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."

Comments

Re:Bah.

[flewp]

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.

Am I missing something?

[jmcmunn]

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.

Re:Am I missing something?

[raytracer]

You are missing something. The key is not being able to make a sketch to show some improvement. That's not really that big of a deal. The key part is storing these images throughout the production pipeline so that artists can refer to Brad's specific directions so that they can accomplish their job efficiently. It is the integration that is important. To bring up photoshop on a separate tablet pc, transfer an image over, sketch over it, send it back and then insert it in a database is not useful.

Weird name!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised they didn't name it SketchMan.

(FYI their renderer is called RenderMan)

Re:Isn't all that new...

[SilentChris]

Did TVPaint let you doodle on something already animated and save the changes automatically when you put the pen down? Did it upload the changes to the server so other artists could get a full transaction history of the suggestions being made? Did it have thoughtful design features, like turning the pen over to erase (obvious) and not allowing someone to delete the whole screen accidentally (not as obvious)? Didn't think so.

Re:Isn't all that new...

[SilentChris]

"Server? Who needs a stinkin server?"

When you're working on a major motion picture that has several dozen artists, a full team of probably close to a hundred people, and a budget of millions, you need accountability if someone makes a change.

I would think an artist would welcome being able to look back at certain versions of scenes, call them up at any point, and derive how the drawing got to where it is currently. This isn't some starving artist creating basic 3D renders in his garage; this a multi-million dollar business.

Re:Isn't all that new...

[tonsofpcs]

Did you read the article at all?? They used the drawing primarily as a directors reference to animators. Looking back at certain versions of scenes would be based up on the actual scene, not his drawing, as his direction is what it is, not what it was. Anyone that works in a production environment knows that there are two basic rules:
1) The director is always right.
2) If the director is wrong, see #1
There is no reason to go back to see what the director was right about in the past, because all that matters is what he is right about in the present.