle dept.

spareacct1 writes "USAToday is reporting that IBM is set to announce a strategic partnership with Threshold Digital Research Labs of Santa Monica, CA. TDRL now hopes it has the deep pockets and computing power to take on Pixar as the undisputed leader in CG animated films. TDRL's spartan website is showing off digital stills. Interesting sidebar at the end of the story, both Pixar and TDRL recently dumped Sun and MS, respectively, in favor of Linux."

7 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Talent, not clock cycles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pixar's movies are good because of their people, not their computers. They've got good artists, good directors, and amazing writers. Without those, you end up with movies like Final Fantasy: technically adept, but ultimately empty and pointless.

    1. Re:Talent, not clock cycles by diersing · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I agree with everything you said, but I don't believe the parent was trying to say Pixar/Disney movies are trying to compete with the type of film you describe.

      Pixar/Disney are about box office and merchandise, which they do very well at. I like their movies because when my 4 year old drags me into a theatre, I get some entertainment out of it as well. They do a great job of adding enough for the adults which many animated features (big screen or small) don't do.

      I'm not the movie buff I'm betting you are, but I'd love to hear what movies for you sparked a debate amongst you and your friends. Of course I have my own list, but I think many are because of the place in my life I was in and the events of the world around me at that time.

  2. Skill & Creativity by GNUman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't just need big computing power, you need design & drawing skills, besides lots of creativity and imagination.

    I could have all the computing power and still not be able to do something worth watching.

  3. we'll see.. by snillfisk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    well, believe it or not, but PIXARs success isn't really because of their rendering power -- true enough, the realism and rendering techniques used in their latest productions has contributed to making images better, but they've always had the edge when it comes down to the thing that matters: storytelling and keeping the audience interested. Look at their older shorts and their more recent feature films, the story is the main driving force.

    While Final Fantasy looked quite amazing, the story and the movie just didn't fit in like most of the PIXAR movies. PIXAR makes movies for the whole family which people enjoy on different levels (best example, toy story 2) -- Shrek was a very welcome break from the PIXAR dominance, but not because it wasn't made by pixar, more because of a great story supported by a nice screenplay and good animation (it's more about how you use the tools, not that the end result has been raytraced with molecular precision)..

    If they're able to produce films that would be entertaining even if they were hand drawn by a five year old, then the rendering power comes to good use; not the other way around.

    --
    mats
    One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
  4. Sensationalized for the press by bmetz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So IBM's supplying hardware as a showcase of their new initiative. It's hardly 'taking on Pixar'. I bet IBM would love to do business with Pixar, too. Do people say that IBM's "taking on the XBox" by supplying the processor in the Gamecube?

    --
    What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
  5. Processing power by shplorb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, processing power is a crucial part of it, but it's only necessary for advancing the state-of-the-art in computer graphics.

    In each movie that Pixar takes, it takes about 8 hours to render each frame (or so I've read in numerous locations) and you can see that with the increasingly "less-computery" look of their movies as processing power has increased for each one.

    This brings me to the point that I'm intending on making: the realism of the graphics is not what makes a great movie, it's the quality of the story and all that. I saw Toy Story again the other week and it looks so dated now compared to say Monsters Inc. It was still a thoroughly entertaining movie though because it was a good story.

    I love CG films, but I admit that the main reason I love seeing them is to see what new effects and advancements have been made, which is why Pixar films are so great to me.. they're always advancing the state-of-the-art.

    Damnit, now I've just contradicted the original point I was trying to make! Hrmm... BRING ON THE CG FILMS!

  6. Re:Pixar may soon be a Mac shop by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "After running our RenderMan benchmarks, we can now say that the G5 is the fastest desktop in the world"

    Regardless of whether the G5 is the fastest CPU for RenderMan, it is not per-CPU performance that matters. If you're setting up a rendering farm, you're buying n computers to render m frames per hour. At the end of the day, what matters is minimising $$$$$$ per m, not n, and I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar. Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.


    Finally, for what it's worth, I'm a Mac user and a big OSX fan. But I know what my dollars are paying for and it ain't CPU cycles.