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The Uses of Animation 1
The Uses of Animation 1 1 The Uses of Animation ANIMATION Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation. Animation can be recorded with either analogue media, a flip book, motion picture film, video tape,digital media, including formats with animated GIF, Flash animation and digital video. To display animation, a digital camera, computer, or projector are used along with new technologies that are produced. Animation creation methods include the traditional animation creation method and those involving stop motion animation of two and three-dimensional objects, paper cutouts, puppets and clay figures. Images are displayed in a rapid succession, usually 24, 25, 30, or 60 frames per second. THE MOST COMMON USES OF ANIMATION Cartoons The most common use of animation, and perhaps the origin of it, is cartoons. Cartoons appear all the time on television and the cinema and can be used for entertainment, advertising, 2 Aspects of Animation: Steps to Learn Animated Cartoons presentations and many more applications that are only limited by the imagination of the designer. The most important factor about making cartoons on a computer is reusability and flexibility. The system that will actually do the animation needs to be such that all the actions that are going to be performed can be repeated easily, without much fuss from the side of the animator. -
Blue Screen Matting
Blue Screen Matting Alvy Ray Smith and James F. Blinn Microsoft Corporation ABSTRACT allowed to pass through and illuminate those parts desired but is blocked everywhere else. A holdout matte is the complement: It is A classical problem of imaging—the matting problem—is separa- opaque in the parts of interest and transparent elsewhere. In both tion of a non-rectangular foreground image from a (usually) rectan- cases, partially dense regions allow some light through. Hence gular background image—for example, in a film frame, extraction of some of the color film image that is being matted is partially illu- an actor from a background scene to allow substitution of a differ- minated. ent background. Of the several attacks on this difficult and persis- The use of an alpha channel to form arbitrary compositions of tent problem, we discuss here only the special case of separating a images is well-known in computer graphics [9]. An alpha channel desired foreground image from a background of a constant, or al- gives shape and transparency to a color image. It is the digital most constant, backing color. This backing color has often been equivalent of a holdout matte—a grayscale channel that has full blue, so the problem, and its solution, have been called blue screen value pixels (for opaque) at corresponding pixels in the color image matting. However, other backing colors, such as yellow or (in- that are to be seen, and zero valued pixels (for transparent) at creasingly) green, have also been used, so we often generalize to corresponding color pixels not to be seen. -
An Advanced Path Tracing Architecture for Movie Rendering
RenderMan: An Advanced Path Tracing Architecture for Movie Rendering PER CHRISTENSEN, JULIAN FONG, JONATHAN SHADE, WAYNE WOOTEN, BRENDEN SCHUBERT, ANDREW KENSLER, STEPHEN FRIEDMAN, CHARLIE KILPATRICK, CLIFF RAMSHAW, MARC BAN- NISTER, BRENTON RAYNER, JONATHAN BROUILLAT, and MAX LIANI, Pixar Animation Studios Fig. 1. Path-traced images rendered with RenderMan: Dory and Hank from Finding Dory (© 2016 Disney•Pixar). McQueen’s crash in Cars 3 (© 2017 Disney•Pixar). Shere Khan from Disney’s The Jungle Book (© 2016 Disney). A destroyer and the Death Star from Lucasfilm’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (© & ™ 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization.) Pixar’s RenderMan renderer is used to render all of Pixar’s films, and by many 1 INTRODUCTION film studios to render visual effects for live-action movies. RenderMan started Pixar’s movies and short films are all rendered with RenderMan. as a scanline renderer based on the Reyes algorithm, and was extended over The first computer-generated (CG) animated feature film, Toy Story, the years with ray tracing and several global illumination algorithms. was rendered with an early version of RenderMan in 1995. The most This paper describes the modern version of RenderMan, a new architec- ture for an extensible and programmable path tracer with many features recent Pixar movies – Finding Dory, Cars 3, and Coco – were rendered that are essential to handle the fiercely complex scenes in movie production. using RenderMan’s modern path tracing architecture. The two left Users can write their own materials using a bxdf interface, and their own images in Figure 1 show high-quality rendering of two challenging light transport algorithms using an integrator interface – or they can use the CG movie scenes with many bounces of specular reflections and materials and light transport algorithms provided with RenderMan. -
Pixar's 22 Rules of Story Analyzed
PIXAR’S 22 RULES OF STORY (that aren’t really Pixar’s) ANALYZED By Stephan Vladimir Bugaj www.bugaj.com Twitter: @stephanbugaj © 2013 Stephan Vladimir Bugaj This free eBook is not a Pixar product, nor is it endorsed by the studio or its parent company. Introduction. In 2011 a former Pixar colleague, Emma Coats, Tweeted a series of storytelling aphorisms that were then compiled into a list and circulated as “Pixar’s 22 Rules Of Storytelling”. She clearly stated in her compilation blog post that the Tweets were “a mix of things learned from directors & coworkers at Pixar, listening to writers & directors talk about their craft, and via trial and error in the making of my own films.” We all learn from each other at Pixar, and it’s the most amazing “film school” you could possibly have. Everybody at the company is constantly striving to learn new things, and push the envelope in their own core areas of expertise. Sharing ideas is encouraged, and it is in that spirit that the original 22 Tweets were posted. However, a number of other people have taken the list as a Pixar formula, a set of hard and fast rules that we follow and are “the right way” to approach story. But that is not the spirit in which they were intended. They were posted in order to get people thinking about each topic, as the beginning of a conversation, not the last word. After all, a hundred forty characters is far from enough to serve as an “end all and be all” summary of a subject as complex and important as storytelling. -
Alpha and the History of Digital Compositing
Alpha and the History of Digital Compositing Technical Memo 7 Alvy Ray Smith August 15, 1995 Abstract The history of digital image compositing—other than simple digital imple- mentation of known film art—is essentially the history of the alpha channel. Dis- tinctions are drawn between digital printing and digital compositing, between matte creation and matte usage, and between (binary) masking and (subtle) mat- ting. The history of the integral alpha channel and premultiplied alpha ideas are pre- sented and their importance in the development of digital compositing in its cur- rent modern form is made clear. Basic Definitions Digital compositing is often confused with several related technologies. Here we distinguish compositing from printing and matte creation—eg, blue-screen matting. Printing v Compositing Digital film printing is the transfer, under digital computer control, of an im- age stored in digital form to standard chemical, analog movie film. It requires a sophisticated understanding of film characteristics, light source characteristics, precision film movements, film sizes, filter characteristics, precision scanning de- vices, and digital computer control. We had to solve all these for the Lucasfilm laser-based digital film printer—that happened to be a digital film input scanner too. My colleague David DiFrancesco was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences last year with a technical award for his achievement on the scanning side at Lucasfilm (along with Gary Starkweather). Also honored was Gary Demos for his CRT-based digital film scanner (along with Dan Cam- eron). Digital printing is the generalization of this technology to other media, such as video and paper. -
To Infinity and Back Again: Hand-Drawn Aesthetic and Affection for the Past in Pixar's Pioneering Animation
To Infinity and Back Again: Hand-drawn Aesthetic and Affection for the Past in Pixar's Pioneering Animation Haswell, H. (2015). To Infinity and Back Again: Hand-drawn Aesthetic and Affection for the Past in Pixar's Pioneering Animation. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 8, [2]. http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue8/HTML/ArticleHaswell.html Published in: Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights © 2015 The Authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits distribution and reproduction for non-commercial purposes, provided the author and source are cited. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:28. Sep. 2021 1 To Infinity and Back Again: Hand-drawn Aesthetic and Affection for the Past in Pixar’s Pioneering Animation Helen Haswell, Queen’s University Belfast Abstract: In 2011, Pixar Animation Studios released a short film that challenged the contemporary characteristics of digital animation. -
Frame by Frame
FRAME BY FRAME by Glen Ryan Tadych As we celebrate Thanksgiving and prepare Watching it as an adult though is a different experi- ences go, “What is this?!” And while this factor is for the holiday season, some of cinema’s most ence sure enough, as I’m able to understand how what made Toy Story memorable to most audiences Lasseter’s work on the short film and other TGG anticipated films prepare to hit theaters, most the adult themes are actually what make the film so upon leaving the theater, the heart of the film still projects landed him a full-time position as an notably Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This moving. lies beneath the animation, the impact of which is interface designer that year. However, everything past Wednesday, Disney and Pixar’s latest what makes Toy Story a classic. changed for TGG in 1986. computer-animated adventure, The Good Today, I see Toy Story as the Star Wars (1977) of Dinosaur, released nationwide to generally my generation, and not just because it was a “first” Toy Story’s legacy really begins with Pixar’s be- Despite TGG’s success in harnessing computer positive reception, but this week also marked for the film industry or a huge critical and commer- ginnings in the 1980s. Pixar’s story begins long be- graphics, and putting them to use in sequences another significant event in Pixar history: the cial success. Like Star Wars, audiences of all ages fore the days of Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear, such as the stained-glass knight in Young Sherlock 20th anniversary of Toy Story’s original theatri- worldwide enjoyed and cherished Toy Story because and believe it or not, the individual truly responsible Holmes (1985), Lucasfilm was suffering financially. -
Richer Worlds for Next Gen Games: Data Amplification Techniques Survey
Richer Worlds for Next Gen Games: Data Amplification Techniques Survey Natalya Tatarchuk 3D Application Research Group ATI Research, Inc. Overview • Defining the problem and motivation • Data Amplification • Procedural data generation • Geometry amplification • Data streaming • Data simplification • Conclusion Overview • Defining the problem and motivation • Data Amplification • Procedural data generation • Geometry amplification • Data streaming • Data simplification • Conclusion Games and Current Hardware • Games currently are CPU-limited – Tuned until they are not GPU-limited – CPU performance increases have slowed down (clock speed hit brick walls) – Multicore is used in limited ways Trends in Games Today • Market demands larger, more complex game worlds – Details, details, details • Existing games already see increase in game data – Data storage progression: Floppies → CDs → DVDs – HALO2.0 - 4.2GB – HD-DVD/Blueray → 20GB [David Blythe, MS Meltdown 2005] Motivation • GPU performance increased tremendously over the years – Parallel architecture allows consumption of ever increasing amounts of data and fast processing – Major architectural changes happen roughly every 2 years – 2x speed increase also every 2 years – Current games tend to be • Arithmetic limited (shader limited) • Memory limited • GPUs can consume ever increasing amounts of data, producing high fidelity images – GPU-based geometry generation is on the horizon – Next gen consoles Why Not Just Author A Ton of Assets? • Rising development cost – Content creation is the bottleneck -
Hereby the Screen Stands in For, and Thereby Occludes, the Deeper Workings of the Computer Itself
John Warnock and an IDI graphical display unit, University of Utah, 1968. Courtesy Salt Lake City Deseret News . 24 doi:10.1162/GREY_a_00233 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/GREY_a_00233 by guest on 27 September 2021 The Random-Access Image: Memory and the History of the Computer Screen JACOB GABOURY A memory is a means for displacing in time various events which depend upon the same information. —J. Presper Eckert Jr. 1 When we speak of graphics, we think of images. Be it the windowed interface of a personal computer, the tactile swipe of icons across a mobile device, or the surreal effects of computer-enhanced film and video games—all are graphics. Understandably, then, computer graphics are most often understood as the images displayed on a computer screen. This pairing of the image and the screen is so natural that we rarely theorize the screen as a medium itself, one with a heterogeneous history that develops in parallel with other visual and computa - tional forms. 2 What then, of the screen? To be sure, the computer screen follows in the tradition of the visual frame that delimits, contains, and produces the image. 3 It is also the skin of the interface that allows us to engage with, augment, and relate to technical things. 4 But the computer screen was also a cathode ray tube (CRT) phosphorescing in response to an electron beam, modified by a grid of randomly accessible memory that stores, maps, and transforms thousands of bits in real time. The screen is not simply an enduring technique or evocative metaphor; it is a hardware object whose transformations have shaped the ma - terial conditions of our visual culture. -
Deep Compositing Using Lie Algebras
Deep Compositing Using Lie Algebras TOM DUFF Pixar Animation Studios Deep compositing is an important practical tool in creating digital imagery, Deep images extend Porter-Duff compositing by storing multiple but there has been little theoretical analysis of the underlying mathematical values at each pixel with depth information to determine composit- operators. Motivated by finding a simple formulation of the merging oper- ing order. The OpenEXR deep image representation stores, for each ation on OpenEXR-style deep images, we show that the Porter-Duff over pixel, a list of nonoverlapping depth intervals, each containing a function is the operator of a Lie group. In its corresponding Lie algebra, the single pixel value [Kainz 2013]. An interval in a deep pixel can splitting and mixing functions that OpenEXR deep merging requires have a represent contributions either by hard surfaces if the interval has particularly simple form. Working in the Lie algebra, we present a novel, zero extent or by volumetric objects when the interval has nonzero simple proof of the uniqueness of the mixing function. extent. Displaying a single deep image requires compositing all the The Lie group structure has many more applications, including new, values in each deep pixel in depth order. When two deep images correct resampling algorithms for volumetric images with alpha channels, are merged, splitting and mixing of these intervals are necessary, as and a deep image compression technique that outperforms that of OpenEXR. described in the following paragraphs. 26 r Merging the pixels of two deep images requires that correspond- CCS Concepts: Computing methodologies → Antialiasing; Visibility; ing pixels of the two images be reconciled so that all overlapping Image processing; intervals are identical in extent. -
Lights, Camera, Media Literacy! the PIXAR STORY by Leslie Iwerks
Lights, Camera, Media Literacy! THE PIXAR STORY By Leslie Iwerks When you hear the phrase or statement (“in quotes”), place a checkmark next to it. __1) “The art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art.” __2) “The best scientists and engineers are just as creative as the best storytellers.” __3) “This marriage of art and science was the combined dream of three men… the creative scientist Ed Catmull, the visionary entrepreneur Steve Jobs, and the talented artist John Lasseter.” __4) “The teachers at Cal Arts were none other than Disney’s legendary collaborators from the 1930’s known as “The Nine Old Men” who taught the essence of great character animation.” __5) “TRON, a live-action feature using the latest computer technology, was screened for employees at the [Disney] studio.” __6) “Computer animation excited me so much. I wasn’t excited about what I was seeing, but the potential I saw in all this.” __7) “If it had never been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” __8) “…no one wanted to do it except for Lasseter.” __9) “He got fired, because, honestly, the studio didn’t know what to do with him.” __10) “During a lot of the early days, artists were frightened of the computer.” __11) “In the 1960’s, the University of Utah set up one of the first labs in computer graphics, headed by the top scientists in the field.” __12) “Here was a program in which there was art, science, programming altogether in one place, a new field. It was wide open. Just go out and discover things and explore right at the frontier.” __13) “Ed’s computer-animated film of his own left hand was the first step in the development of creating curved surfaces, wrapping texture around those surfaces, and eliminating jagged edges.” __14) “Alex Schure, the president of New York Tech, hired Ed to spearhead the new computer graphics department to develop paint programs and other tools to create art and animation using the computer. -
Loren Carpenter, Inventor and President of Cinematrix, Is a Pioneer in the Field of Computer Graphics
Loren Carpenter BIO February 1994 Loren Carpenter, inventor and President of Cinematrix, is a pioneer in the field of computer graphics. He received his formal education in computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle. From 1966 to 1980 he was employed by The Boeing Company in a variety of capacities, primarily software engineering and research. While there, he advanced the state of the art in image synthesis with now standard algorithms for synthesizing images of sculpted surfaces and fractal geometry. His 1980 film Vol Libre, the world’s first fractal movie, received much acclaim along with employment possibilities countrywide. He chose Lucasfilm. His fractal technique and others were usedGenesis in the sequence Starin Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was such a popular sequence that Paramount used it in most of the other Star Trek movies. The Lucasfilm computer division produced sequences for several movies:Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Young Sherlock Holmes, andReturn of the Jedl, plus several animated short films. In 1986, the group spun off to form its own business, Pixar. Loren continues to be Senior Scientist for the company, solving interesting problems and generally improving the state of the art. Pixar is now producing the first completely computer animated feature length motion picture with the support of Disney, a logical step after winning the Academy Award for best animatedTin short Toy for in 1989. In 1993, Loren received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his fundamental contributions to the motion picture industry through the invention and development of the RenderMan image synthesis software system.