Slashdot Mirror
Big Blue to take on Pixar?
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."
This looks eeirly familiar. Is that from the Mortal Kombat movie?
Everything is mainstream now.
After looking at the article and TDRL's website, the more interesting side of the story seems to come from the USA Today article, specifically IBM's new goal to make computing power a utility such that on demand computing can be purchased just like the power/water/gas utilities of today. The animation stills from TDRL are ok, but nothing spectacular. I've seen more realistic stills come out of a skilled single artist with Maya (see here). The incredible results that Pixar has been able to achieve through their research into rendering technology (ie. RenderMan) combined with artistic prowess have brought them success, and I fail to see how the Terminator 2 producer merely acquiring processor power brings TDRL into a position to challenge the best in the field.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the company he co-founded which just entered an alliance with IBM for microprocessors.
Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the company he bought from ILM which just entered a battle with IBM for computer procduced films.
Reality is stranger than fiction.
But they have amazing artists. Finding Nemo was an awesome feast for the eyes. It raised the bar (that's the in phrase right now) in visuals and everything was simply a joy to look at. And yet when you see Pixar people interviewed they always repeat the "Story is King" line and say how animation is nothing without story. I disagree. Beautiful visuals can carry a movie with a lame script. Film is a visual art form. Whether you're an old bastard like me or a 5 year old, pretty images can keep you looking.
-- SIGFPE
"After running our RenderMan benchmarks, we can now say that the G5 is the fastest desktop in the world"
This according to Pixar president Ed Catmull, who is an early booster of the Power Mac G5. An introduction video for the Power Mac G5 posted to Apple's own Web site features Catmull explaining that the G5 allows Pixar animators to show frames at full resolution.
This comes amid speculation of a Rendezvous-enabled (G5) Xserve rendering cluster, which would allow 3D shops to set up a plug-and-play rendering cluster which works in conjunction with RenderMan. Couple this with the availability of other 3D applications like Maya, and of course the sheer number of other production and DV applications like Photoshop, AfterEffects, Final Cut Pro, and Shake and the Mac seems to become an ideal platform for 3D production.
Unless you're going to replicate the entire Pixar team, company X (Dreamworks, TDRL, anyone...) is never going to be Pixar.
As if the bleedingly obvious has to be stated here, but Pixar have a long history of digital animation, and their films have never been about the technology, it's always about telling a great story.
The technology simply provides a platform from which to elevate their incredibly rich narratives and ideas to another level. Should Pixar ever reach the boundaries of their current technolgies (software and/or hardware) I'm guessin' they will find something else, or some other alliance that will provide them with a powerful platform which will support their creativity.
There is no doubt that they do this already. RenderMan, provides them with the flexibility to (re)develop their own software when requirements upon it change.
I wouldn't bind my creativity to anything - would you?
It's a myth that Pixar are uncontested when it comes to digital features (as it states in the article). For example:
(1) Blue Sky Studios made a little movie called Ice Age.
(2) Pacific Data Images made a little movie called Shrek, and also released the 2nd ever computer generated feature, Antz (the official site, Antz.com seems dead).
Here's another myth:
While Pixar's rendering techniques are *good*, they aren't necessarily cutting edge when it comes to technology. Blue Sky uses raytracing for their images. This gives them features like caustics, global illumination and efficient curved surfaces. Curves in particular had a huge advantage through memory efficiency for their render farm - meanwhile Pixar's render nodes were crashing because of scene complexity simulating curves through polygons. Sure, Pixar's movies are impressive, but I can't help but think they'd do better without clinging to some legacy baggage that comes with Renderman.
Anyway - the technology is overhyped. It's just a better pencil. Story, story, story is what counts. Disney can probably afford to take longer developing scripts. This is why you can have something as gorgeous as the Final Fantasy movie and have it completely suck at the box office; and Disney flicks don't look so great, but sell well.
Like many of the Slashdot crowd, I absolutely love Pixar's movies (and shorts). Not only for the visuals (which are always stunning) but also the great stories.
I recall seeing somewhere, many many months ago, a comment from someone at Pixar saying that part of the key to their success is that they take artists and teach them how to use computers, instead of taking computer people and teaching them how to be artists. Many of Pixar's best people are alums or the California Institute of Arts (including John Lasseter). [There are many in-jokes through Pixar's movies that are refernces to Cal Arts).
Can't wait for "Cars" or "The Incredibles" to hit theaters.
CyberDave
May show some 'rendering skills' but it shows zero artistic merit. The page seriously has the esthetic merit of some Geocities page who's proprietor just learned about the 'lenses flair' function in Photoshop...
Just about everyone in every industry says stuff like "We are going to be the next [industry leader". It hardly ever happens. If these guys actually want to take on Pixar, they are going to need some real artists.
Btw, has anyone noticed how much poorly done cg is out there in the movies now? I mean, when CG was all new and novel it was always so well done, Jurassic park looked real to me, but the CG in League of Exceptional Gentlemen (not a movie that I had really planned on seeing) was horrible. Even the CG in spider-man was pretty hokey (but there the movie was rescued by a good plot)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"The Faculty", a rather insipid and forgetable sci-fi film from the mid-to-late 90s for the teeny bopper set. It was about alien pod people and that sort of thing, I suppose that it was supposed to be a message about conformity or whatever, like the "in crowd", or whatever that equally forgetable film was.
Don't you just find mass market media, preaching to teens about conformity to be wonderfully ironic?
I suppose that I should talk about Pixar though. Some of their movies have been all right, people have been saying that they have great writers and all of that. The animation I can respect, but the writing isn't anything out of the world. Really, if it wasn't for the fact that the films were fully computer animated they would just be standard fare, but as of right now we have this love affair with all things tech.
Of course the writing is far better than a great number of a lot of the schlock they throw at us in order to keep us pacified.
Of course, visually Pixar films aren't much without all of the fun gloss of the computer animation, it all seems to be pretty standard format kinds of things, but I guess they really aren't the kinds of films to delve into the artistic side of things. I like them, I don't love them, not tha tanyone cares.
"Pixar is migrating to OS X, primarily because of the G5. Pixar's OS/machine of choice seems to vary with the wind, whatever is the most powerful at the time. It seems that they believe the G5 is where it's at in the near future."
Not surprised. I can't speak for what Pixar uses, but Lightwave has a pipeline that's like 390 bits wide or something like that. Each pixel value is described to a ridiculous number of decimal places. The reason for this involves color precision as each step of the rendering process mutates the number. It strikes me that a 64-bit processor would have significant advantages here.
If anybody here is knowledgable about the advantages (or disadvantages) of 64-bit processing in the 3D world I'd LOVE to hear about them. Opteron may be in my not too distant future.
"Derp de derp."
They simply don't have the talent to take on Pixar. It's a "B" movie house. The place is run by a guy named Larry Kassanoff (sp?) who made his fortune with movies such as Mortal Kombat. He has no love for cartoons or animation like the Pixar staff does.
I saw what the projects Threshold had in the development pipeline last year. While I can't give specifics, nothing they had was worth making into an animated feature.
In my opinion, the only two studios that can even attempt to take on Pixar are Dreamworks and Sony.
Heat dissipation is a MAJOR, HUGE factor is clustering. The G5's extremely low power output is undoubtedly a big selling point for G5 clusters. You think climate control for a cluster of AMD chips is cheap? It's hard enough to keep ONE Athlon XP cool, let alone a few hundred.
PIXAR has what really counts: audience mindshare.
They also have something else that really counts with the paying public, which is a terrific track record. If a PIXAR movie and a TDRL movie were released on the same weekend, which one would you choose? 99% would go with the sure bet, and that's PIXAR.
TDRL/IBM would be better served going after the Dreamworks market. Other than Shrek, Dreamworks last couple of animated films were box-office disappointments. Sinbad, in particular, has been a collossal bomb for them. But that just proves my point, Sinbad was released so close to Finding Nemo that the audience for animated features choose the one they knew would not disappoint.
The dynamics of what makes PIXAR the undisputed king of computer animated movies has very little to do with technology and everything to do with satisfying audience expectations.
I heard an interview with one hof the big guys at Pixar on NPR. He said that what they can do with the currecnt tech is a factor taken when they do a film.
Toys are plastic, ALL early CG looked plastic, thus Toy Story.
He also said that when they felt they could do fur they did monsters inc. Because they wanted to use the fur.
From the interview it sounded like every part got equal share of the attention, (the directing, the casting, the story, the graphics). All of the Pixar films have been solid childrens movies that would have worked weather CG or animated (most would have been incredibly hokey live action though).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Pixar president Dr Ed Catmull has said on record that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac is the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan to be released for Mac OS X very soon.
There's a small difference in this industry (which I am happy to say I work in). There's a definate "king" to the industry, Pixar, and everybody is always shooting for that goal. "One day I will work at Pixar." is heard frequently by those just starting out (I think I've said it myself). But it takes years of experience and an enormous amount of talent to make it there, even in the less artistic sides like programming (which is what I do).
The problem that other companies have in trying to compete with the talent of Pixar, is that they just can't go out and buy it. Pixar could offer a competitive offer against Threshold for a prospective employee of a nice stack of shiny pennies and most artists would take Pixar. I would. They're the best of the best, and they attract the best of the best.
But other posters have it right. You compete by having a great story. Right now, I'm working at a company on another project while they're doing the storyboards for their next feature. It's an interesting process to watch. The production crew doesn't even get to look at the movie for many more months (partially due to budget constraints), but they're hammering out this animatic every minute detail they can possibly think of. And the idea is that it can stand on it's own as a movie, it will just LOOK like crap. That's where/when we come in.
Great talent is a hard thing to come by in this industry. Just running out and buying a few animators and a couple hackers won't get it done.
Taos
Ghost in the Shell a kick ass action with an open ended look some serious philosophical problems posed by cyborgs and real AI entities.
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade amazing emotional animation of a parable about duty, strength, weakness and power.
Can't think of any more off the top of my head right now. EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye