Ernest Burden III Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 I went with my 5 year-old to a birthday party for his friend. She wanted to have a movie party. We saw Cars. That film is an amazing work, beginning to end. OK, the story is the same old 'stuck-up, self-interested jerk meets folksy folks and learns to care about more than just himself' that we've seen 100 times before. But the visuals, the camera work, the backgrounds, the in-jokes, the car-culture (my roots), the details...perfection. I thought this movie was going to stink. But last winter when Pixar had their exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and a few of the main artists did lectures that I went to, I got to see how they put the film together. That made me think that maybe it wouldn't stink, and it doesn't. There are scenes with fantastic landscape and trees, fanciful structures. The architecture is made from car parts, the bugs are VW bugs. Truly amazing piece. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oluv Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 we will still have to wait some months to have this movie over in austria why did you think the movie would stink? i haven't seen any pixar-movie that stunk yet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gfa2 Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 My kids want to see Cars before Over the hedge and I'm glad. From the trailers I've seen it looks like it's pretty amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted June 10, 2006 Author Share Posted June 10, 2006 My kids want to see Cars before Over the hedge and I'm glad. From the trailers I've seen it looks like it's pretty amazing. Over The Hedge is going to be great--on DVD. The trailer for Cars shows the most obvious stuff. This movie is great for the details, the thouroughness of design and execution. It may be the first mature CG film. It doesn't look like it was made to be a cartoon movie, it looks like it is a film that just happened to be made with CG. The direction is spot-on. I thought it would stink because its a movie with cartoon talking cars with blinky uni-eyes and rubbery mouths. Can you stretch that joke to feature-length? Apparently, yes. I'm going to have to see this several more times to catch all the details I missed--and the middle part when my little guy needed a bathroom break. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 wow. i went to quicktime's website to watch the trailer. they actually posted high-def trailers. the largest being 1920x800 pixels. http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/cars/hd/ . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipjor Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 my wife and i loved over the hedge, I always enjoy the big screen over DVD/televsion, we usally go to early matinee, 11am sometimes we are the only ones in the theater. about $6 here in Atlanta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliot Posted June 10, 2006 Share Posted June 10, 2006 Last night I went with my 8 year old twins and their friends to see CARS. It is certainly an interesting movie. I just kept thinking about the kind of computers they must have. I have been rendering a 600 frame small movie all day long and it is not finished. Can you imagine CARS...? By the way the movie house was pack full. We spent more than 100.00. I was also thinking about all the ticket money these people are making. He he he he Regards Elliot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Msamir Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 The average time for rendering one frame was 17 hours with a network of 3000 computers ! More Info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 i read somewhere that some of the frames took like 17 hours to render :|... havent seen the movie yet ..but is on the wishlist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 Here is a quote: " Lasseter's mandate to have the car characters look as real as possible posed some daunting new challenges for Pixar's technical team. Having a film where the characters are metallic and heavily contoured meant coming up with resourceful ways to accurately show reflections. "CARS" is the first Pixar film to use "ray tracing," a technique which allows the car stars to credibly reflect their environments. The addition of reflections in practically every shot of the film added tremendous render time to the project. The average time to render a single frame of film for "CARS" was 17 hours. Even with a sophisticated network of 3000 computers, and state-of-the-art lightning fast processors that operate up to four times faster than they did on "The Incredibles," it still took many days to render a single second of finished film." ------------ I love how they talk about raytracing like it is some advanced technique that Pixar came up with. 17 hours a frame.... no wonder they used Brazil on The Incredibles. Also keep in mind that the Pixar mentality is no compositing... render everything all at once. That car in the backgound looks too blue? Re-render the whole thing over. That, to me, is insane. But we all forgive them, as we should, because their movies are awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliot Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 I can believe it.... there is a lot of fancy rendering on the movie I just finished my small movie on VIZ. It took like 14 hours for 600 frames for a 800 by 640. Now I am working on Premiere and AE. I know this will take all day long. I have been working on this thing for about a week starting from the 3D model. I can't imagine the movie CARS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Well let me tell you this... I worked on several features and generally speaking if you your renders are running longer than 2 hours a frame at 2k, you need to start looking at other solutions to speed things up. Pixar is spoiled by a huge amount of processors, long production times, and tolerance for slower (not less advanced) technology in their rendering engines. Basically they know that their movies will make money so they let it happen. It just sort of sucks for toehr places that are forced to use the same technology that don't have that luxury of time and processors. With that said... I should say that at Pixar, rendering is good but Animators are king. And the success of Pixar is the Animators. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Wow, what is this "ray tracing" they speak of? That would be sooo nice to have someday. It's weird they don't do any compositing work, but I wonder what sort, if any, digital intermediate work they may do. I mean, do their frames really come out that amazing, or are they doing a whole set of color corrections and effects on them. But really, I was watching some hd trailers for Cars today and got really excited about seeing it. Their use of color was absolutely incredible in the few shots I did see. I love the shots with the cars speeding down the desert road because the dust trails are just beautiful to watch. The fact that their frames are 17 hours is somewhat comforting to me, knowing that in our office frames above 10 minutes are pushing it. I wonder though, if we were to do architectural renderings & animations in the style such as Cars, would it be considered child-like, or a work of art? I really like realistic renderings, but I also like them to be infused with color and intensity not always found in realistic situations. I haven't seen the entire Cars movie yet, so I honestly don't know if something like that would pass for an architectural project or not. I think it would have to be somewhere in between since we don't normally see talking cars & animals in the projects we are working on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IC Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 I'm not surprised it's good. The Incredibles is one of the best films I've seen in the last few years and I don't mean just out of the animated ones. The only other animation that's had a similar impact on me was Howl's Moving Castle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 do their frames really come out that amazing, or are they doing a whole set of color corrections and effects on them. They plan the colors well before they are outputting finals. Last winter I saw the entire movie reduced to one frame per scene and arranged into a 'colorboard'. So its no accident. And to me the best aspects of CARS is the camera work and scenic design. I wonder though, if we were to do architectural renderings & animations in the style such as Cars, would it be considered child-like, or a work of art? I don't mean to make a direct comparison to Pixar's work, but that use of stylized realism is how I approach arch. rendering. My animation is the same. I don't think its all in the technique, I think the eye for color, contrast, and composition are still more important than the style of picture. When you see CARS and look at all the aspects that are not unique to a CG movie, you will realize just how much Lasater and the Pixar people have learned from traditional movies and painting. There is so much to learn from 'old-school' art that can be brought into digital that all of us should take the time to study it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 It's weird they don't do any compositing work, but I wonder what sort, if any, digital intermediate work they may do. I mean, do their frames really come out that amazing, or are they doing a whole set of color corrections and effects on them. There is a bit of that "don't mess with success" attitude... and when your first success is Toy Story, you tend to see a lot of slow progress. It is only when you bring in some outside influence that you see some change. Such as Brad Bird directing the Incredibles... then all of a sudden, you see things like max and Brazil, and some actual compositing. I would not recoomend this work flow to anyone. Enormous rendertimes like that can be avoided and will allow you to create better and faster work... no matter what the Maxwell people say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 I would not recoomend this work flow to anyone. The movies are story-driven from the start. So says their story director--whos name escapes me unfortunately. They produce an animatic 'story-reel' which is the entire movie in sketch and storyboard with dialog voiced by the artists who drew them. Then its all work directed at fleshing out those scenes. So I'm not surprised that by the time they get to final renders they can do 'em in one take. ForDummies version: http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html# I've got to remember that story guy's name--I want to write to him now that I've seen the film. His presentation at MOMA, which was aimed at kids 10-15 or so, sounded very much like the advice I give to students about drawing, color, etc. But he's a Pixar guy, I'm not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 here is an interview i heard on NPR last week.... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5471976 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 Also keep in mind that the Pixar mentality is no compositing... render everything all at once. That's really surprising to hear that they don't do any compositing. If you watch the making of stuff with finding nemo there is a portion that goes through all the different "effects" that gets added and it all looks just like specular, reflection, diffuse, etc. layers. Also, we took the kids to see it this weekend. It was the first time we've tried to take our 1 year old and sure enough he didn't last through much of it. So my wife and I took turns in the lobby with him. I saw the begining and the end. What I saw looked really good though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anvaraziz Posted June 13, 2006 Share Posted June 13, 2006 look at there new trailer of "Ratatouille" http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ratatouille/index.html look at those shaders,, its ammazing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IC Posted June 13, 2006 Share Posted June 13, 2006 It was the first time we've tried to take our 1 year old and sure enough he didn't last through much of it. So my wife and I took turns in the lobby with him. I saw the begining and the end. What I saw looked really good though. That made me laugh! My youngest (3) will sit happily through a film nowadays but only lying prone on my chest. Not good on hot days! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 18, 2006 Share Posted June 18, 2006 just got back from Cars. lots and lots of reflections noticable not only on the cars, but also on the asphalt, and several other surfaces. i think that is what made watching the movie really nice. ..but i have to say, my favorite part was when i heard the Car Talk guys playing reps for the bumper shine sponsor company. ...i also wanted to mcqueen race with the whitewalls. that would have been sweet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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