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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."
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.