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Pixar's Drawing Tool
May Kasahara writes "Millimeter has an interesting look at Pixar's Review Sketch tool, one of this company's latest pieces of proprietary software. It's cool in that it allows directors to draw on top of CG images with a Wacom Cintiq, essentially bringing elements of traditional hand-drawn animation into the 3D realm. The article discusses how the tool came about, how it was used during the production of The Incredibles, and even includes a discussion of the tool's naming."
that's incredible!
I don't need a signature.
This idea isn't all that new, the only new part is their application. TVPaint on the Amiga let me do this with renders (from NewTek's Lightwave).
Video Production Support
Say a doctor is performing a surgery, and suddenly needs help from a a more experienced surgeon. Get him on the net, get a live video feed of hte operation going, and the more experienced doctor can draw live diagrams (or whatever he needs to)to show the other what to do/where to go.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I certainly see the value of the tool, but is it really such a unique invention?
I give you 15 minutes until this generates rumors of an impending tablet Mac.
Lightwave, Maya, Bauhaus Software's Mirage, NewTek's Video Toaster (up until recently when the source was released), shall I continue?
Video Production Support
Bah.. they should build their characters & sets out of Lego.
Name one community-driven program that exists now that can do what this professional program does. And I'm not talking about something that you could to hack up in a matter of days or weeks, tell me one that exists NOW.
Professional programs inspire the community to create free programs that have similar functionality - MS office->OpenOffice, Unix->Linux & BSD, Adobe Photoshop->GIMP, IE->Mozilla & Opera. That said, I expect that somewhere between a month from now and 2 years, there will be a community-driven version that has similar functionality.
Or maybe not: The market for this software is very small in comparison to the number of people who use GIMP or Linux, which means that there will be a smaller group of developers for the community-driven version that does what this does. Maybe it'll never be done, but I doubt that.
I read this article in mm, and i beleive CGW had an article on it as well.. from what i understand its very similar to Alias's Sketchbook pro. It is a little different in that in Alias Sketchbook Pro you first hit the capture screen button on your windows task bar and then it opens up in alias sketch pro... where you can easy draw on the screen cap and save etc.
c hb ook_pro/index.shtml
Alias Sketchbook pro is an EXCELLENT tool. I would like to see it have the Pixar workflow added to it though, which is to simply allow you to draw anywhere on the screen and then save it as a capture, rather than hitting the capture screen and then drawing in alias sketch.
Both workflows are good actually... let the user decide how it fits with their brain.
Either way... Alias Sketchbook Pro is very similar to Pixars tool and i definatly recommend it.
http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/sket
My brand-new Intuos3 seems as dust and wormwood to me now that I hear the Cintiq really does work... I am consumed with envy and covetousness... the great shininess of this shiniest of toys calls to me... perhaps finally it's actually time to hop over to the US and shop for one!
PS
I live in the UK. Sensible people don't buy at UK prices.
PPS
For innovation, service and attitude, Wacom are the best tech company in my universe.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I have a hard time seing what's so unique about it. Drawing on top? Any graphics program can do that, The Gimp has layers, ok, it's for images instead of movies, but then take a look at CinePaint... I never edited movies, so I never needed that part of it. Or is it the Wacom Cintiq that makes it unique? You can buy those, and I'm almost certain the Wacom module supports this along with just about every other Wacom digitizer.
Ok, it saves the new layer in a separate file, organized exactly like Pixar prefers, but that's not an advantage of closed development, it's an advantage of in-house development, no matter if it's open or closed.
The director could draw on an image, and then play it back with the image moving underneath his drawing
Pfft. John Madden has been doing this for years!
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Professional programs inspire the community to create free programs that have similar functionality - MS office->OpenOffice, Unix->Linux & BSD, Adobe Photoshop->GIMP, IE->Mozilla & Opera.
I partly agree, but I have to say: OpenOffice originates from the (still existing) StarOffice, which started a long time ago as a commercial, closed-source product (heck, I remember I bought StarWriter for DOS a long time ago).
Same with Mozilla: Mozilla didn't start as a copy of IE, its history is much more complicated (think Netscape/Mosaic... look up on Wikipedia, if you want, I'm sure they have a long article about it)
I don't need a signature.
While it may not be quite as advanced, in particular with the corporate uses, Panic has a li'l app, also for OS X called desktastic which allows you to draw directly on the screen. Just as Pixar's tool, this features Wacom tablet support, variable line widths and an eraser function. The drawings can be saved for later use.
It's really quite a bit of fun! Not to mention available to Joe User.
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
I can't speak for CinePaint and gtoaster, but no free open source product comes anywhere near close to Lightwave or Maya in terms of power. And don't even try and say Blender.
If there were a free alternative that could actualyl compete to such expensive programs as LW and Maya, don't you think companies would have adopted them by now?
Open source is nice, but just because it's open source doesn't mean it's better.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
> "and even includes a discussion of the tool's naming"
"Wow! I can't wait to read that riveting piece of journalism!"
Absolutely! With an obscure name like "The Review Sketch tool" the mystery is killing me. It's like something out of the Necronomicon! Or "The Da Vinci Code"! Only exactly the opposite!
(It's clearly a slow Friday alright... Anyone up for UT2004?)
Couldn't they just have gotten this guy a nice tablet PC, a copy of Photoshop, and then give him a new layer to go hog wild on? I mean, is this really that revolutionary?
Or they could have projected onto a whiteboard with one of those fancy tools that transfers whatever you write to a PC...thus having his sketch overlayed on the original...there seem to be dozens of better alternatives to their orignal idea of taking a digital picture of the whiteboard.
How long until we get to see Charlie Brown's Christmas in 3d? They can still go back and add the Shultz jitters.
God, Root, Whats the difference?
It was: Mosaic --> Netscape Navigator --> Internet Explorer
Mozilla is just the latest incarnation of Navigator. Claiming it was a reaction to Internet Explorer is just 100% batshit daffy.
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This would have been cutting edge twenty years ago. Now it is yet another example of hollywood nerds using their moderation points to plug one of their companies.
There is some tendancy to say "photoshot already does this with layers..." and to some extent its true, but why this is different.
Its not a pixel drawing tool. Its a hybrid vecto tool with erase any part of the stroke you put down capability. You erase any part you like, which is a neat solution.
quoth..
A key feature of the tool is its eraser. "This is a vector-based tool with a raster erase," says Johnson. "You can scale an image up or down, and when you want to erase, you turn the pen over and it erases.
end quote.
I like software solutions to specific problems, especially those that can be developed by small teams. Unix like.
It seems to be just erasing by adding "transparent strokes" which I've never seen before. It would make it harder for an application like painter to use this technique because how many layers would you remove. But for sketching it seems ideal.
I'm sure that any good image editor can interface with the Wacom, and I realize that many editors use layers, that's not what I'm saying is so unique. It also would be simple to set up a VNC server and file share so that the remote viewers could watch what you're doing and then with a conference call/chat room they could even talk back to the person doing the drawing to give feedback. Or maybe they could set up a whiteboard setup to all work on the same image. ;)
The innovation (at least from how I read the article) is in how neatly it combines these elements. The remote parties can see what's happening in real time and give their feedback right on the whiteboard-type setup, and save it to a single place for them to all work from later on, all from one nice, easy-to-use program. No more setting up of all the individual elements before any work can get done.
Since this is slashdot, I'm sure I don't have to invite anyone to correct any inaccuracies in this post, but I'll do it anyways
So... feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm surprised they didn't name it SketchMan.
(FYI their renderer is called RenderMan)
Now that we're seeing a demo of "Review Sketch", we'll see reimplementations of it under open source - and won't see others, kept proprietary and secret at actual Pixar competitors. Regardless of copyright or patent, though trademark will probably keep the name "Review Sketch" safe. Often, the most valuable contribution to innovation is the proof of concept. And Hollywood tools make their techniques part of the culture in that shifting population of mercenary contractors which prizes specialization as much as complexion. We'll see whether Pixar's innovation can actually contribute to society's innovation, or whether they'll keep developers from adding their own "clean room" versions to our favorite multimedia packages.
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make install -not war
Sorry about the technicality, point taken. I realize that since this is /., I should have been more precise in my wording. I meant to point out the fact that for a while, and for the point at which many people became turned on to the idea of the internet (even some of the people out there who are coding FOSS), IE was the leader in terms of functionality and market share. Mozilla has only recently (read: in the past few years) pushed ahead to develop a superior product which has caught on in such a way as to threaten IE's dominance.
And to be completely pedantic, there WERE other graphical browsers before Mosaic, but they didn't catch on as well.
Imagine it in a John Madden voice:
You see, Mr Incredible is running through the forest because he doesn't want to get caught. Watch him hit this spin move right there (scribbles line on screen) - and when the henchmen try to close the gap (marks an X on henchman's forehead) he cuts back and completely dodges their tackle. (unrelated doodle) I wish I had him on my team when I was coaching. (play-by-play announcer slaps forehead and shakes his head)
Its funny that I find people who generally make these statements do not work regularly with the applications they are talking about. To be honest the philosophy behind the software is not a decision I use the best tool for the job and honestly I'm not too cheap to pay for good software. You can pull the blanket over your eyes and pretend like open source completely replaces proprietary software but it doesnt.(PERIOD) I will however state that GIMP is far superior to Photoshop IMHO.
Gromit does this and Totem can use Gromit when playing a video.
Maybe now spoiled Hollywood directors, with fat budgets and competitive coolness, will drive a market for simple, mobile tablets. A 20x15x.5" 4Kx3Kpxl 8h Flash/WiFi tablet that's just an Xserver with GL ASICs would really lead the market into the 21st Century. After a while, a 12x9x1" UXGA version might cost $1000.
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make install -not war
Let's see
It replaced a process by which they would project a video onto a white board and then need to take digital stills of it in order to preserve the work.
Now the director can sketch on the video and actually do playback with the additions on it, save it to disk, and re-use it later. Mark up items for moving and deletion, and do it in a more 'natural' way.
This is way cooler than "just added fluff to a tool thats been around for many years". By a huge amount.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
In less incredible news, Pixar has pushed back their last feature, while paired with a certain evil empire, Cars until May 2006
(insert riot here) which had been due Nov 2005. This is so they can sell more DVDs for your holiday shopping pleasure later in 2006 (the fucked up logic escapes me, but Dreamworks is doing the same shit with Shrek 3, moving it back to May 2007)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
please visit http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/index.cfm to find out wtf it is.
I own an old Wacom PenPartner tablet and the harder I press, the thicker the line both for drawing and erasing. I wonder why they had to use a line-width indicator for this instead of pressure?
gromit
Couple it with an application to take screenshots, and you're set.
GIMP, Photoshop, and other fancy-shmancy programs are for wimps. The images should be created and edited the God meant it - in vi.
Well, if you want to get *really* picky:
WorldWideWeb->NCSA Mosaic->Netscape Navigator->Internet Explorer
"WorldWideWeb" was a program written for NextStep by Tim Berners-Lee. There were even earlier hypertext-like systems, but this one is generally regarded as the first one to put most things together to form what eventually became familiar to people as the world wide web. The only thing missing was inline images and, of course, wider platform support -- those are the big things that NCSA Mosaic added.
A lot of people seem to be missing the central point here:
The thing that is so useful about their program is not that you can sketch over the top of a picture. You can do that on a hundred different programs out there.
The big thing is that the sketches are completely integrated into their pipeline. This means that if someone makes a sketch on an image, anyone working on that show can view that sketch when they're viewing that image. They can view the sketch when they're working in their 3d package - they can view the sketch when they're working in their compositing package. It's all saved, tracked and displayed automatically.
I work at a major European Visual Effects/Post Production studio, and that kind of stuff can be tricky. Tracking all your resources, integrating all your software, that kind of thing. It's all to do with workflow making sure everything is working smoothly for everybody from Render Support through to Producers, Animators and TDs.
I've been using computers for more than 20 years, and I can safely say that CinePaint is the best program that I've ever used.
Furthermore BSD is a descent from unix , while linux is modelled against it.
Commentators on pool games already do this, but between shots, not during.
There's an interesting PDF over at Animation Meat called Brad Bird on Comps, which has him scribbling all over shots from King of the Hill showing what's wrong with them.
My first thought Tic-Tac-Toe. I guess Hangman's just as good, but perhaps Pictionary would be more appropriate.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Blender was used in Spiderman 2 to make quick previews, so it's getting there. Of course, when it is really there, it will still be hard to spread. Mozilla is nice, but MSIE still wins, and what is worse, it has been used for AOL when Mozilla could have been used. This is more than being capable, there is a lot of other details, including politics and PR.
Hmmm, if I were working at Pixar they would've had this years ago.
Has Pixar switched over to using Maya for their animation?
I remember reading somewhere that they had their own animation software... Marionette I think it was called.
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This would be the ultimate tablet! Sure it would be a tad heavy but imagine the look on the faces of the other directors who don't have one of these.
The Video Toaster is a hardware+software digital switcher for the Amiga, not a CD burning app (as gtoaster). I'll be trying CinePaint now that you point it out, but I doubt it matches Mirage.
Video Production Support
Different programs for different uses, CinePaint is not a replacement for all software and that includes video editing/authoring software(including proprietary).
I think the software is nice and all, but the importance of the article is how the company shapes itself and is flexible enough to change the way they work and produce new tools, especially in 3D, where all the software has such a high learning curve. They are only not scared of changing what their artists use, but they also adapt to new needs.
This is an excellent insight as to what really makes Pixar a success! Who can doubt they will be leading the market for years to come?
How many of us can say we work in such a company?
I think it's up to us to make sure that we apply these concepts to any technological startup we might venture into.
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who needs a sig?
Old news for a lot of people but just FYI: Wacom is part of the Church of Reunification aka the Moonies. You can read up about them and even the MoonMan himself gloats about it. The problem appears that they own the technology for batteryless/wireless digitizing tablets so other than calcomp there is no alternative. Too bad.
Who cares what their beliefs are? You have no problems buying oil... how much pain and suffering has that brought about?
So the moonies are a little out there. Big deal. They didn't kill 20,000 Iraqis.
/. need a Disney icon - not for their plundering the public domain and securing the contents in copyright with other laws, but for its shiny irresistable Disney Magic productions.
Or was that DreamWorks?
:)
I really got to get my pro-Linux facts right
or I will be made to look stupid at cocktail parties
It'd be great for PDF or any word processor to use a tool like this. Scratch out, proof reader mark up red right on the docs. Open Source would be killer. The utility would save the scratches as vectors in the PDF, and you could email back the writers.
My first reaction to this was, why don't they open source it? It doesn't really give competitive advantages to them, it's just a way to communicate better between teams.
It will become the next overpriced franklin covey tool.
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Pop up to the homepage, and that issue of millimeter also has a really interesting bit on the creation of the sword fight in the leaves from Zhang Yimou's "Hero."
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Buh... Buhl... Blennn...
Damn. You're right, it's tough!
You can see very clearly in the sketch screens included with the article that those are variable lines made with a pressure sensitive tool. It's just a matter of what you want the base thickness of the tool to be.
Using an inappropriate base thickness hurts like hell because you have to keep pushing too hard on the tablet.
Blite my shiny metal ass.
In short, it's a digital pencil which works like a pencil, looks like a pencil and still gives a digital output :)
Nice mixture of old and new - now, I prefer to see what I'm drawing AND the pen together (like on paper) , which sucks when I draw on a tablet. All that said, I'm not a graphic artist and all I draw are random linesQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur