Well don't know him either and I don't care much for this review. But talking about Knowles, AICN and integrity, well that might be a bit of a stretch. Do you remember the OScar debacle from a few years ago or his apperance on Politically Incorrect. You should read the articles on Film Threat about him and some of his associates:
I mean if is willing to pimp a script from one of his friends without telling anyone, it's abit of a stretch to talk about integrity and his site. Maybe instead of begging for presents he should put ads like Slashdot.
Hmmmm maybe I was thinking of Rayz, which I couldn't remember in my first post. Rayz for sure is primarily developed on Linux. I still think about v. 2 of XSI being done on Linux but I maybe got confused (it happens quite a bit;-)
As far as I know is that they get the software and hardware at very discounted prices, particularly from SGI, Alias/Wavefront and Pixar. With Pixar it seems that one of the conditions for Lucas to sell it to Jobs was to have early access to Pixar's technology, mainly PRMan (and I could guess also RAT now). From SGI they get early access to hardware thanks to their JEDI agreement (Joint Environment for Digital Imaging), I think it's JEDI III at the moment. According to some rumors is that part of the agreement is that ILM doesn't mention other platforms. They get the gear and give feedback to SGI along braging rights. From Alias/Wavefront they are also among the beta testers for all new versions. But in the end they wouldn't give it away as an incentive. Even if it was free if it didn't fit their pipeline it would be pointless.
There are plenty of articles detailing Linux increasing use in VFX. Here are a some:
From what I remember from an article XSI (probably starting with v. 2) is actually developed under Linux and from there ported to NT and Irix.
There are also other apps. Most people forget about Houdini from Side Effects. There was of course Shake, but now that Apple bought Nothing Real who knows what is going to happen. Photorealistic RenderMan also has run under Linux for quite a while.
I was talking about commercial 3D packages, as that was the reference on the parent post. yes Blender has been a while, but as far as regular commercial 3D apps Houdini was first, maybe I should have made it clear. I thought Blender was longer than that. I remember seeing Houdini on Linux at SIGGRAPH 2000 (maybe the HP booth?) so Houdini has been ther for a while.
From the little search I did, Houdini for Linux was announced on March of 99, and shown at SIGGRAPH 99 at the E&S booth (beta version I believe). Houdini 4 which became available for Linux was apparently released in January 2000:
Nothing against Blender, sued it myself a little, but basicly they were giving it away. As far as a more established commercial entitity (along with the focus to use it for games) is a little more recent happening. We are just comparing different things;-).
Yes both Maya and Softimage XSI are on Linux. Houdini was actually first. There is also PRMan and the RAT tools, Rayz, Shake, rastrack, and few others here and there.
Yes I guess it depends on the perspective about favorite 3D package. Even Michael Tiemann of RedHat said once that long ago he wanted Maya running on Linux after experiencing it some time ago. But Blender is good for it's target audience/niche.
You are correct I didn't say that all right. Probably what they meant is that in the next film all the interactive workstations will be Linux based (say for running Maya). There is still work done on Macs. And of course their renderfarm will be SGI based for some time, and even more the machines that run their simulations.
Well the thing is ILM has a ton of propietary software (and probably some is optimized for SGI?Irix). By the last account I had, maybe they had a 50% of propietary software and 50% commercial. They have the biggest R&D dept. in the FX biz, and have won several technical Oscars including 2 this year. Many of these apps are highly complex, written by their geniuses like Cari, the water dynamics simulator, hair renderer, muscle dynamics, matchmoving and scene recovery, stuff probably for the HD camera, their constrained dynamics and rigid body dynamics systems, Viewpaint, Sabre and many more. I don't think a mere intern could port this in his spare time. They have several shows in pre production and production right now. The port to Linux will be easier compared if they did it to NT but it still will require some time and care.
Actually ILM is indeed making moves to Linux. Surprisingly they said the Linux was more ready for desktops than servers for them. There were a couple of srticles about this, one in CGW (requires free registration):
But here is the relevant section for those that don't want to register:
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is still porting its code and will begin using Linux on its next movie after Star Wars, Episode II (release date May 2002). Director of research and development Andy Hendrickson says, "We're on schedule to replace about 20 percent of our 600 desktops and 20 percent of our renderfarm with Linux PCs in October. We'll be supporting both Irix and Linux to keep from shocking the system. Right now we're doing a lot of spring cleaning, looking at five million lines of existing code to decide what should be ported and what to retire." ILM uses both its own tools and commercial programs such as Maya and SoftImage.
For flipbook playback of high-resolution movies, ILM has ported its Irix Quicktime-compatible player to Linux. Generally speaking, the players that are available for for Real, Quicktime, MPEG-1, and AVI don't do well above 320-by-240 pixels. But with Linux, says Hendrickson, "we've got flipbook playback of movies working at 1280-by-700 pixels and 24 frames per second-as wide as the typical monitor. We're hoping to bring that to full 2K-by-1K soon." ILM plans to release its flipbook movie player, internal file formats, and batch job scheduler as open source.
You can find a couple more references at the website I help mantain:
If the statements are correct, that would probably make MIB2 the first ILM project completely done in Linux, but I still have to check. Still you are right for the most part ILM is an SGI house, though don't forget about the Rebel Mac Unit.
In response to the parent of this, while Maya might run under NT and PCs, there is still software that doesn't like Infernos, ILM in house compositing system, Sabre, is based on Inferno. And there are other examples though are probably very specialized apps.
It's the next generation animation package from Softimage. The first generation was called Softimage 3D. The second generation is called now Softimage XSI (the code name was Sumatra). XSI took it's name from one of their new file formats which has the extension.xsi.
There is also Photorealistic RenderMan, JIG, the upcoming Softimage XSI. Softimage even showed a beta of XSI running under RedHat during SIGGRAPH 2000. There were rumors that Lightwave might also do a port but I don't know. Realsoft3D is also on Linux.
The one by ILM (user lucasdigital) was actually organized first by the employees and consisted of crew items. A CG supervisor at ILM was the front man and he really busted his chops doing that, especially since he is also in the middle of prodction. They did auction more than the stuff that is listed on that link (which only shows last 30 days). I was trying to decide how to donate some more money and found the ILM auctions suited me best. Some really amazing items. Got 4 for myself. Hopefully they will be able to put out more stuff out.
As far as the kits go, Lucas has always been one that has kept all sorts of props and stuff from ILM with him for preservation. He doesn't want them to be either lost or hidden by some collector.
Well but because of your lack of smilies you know someone would have taken it literally;-) (hmm I did forget mine in my first post, Im guilty myself). Well probably we wont see any GPL apps anytime soon besides Film Gimp and a few other things. I guess 3D is just to specialized for people from OpenSource make a run for it. I don't think we'll see a GPL equivalent of Maya or Softimage or avid anytime soon. Then again there is stuff like Aqsis (at Sourceforge) which is a GPL RenderMan renderer. It actually implements the REYES architecture (used in PRMan) and it's moving along pretty well. But besides renderers 3D interactive apps are long ways off.
For comparison both SGI and Alias started in 1982, Softimage in 1986, Wavefront and TDI in 1984. Blue Sky started in 1987, but most people came in from MAGI (like Dr. Troubetskoy sp.?), which itself started in 1966. Some of the Blue Sky studio founders at least were at MAGI in the late 70s or early 80s. Rhythm and Hues was founded also in 1987 but the founders (like John Hughes and Keith Goldfarb) came from Robert Abel's company (itself started in 1971). All these places only had propietary software (and many of the old ones used Crays).
Next year a special edition DVD of Tron will come out. Hopefully the extras will include plenty of info from this earlier era of CGI.
Not at all, they are running PRMan from the looks of it. One guy from WETA digital is a frequent poster at the renderman newgroup and has even posted job openings for shader writers. besides Maya and Shake they are also running things like Houdini which has a great RenderMan connection. Weta does indeed have propietary software like Masive, but as most other places they have a mix of in house built and of the shelf stuff.
Most old timers in the CG arena have in house tools because there wasn't any off the shelf stuff to buy. Besides Rhythm and Hues, you have places like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar (though they decided to sell their renderer most of their other tools are propietary) and others. Most FX studios run on a mix off commercial and in built software. Most places run mostly SGI but many are switching or at least experimenting with Linux. Rhythm and hues is even helping develop the Film version of the Gimp (for 16 bit work, tha's 16 bit per component).
Well PDI, Blue Sky, Rhythm and Hues and other facilities wrote their own renderer because there wasn't any commercial one back then (PDI is over 20 years old!!!). That what Pixar also did when it was still the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group, they created their own renderer, but later on decided to sell it. But even Pixar uses its own animation software called menv or Marionette (for the media). And besides the advantage is that all these companies don't have to wait for new features and also they can tailor it specifically to their pipeline, not that they want punishment.
Ohhh, and WETA Digital is using PRMan. There is one guy from there that frequently posts at the RenderMan newsgroup. He even posted at least once job openings for shader writers. They also use Houdini, which has a Linux port and it has a great RenderMan connection.
Actually WETA is pretty old. At least the worksop (now in charge of doing things like swords and armory for the film) was started by Dan Taylor around 1986. WETA Digital was started around 1993 ( one interesting trivia is that some exILMers help set that up).
They have worked in several Peter Jackson movies most notable Heavenly Creatures and the Frighteners. But they have also done other work like most of "The Ride" sequence in Contact.
The only question left is what will WETA Digital be like after 2003. For the time being they are concentrating almost exclusively on LOTR.
Eeehhh, Alias Wavefront ported the Maya batch renderer to Linux and announced it at SIGGRAPH 99. And of course if you are looking for a reneder farm for Maya, there is also Phortorealistic RenderMan from Pixar (couple it with RAT: RenderMan Artists Tools) which is also available from Linux for a couple of years at least.
Maya itself has already been ported to Linux (v. 4) and to Mac OS X (V. 3.5 I think).
ILM last FX for ST movie was First Contact, here are the ILM supervisors: The Voyage Home was supervised by Michael Lantieri if I remember right, Undiscovered Country by Scott Farrar, Generations by John Knoll, Bill George and Dave Carson, and First Contact by John Knoll and George Murphy. Of course other facilities and supervisor were involved.
They didn't do Insurrection. ILM also didn't work on the first one or number 5 (Final Frontier).
Yes Rick Berman made that comment among another stupid remark. He said that since ILM was working on Episode 1 he didn't want ST to be done by the unit B. Of course that's totally ridiculous, there is no A and B team. Not that Insurrection had terrible FX but the production went screwy, like changing the ending at the last possible minute and of course the great effort to create the FX for it.
Lack of surprises!!! Well that depends if you look out for spoilers on the Internet. I tried to stay spoler free as much as possible, and I did my "mom" test, I asked her and she didn't know anything except for what she see on the trailers. Some people have a "fast food" instant gratification mentality but there are many others wanting to be surprised. Your other points are subjective they are valid opinions, but they are not certainties. I mean have you ever played with a little brother or nephew? They talk like that aand I don't see how just saying Yipee will later prevent someone from growing up and doing stuff. As I said a valid opinion but there are others. Just let Lucas make his movie.
yeah like the previous poster said, first check the facts before making such bold statements.
Episode 1 was the biggest project the ILM model dept. has undertaken. There are tons of models in there, from battle tanks, spaceships, set pieces, practiacl elements and interiors. Just check out the Beginning documentary in the DVD or better yet the best source of info, Cinefex issue 78:
Too bad the official site is kinda hosed, you could check some there.
Re:uhm, no. Wired has the scoop on Pixar's interna
on
Review: Monsters, Inc.
·
· Score: 2
Ahh forgot another great article, this one from the best magazine about CG, CGW. Monsters Inc. is the cover story:
Monster Mash
Re:uhm, no. Wired has the scoop on Pixar's interna
on
Review: Monsters, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
Well if you want more info on internals just look for all the Pixar papers and course notes from SIGGRAPH and the 2 RenderMan books. Besides the renderMan course notes they have also presented on several FX related courses. Here is a start:
No, actually they used the same renderer, Photorealistic RenderMan. Renderman is a spec, and PRMan is an implementation of it. If anything Pixar uses development versions of PRMan but eventually they make it to the next version of PRMan. Square Pictures actually worked closely with Pixar and many of the requests they had were incorporated into PRMan.
What you are referring to is shaders which are "little" programs that can calculate light and shading. Every place will create their own, so the skin shader used in Final Fantasy is different from the one in Monsters. But the rendere is basicly the same.
If you want a more technical discussion of this just check the RenderMan SIGGRAPH 2001 course notes. They have a chapter by Kevin Bjorke, who had several presentations during SIGGRAPH, about what Square did with RenderMan for Final Fantasy: of th
This is a common confusion. RenderMan is a rendering interface a spec. Usually it's compared as the Postscript of 3D. You can implement a renderer that follows the RenderMan spec. Pixar's implementation is called Photorealistic RenderMan or PRMan for short. It uses the REYES (which stands for Renders Everything You Ever Saw)architecture for rendering (in gross termsZ buffer scanline renderer). Many people when they say RenderMan they actually mean PRMan. PRMan is sold by Pixar along with the RenderMan Artist Tools or RAT. But there exists many other implementations of the RenderMan spec, including BMRT, Entropy, RenderDotC, AQSIS, and AIR among others.
But when Pixar got started there was barely any adequate off the shelf software, so like many others back then (like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Abel and Associates, triple I, etc), they had to create their own tools. Actually you can see mention of it at the end of the movie: Marionette is their animation environment, previously referred to as menv.
Slashdot Mirror
Well don't know him either and I don't care much for this review. But talking about Knowles, AICN and integrity, well that might be a bit of a stretch. Do you remember the OScar debacle from a few years ago or his apperance on Politically Incorrect. You should read the articles on Film Threat about him and some of his associates:
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY: AIN'T IT UNETHICAL? (part one)THE GEEKS STRIKE BACK: DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (part two)
AIN'T IT CRIMINAL: DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (part 3)
AIN'T-HE-A-FOOL: JUDGMENT DAY FOR JOE HALLENBECK
AIN'T IT BACKLASH: HARRY GOES ON TV, BUT TV GOES OFF ON HARRY
HARRY & ME
I mean if is willing to pimp a script from one of his friends without telling anyone, it's abit of a stretch to talk about integrity and his site. Maybe instead of begging for presents he should put ads like Slashdot.
Hmmmm maybe I was thinking of Rayz, which I couldn't remember in my first post. Rayz for sure is primarily developed on Linux. I still think about v. 2 of XSI being done on Linux but I maybe got confused (it happens quite a bit ;-)
As far as I know is that they get the software and hardware at very discounted prices, particularly from SGI, Alias/Wavefront and Pixar. With Pixar it seems that one of the conditions for Lucas to sell it to Jobs was to have early access to Pixar's technology, mainly PRMan (and I could guess also RAT now). From SGI they get early access to hardware thanks to their JEDI agreement (Joint Environment for Digital Imaging), I think it's JEDI III at the moment. According to some rumors is that part of the agreement is that ILM doesn't mention other platforms. They get the gear and give feedback to SGI along braging rights. From Alias/Wavefront they are also among the beta testers for all new versions. But in the end they wouldn't give it away as an incentive. Even if it was free if it didn't fit their pipeline it would be pointless.
There are plenty of articles detailing Linux increasing use in VFX. Here are a some:
Linux Helps Bring Titanic to Life
The Little Engine That Could
Penguin Power
Linux Invades Hollywood
VESTECH 2000
Linux takes Hollywood by storm
Linux goes to the movies
Nixed for Linux
DreamWorks Feature Linux and Animation
Industry of Change: Linux Storms Hollywood
From what I remember from an article XSI (probably starting with v. 2) is actually developed under Linux and from there ported to NT and Irix.
There are also other apps. Most people forget about Houdini from Side Effects. There was of course Shake, but now that Apple bought Nothing Real who knows what is going to happen. Photorealistic RenderMan also has run under Linux for quite a while.
I was talking about commercial 3D packages, as that was the reference on the parent post. yes Blender has been a while, but as far as regular commercial 3D apps Houdini was first, maybe I should have made it clear. I thought Blender was longer than that. I remember seeing Houdini on Linux at SIGGRAPH 2000 (maybe the HP booth?) so Houdini has been ther for a while.
From the little search I did, Houdini for Linux was announced on March of 99, and shown at SIGGRAPH 99 at the E&S booth (beta version I believe). Houdini 4 which became available for Linux was apparently released in January 2000:
Houdini To Support Linux
Side Effects Shows Houdini for Linux
Side Effects Ships Houdini 4.0
Nothing against Blender, sued it myself a little, but basicly they were giving it away. As far as a more established commercial entitity (along with the focus to use it for games) is a little more recent happening. We are just comparing different things ;-).
Yes both Maya and Softimage XSI are on Linux. Houdini was actually first. There is also PRMan and the RAT tools, Rayz, Shake, rastrack, and few others here and there.
Yes I guess it depends on the perspective about favorite 3D package. Even Michael Tiemann of RedHat said once that long ago he wanted Maya running on Linux after experiencing it some time ago. But Blender is good for it's target audience/niche.
You are correct I didn't say that all right. Probably what they meant is that in the next film all the interactive workstations will be Linux based (say for running Maya). There is still work done on Macs. And of course their renderfarm will be SGI based for some time, and even more the machines that run their simulations.
Well the thing is ILM has a ton of propietary software (and probably some is optimized for SGI?Irix). By the last account I had, maybe they had a 50% of propietary software and 50% commercial. They have the biggest R&D dept. in the FX biz, and have won several technical Oscars including 2 this year. Many of these apps are highly complex, written by their geniuses like Cari, the water dynamics simulator, hair renderer, muscle dynamics, matchmoving and scene recovery, stuff probably for the HD camera, their constrained dynamics and rigid body dynamics systems, Viewpaint, Sabre and many more. I don't think a mere intern could port this in his spare time. They have several shows in pre production and production right now. The port to Linux will be easier compared if they did it to NT but it still will require some time and care.
Actually ILM is indeed making moves to Linux. Surprisingly they said the Linux was more ready for desktops than servers for them. There were a couple of srticles about this, one in CGW (requires free registration):
Linux Invades Hollywood
But here is the relevant section for those that don't want to register:
You can find a couple more references at the website I help mantain:
ILM and Linux
If the statements are correct, that would probably make MIB2 the first ILM project completely done in Linux, but I still have to check. Still you are right for the most part ILM is an SGI house, though don't forget about the Rebel Mac Unit.
In response to the parent of this, while Maya might run under NT and PCs, there is still software that doesn't like Infernos, ILM in house compositing system, Sabre, is based on Inferno. And there are other examples though are probably very specialized apps.
It's the next generation animation package from Softimage. The first generation was called Softimage 3D. The second generation is called now Softimage XSI (the code name was Sumatra). XSI took it's name from one of their new file formats which has the extension .xsi.
There is also Photorealistic RenderMan, JIG, the upcoming Softimage XSI. Softimage even showed a beta of XSI running under RedHat during SIGGRAPH 2000. There were rumors that Lightwave might also do a port but I don't know. Realsoft3D is also on Linux.
The one by ILM (user lucasdigital) was actually organized first by the employees and consisted of crew items. A CG supervisor at ILM was the front man and he really busted his chops doing that, especially since he is also in the middle of prodction. They did auction more than the stuff that is listed on that link (which only shows last 30 days). I was trying to decide how to donate some more money and found the ILM auctions suited me best. Some really amazing items. Got 4 for myself. Hopefully they will be able to put out more stuff out.
As far as the kits go, Lucas has always been one that has kept all sorts of props and stuff from ILM with him for preservation. He doesn't want them to be either lost or hidden by some collector.
Well but because of your lack of smilies you know someone would have taken it literally ;-) (hmm I did forget mine in my first post, Im guilty myself). Well probably we wont see any GPL apps anytime soon besides Film Gimp and a few other things. I guess 3D is just to specialized for people from OpenSource make a run for it. I don't think we'll see a GPL equivalent of Maya or Softimage or avid anytime soon. Then again there is stuff like Aqsis (at Sourceforge) which is a GPL RenderMan renderer. It actually implements the REYES architecture (used in PRMan) and it's moving along pretty well. But besides renderers 3D interactive apps are long ways off.
For comparison both SGI and Alias started in 1982, Softimage in 1986, Wavefront and TDI in 1984. Blue Sky started in 1987, but most people came in from MAGI (like Dr. Troubetskoy sp.?), which itself started in 1966. Some of the Blue Sky studio founders at least were at MAGI in the late 70s or early 80s. Rhythm and Hues was founded also in 1987 but the founders (like John Hughes and Keith Goldfarb) came from Robert Abel's company (itself started in 1971). All these places only had propietary software (and many of the old ones used Crays).
Next year a special edition DVD of Tron will come out. Hopefully the extras will include plenty of info from this earlier era of CGI.
Not at all, they are running PRMan from the looks of it. One guy from WETA digital is a frequent poster at the renderman newgroup and has even posted job openings for shader writers. besides Maya and Shake they are also running things like Houdini which has a great RenderMan connection. Weta does indeed have propietary software like Masive, but as most other places they have a mix of in house built and of the shelf stuff.
Most old timers in the CG arena have in house tools because there wasn't any off the shelf stuff to buy. Besides Rhythm and Hues, you have places like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar (though they decided to sell their renderer most of their other tools are propietary) and others. Most FX studios run on a mix off commercial and in built software. Most places run mostly SGI but many are switching or at least experimenting with Linux. Rhythm and hues is even helping develop the Film version of the Gimp (for 16 bit work, tha's 16 bit per component).
Well PDI, Blue Sky, Rhythm and Hues and other facilities wrote their own renderer because there wasn't any commercial one back then (PDI is over 20 years old!!!). That what Pixar also did when it was still the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group, they created their own renderer, but later on decided to sell it. But even Pixar uses its own animation software called menv or Marionette (for the media). And besides the advantage is that all these companies don't have to wait for new features and also they can tailor it specifically to their pipeline, not that they want punishment.
Ohhh, and WETA Digital is using PRMan. There is one guy from there that frequently posts at the RenderMan newsgroup. He even posted at least once job openings for shader writers. They also use Houdini, which has a Linux port and it has a great RenderMan connection.
Actually WETA is pretty old. At least the worksop (now in charge of doing things like swords and armory for the film) was started by Dan Taylor around 1986. WETA Digital was started around 1993 ( one interesting trivia is that some exILMers help set that up).
They have worked in several Peter Jackson movies most notable Heavenly Creatures and the Frighteners. But they have also done other work like most of "The Ride" sequence in Contact.
The only question left is what will WETA Digital be like after 2003. For the time being they are concentrating almost exclusively on LOTR.
Eeehhh, Alias Wavefront ported the Maya batch renderer to Linux and announced it at SIGGRAPH 99. And of course if you are looking for a reneder farm for Maya, there is also Phortorealistic RenderMan from Pixar (couple it with RAT: RenderMan Artists Tools) which is also available from Linux for a couple of years at least.
Maya itself has already been ported to Linux (v. 4) and to Mac OS X (V. 3.5 I think).
Check it at the Maya press releases page:
Maya Press releasesILM last FX for ST movie was First Contact, here are the ILM supervisors: The Voyage Home was supervised by Michael Lantieri if I remember right, Undiscovered Country by Scott Farrar, Generations by John Knoll, Bill George and Dave Carson, and First Contact by John Knoll and George Murphy. Of course other facilities and supervisor were involved.
They didn't do Insurrection. ILM also didn't work on the first one or number 5 (Final Frontier).
Yes Rick Berman made that comment among another stupid remark. He said that since ILM was working on Episode 1 he didn't want ST to be done by the unit B. Of course that's totally ridiculous, there is no A and B team. Not that Insurrection had terrible FX but the production went screwy, like changing the ending at the last possible minute and of course the great effort to create the FX for it.
Lack of surprises!!! Well that depends if you look out for spoilers on the Internet. I tried to stay spoler free as much as possible, and I did my "mom" test, I asked her and she didn't know anything except for what she see on the trailers. Some people have a "fast food" instant gratification mentality but there are many others wanting to be surprised. Your other points are subjective they are valid opinions, but they are not certainties. I mean have you ever played with a little brother or nephew? They talk like that aand I don't see how just saying Yipee will later prevent someone from growing up and doing stuff. As I said a valid opinion but there are others. Just let Lucas make his movie.
yeah like the previous poster said, first check the facts before making such bold statements.
Episode 1 was the biggest project the ILM model dept. has undertaken. There are tons of models in there, from battle tanks, spaceships, set pieces, practiacl elements and interiors. Just check out the Beginning documentary in the DVD or better yet the best source of info, Cinefex issue 78:
Cinefex issue 78Too bad the official site is kinda hosed, you could check some there.
Ahh forgot another great article, this one from the best magazine about CG, CGW. Monsters Inc. is the cover story: Monster Mash
Well if you want more info on internals just look for all the Pixar papers and course notes from SIGGRAPH and the 2 RenderMan books. Besides the renderMan course notes they have also presented on several FX related courses. Here is a start:
RenderMan docsAnd those moviews are not easy, they take an average of 3 to 4 years to make. Next one will take place under the sea.
No, actually they used the same renderer, Photorealistic RenderMan. Renderman is a spec, and PRMan is an implementation of it. If anything Pixar uses development versions of PRMan but eventually they make it to the next version of PRMan. Square Pictures actually worked closely with Pixar and many of the requests they had were incorporated into PRMan.
What you are referring to is shaders which are "little" programs that can calculate light and shading. Every place will create their own, so the skin shader used in Final Fantasy is different from the one in Monsters. But the rendere is basicly the same.
If you want a more technical discussion of this just check the RenderMan SIGGRAPH 2001 course notes. They have a chapter by Kevin Bjorke, who had several presentations during SIGGRAPH, about what Square did with RenderMan for Final Fantasy: of th
RenderMan SIGGRAPH course notesThis is a common confusion. RenderMan is a rendering interface a spec. Usually it's compared as the Postscript of 3D. You can implement a renderer that follows the RenderMan spec. Pixar's implementation is called Photorealistic RenderMan or PRMan for short. It uses the REYES (which stands for Renders Everything You Ever Saw)architecture for rendering (in gross termsZ buffer scanline renderer). Many people when they say RenderMan they actually mean PRMan. PRMan is sold by Pixar along with the RenderMan Artist Tools or RAT. But there exists many other implementations of the RenderMan spec, including BMRT, Entropy, RenderDotC, AQSIS, and AIR among others.
But when Pixar got started there was barely any adequate off the shelf software, so like many others back then (like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Abel and Associates, triple I, etc), they had to create their own tools. Actually you can see mention of it at the end of the movie: Marionette is their animation environment, previously referred to as menv.
RenderMan InterfaceExluna (makers of BMRT and Entropy)
AQSIS
RenderDotC
3DLight
AIR
RenderMan Repository
I guess yopu haven't heard but Square Pictures seems to have finally bite the dust:
Square Shamed