I was recently asked to explain the differences between my amateur open source operation and a major animation studio like Pixar. The short answer is there are too many fundamental differences to even warrant comparison, but after thinking it over, I came up with the long answer.
Luxo in Blender
At the basic level, the open source programs I use are similar to the propriety software that Pixar uses. They both summon a relatively basic engine to matrix individual vertexes in 3D space and define their relationship to one another. From there, the rendering software takes all the vertex information, along with surface values and light sources, and creates an image.
Pixar and and other effects companies use orders of magnitude upon orders of magnitude more computing power than I do. It routinely takes my laptop an hour to render a single 30-frames-per-second frame. With more computer power, they can afford to do much more advanced simulations. For example, I use a raytrace approximation technique to illuminate my scenes, while Pixar’s computers will actually trace each of the millions of light particles as they bounce around the set. But things are improving. Former ILM employee Alex Lindsay podcasted in MacBreak Weekly about the machines used to render the finished shots of the first Star Wars prequel, noting that the iPhone in his pocket was more powerful.
Pixar is also highly specialized. The person who animates a character’s body movements is different from the person who animates the facial expressions; the person who sets up the lighting system is different from the person who creates the sets. My work is all my own, from the modeling and rigging to the textures and simulations. This holistic approach is one reason I became interested in animation.
Perhaps the most important difference, however, is the legacy that Pixar animators seem to understand. There was a great deal of mistrust between traditional animators and computer animators in the 80’s and 90’s: many hand-drawn animators thought that the computer animators would take their jobs and reduce their art form into a bunch of clean, shiny reflective surfaces while many computer animators dismissed 2D as useless and antiquated. The mistrust became so bad that Disney set up boot-camps for the animators, essentially forcing 2D animators to learn 3D and vice versa while elevating the animation itself above the means.
The legacy that I refer to comes from this lighter focus on the method and a heaver focus on the animation. It is so easy to get lost in the wonderful aircraft cockpit-style array of buttons in an animation software and forget about the reasons behind a character’s movement. In this way, computer animation is no easier than traditional methods. Sure, if you want to create a simple bouncing ball, it is no more complex than turning on a physics simulator. But when it comes to making movements that tell the audience something about the character, making different characters behave differently in the same situations, and (most difficult of all) knowing when stillness is a appropriate for a scene, the toolbox is irrelevant. A good animator is a good animator in any dimension.
From what I can see from afar, the industry has embraced these ideas and have become more open to different styles and methods, while not allowing the method to overshadow the story. As an aspiring animator, I can only except that the next few decades to yield fantastic changes in the possess of creating animation.
