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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."
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.
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)
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
"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.