
Pixar in a Box - theastrowolfe
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar
======
rawnlq
The animation timeline controls used in these tutorials[1] are better than the
ones used for by professional web developers[2].

[1] [https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-
content/pixar/animate/ba...](https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-
content/pixar/animate/ball/p/squash-and-stretch-animation-with-bezier-curves)
[2] [https://greensock.com/timelinemax](https://greensock.com/timelinemax)

I wish web devs would stop reinventing the wheel and just steal these UIs from
animation software that are proven to work well for animators.

~~~
mattdw
There are tools to go between the two (from [http://cubic-
bezier.com/](http://cubic-bezier.com/) to Flash's HTML5 export), but I don't
think there's any general solution to go from a UI like that, to code. What if
one of your points is a programmatic parameter that varies over time? What if
you're changing ground level with every iteration? How does the bezier-based
editing UI help with that?

~~~
intoverflow2
> What if one of your points is a programmatic parameter that varies over
> time? What if you're changing ground level with every iteration? How does
> the bezier-based editing UI help with that?

Check out how After Effects solves this, keyframed and scripted animation
shares the same timeline and can reference each other.

------
jitl
If you want to dive in, this first video has a cool overview of the Pixar-y
things the course covers: [https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-
content/pixar/start/intr...](https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-
content/pixar/start/introduction/v/pipeline-video)

I was disappointed that the landing page says practically nothing, and you
have to go looking around to get a good overview.

------
Isamu
The "Patterns" lesson is new, it's pretty cool.

Check it out: Voronoi partition, Poisson disk process, Make your own dinosaur
skin, Perlin noise.

Very fun. My daughter really enjoyed this when it first came out. She was
surprised to see the applications for math she had learned at school!

~~~
gdubs
Started watching last night and couldn't put it down. Really slick visual
explanations and a great combination of practicality and artistry.

~~~
britcruise
That's so exciting to hear, thanks for this feedback

------
beneater
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10129914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10129914)

------
climber_mac
I really recommend reading Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmull, one of the
cofounders of Pixar. It's an incredible book full of insight on how Pixar
fosters creativity to create hit after hit movie.

It really helped me shift my mind during some difficult projects where I felt
like I was working against impossible odds.

~~~
greggman
I read the book. But it was after that that Mr. Catmull got caught apparently
keeping is employee's salaries lower than market rates by making illegal non-
poaching agreements.

[http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-
emerge...](http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-
central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html)

Also, he never covered why Cars was so awful. (or Cars 2) which I believe both
came out before the book? Maybe you disagree they were bad but rottentomatoes
and metacritic has them near the bottom of the list along with The Good
Dinosaur, Brave, and Monsters University.

I'd love to know what he thinks changed.

What I liked most about that book was how much he acknowledged luck. Examples:
Luck they didn't get sold/disbanded before Jobs bought them from Lucas. Luck
that Jobs was willing to blow 70 million on them as a computer company before
they switched to being an animation company. And he acknowledges lots of other
luck.

~~~
rootbear
Cars was not critically successful, but it has been a merchandising goldmine.
Every NASCAR mom and dad bought a Lightning McQueen, or a Mater, or other Cars
toy for their kids.

~~~
trentlott
I'm surprised that Cars holds ~75% on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatos, while
Inside Out and Toy Story and others have >95%.

I see Cars as a film that appeals to children primarily, while the others are
"family" movies in the best sense.

It always seemed to me that Cars was intended to be a more child-oriented
movie, but I don't know that it should suffer for that critically.

Maybe it w as hoped to be a film on the same level as those others, but I
can't imagine anybody read the script and thought it would be.

~~~
intoverflow2
> I see Cars as a film that appeals to children primarily, while the others
> are "family" movies in the best sense.

They're not family movies, they're movies that parents want their kids to be
interested in but the reality is kids prefer Cars, Frozen, Shrek and Minions.

~~~
ChristianGeek
I'm 54 and Cars is one of my favorite Pixar films (no, I'm not a NASCAR kind
of guy). I never understood why it received such poor ratings.

------
mrmeemus
Thanks for sharing this, it's so awesome!

~~~
qz_
Why all the downvotes this person is obviously new here and he's just trying
to be nice.

------
mintplant
I'll take this opportunity to ask: how do you learn 3D modeling? I tried just
diving in with Maya and 3DS Max, but the tools are so complicated and I'm sure
I was doing things the wrong way. I'm in college right now, but my university
(UCSD) doesn't seem to offer any courses on the subject.

~~~
AustinG08
I've been learning Blender in my free time for the past few months, this
tutorial was a most excellent starting point:
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro)

My goal is to make characters for games, and I have been watching this video
series
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFt_AvWsXl0eTHFZ2XPkM...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFt_AvWsXl0eTHFZ2XPkM6gLK8XdsdzNl)
\- I recommend the 5 Blender Character Animation videos. Tremendously helpful.

In my opinion the key is, like learning most things, a little bit every day.

~~~
manu29d
I played around with Blender when I was in college back in 2012-2013. Cycles
render was just introduced back then. Blender and it's community has come a
long way since then in this short span of time.

My starting point was
[http://www.blenderguru.com/](http://www.blenderguru.com/) (for general tips
and tricks), reading about ray tracing(for understanding why my renders were
not up to the mark), anatomy of physical shapes(for sculpting) and watching a
lot of behind the scene VFX breakdown videos(to understand their
construction). Frankly, my humble computer back then was not capable of
running 3DS Max or Maya.

Apart from this, a lot of articles regarding photography helped. A keen
attention to detail and huge amounts of patience is required(while watching
your renders take hours if you have the wrong graphics card).

------
djcapelis
It's good to see Suzanne popping up in so many places!

(Suzanne is Blender's monkey mesh primitive and logo. Blender uses it where
other programs would use the Utah teapot. You see it in the character modeling
icon on that page. Wikipedia about it here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Suzanne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_\(software\)#Suzanne))

------
amelius
> A single frame can take more than 24h to render

What, really? I was under the impression that pixar had a render farm large
enough to render frames in minutes or even seconds.

~~~
rootbear
Twenty-four hours is not typical. I'm a bit out of date, but I think four
hours is more common. On Toy Story, it was more like two. The increase is due
mostly to the use of global illumination for nearly all scenes now. Renderman
traditionally didn't do ray tracing or any other GI lighting. The modern
version does, and it simple takes longer.

Higher resolution, and stereo (3D), are also to blame. Toy Story was rendered
at less that 1080 HD resolution!

~~~
orbitur
Is there more info about the TS1 re-releases then? Based on your comment I
started looking for info and verified that the original render was 1536x922,
but there's no info about the work they put into the 3D version and Blu-Ray
release.

~~~
tomvbussel
Seems like it took them a few minutes per frame to render TS1 in 2011 [1], not
sure if that's with the higher resolution.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-
render-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-Toy-
Story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995)

------
hmate9
"A single frame can take over 24 hours to render. And that's just ONE frame".

There are about 150,000 frames in a movie. Not bad.

~~~
njloof
Rendering is a trade off between time, quality and artistic and technical
effort. No frame _needs_ 24 hours to render; it just means someone wasn't
tasked with making it faster or cheaper.

~~~
loco5niner
... or lower quality ;-)

