How Pixar Changed 3D Animation With Every Movie (Part 1, 'Toy Story' to 'Cars 2') | Movies Insider
Every Pixar movie has introduced its own technical problems, from creating the first fully computer-animated feature film with "Toy Story" to developing a stronger virtual camera for "WALL-E."
In this episode of "Movies Insider," we take a look at how the unique worlds, characters, and practical challenges brought up by each Pixar movie pushed the studio to expand animation technology.
We break down the progress the studio has made over the years in different areas of computer technology, including shading, ray tracing, subdivision surfaces, subsurface scattering, translucency effects, cloth and fur simulation, and muscle movement on human characters. Here's how Pixar improved CG animation with every one of its films from 1995's "Toy Story" to 2011's "Cars 2."
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How Every Single Pixar Movie Advanced 3D Animation, Part 1 | Movies Insider
Fun fact: For Finding Nemo, the crew tried making a realistic-looking ocean. Apparently, the end result was SO realistic that it could be mistaken for live-action. They had to go back and make the ocean MORE cartoon-ishly blue so that the cartoony fish wouldn't stand out.
I remember watching that behind the scenes video! I even thought that their ocean looked more real than the real ocean!
@@MrGamelover23 waw do you have a link please ?
@@fluffystar13 just look up “Nemo behind the scenes” that might work for ya
@@lardlover3730 thx !!!
no link = cap
wow animators don’t get nearly enough recognition that they should. their job is really hard
same with the lighting department, they make the films look as stunning as they do after all
And the modelers
It’s just like a real movie, the actors gets the maximum recognition because we only see them in the film.
@@garin6482 very good point.
@@diamondmindset. k l. 990ln0h ⁰h9hv9v
I think the biggest advancement/challenge that Bugs Life challenged was crowd shots. They needed to find a way of rendering all these hundreds of ants in one shot, which wasn’t possible before the movie.
They used the same technology that Mulan did IIRC.
@@Princeofwinners 2d
Pixar's recent crowds use mocap and automated algorithm to create different crowds
@@Princeofwinners They also used CG crowd animation in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You don't want to look too close at it, though.
That's just not true
I remember reading recently that Pixar’s computational power now could render the original toy story in real time. It’s cool to see how far we’ve come
It couldn’t with the original software, but it could theoretically run in real time on current consoles and consumer PCs if recompiled for them. Just look at the Toy Story section in Kingdom Hearts 3.
What does that mean? In real time they could render toy story ?????
@@Twilightwolf34820 The entire thing, without segmenting it into smaller sections which is generally more efficient. (e.g rendering motion, then lighting etc)
@@Twilightwolf34820 Basically they could render it out as you were watching it (and basically finish the rendering before you even finished watching the movie). But it originally took them using 100+ computers running 24 hours a day EVERY day for multiple days straight to render out the first film back in the mid 90's.
but like, can't any powerful enough PC do that? they can run red dead redemption 2 at 120 fps and you'd think it's a tad more visually complex than toy story
But there are still people who are like "CG sucks, computer just creates everything by itself, there's no artistry in this!".
Well there's Animation with Passion and Hardwork and Animation made with Laziness and Greediness Edit: There's also the Budget and Time.
@@doodleboi7034 that's true for every art form
@@doodleboi7034 there is no animation that gets finished when you're lazy.
@@donsorenoelchapogringo1182 I don't think so. We have a lot of examples of HORRIBLE animations, you can see that the people who worked on it are lazy. I wish I could send you a link, but KZhead delete comments with links
To me, animation is better than live action.
4:24 Sully's hair is going nuts here
That seems about right, no matter how advanced their hair particle system are, there will always be a chance for the collision to freak out, collision detection on hair always been a hardware taxing to perform properly. More sampling meanings more waiting time so they probably had it lowered for that test scene. Still it was a major breakthrough when it first came out.
That was before they fixed the glitches
I can imagine my pc instantly crashing looking at Carl’s house if “UP” was a video game
There is an up video game
Maybe my 3070 Ti could handle it, rofl. Def not my old 1070 though
Well, if it tried to render it at real time speed, maybe. I'm fairly certain they didn't render it that fast though.
My pc can probably run that at 60spf edit: I didn't make any spelling mistakes
wouldn't have to be a video game. could just be rendering a still of the actual 3D shot.
You forgot to mention a lot of stuff. Violet in the incredibles was also really hard to animate. Her hair animation was revolutionary to the animation industry. Before that point they hadn’t made a character with long hair because it was so difficult to animate the way the hair strands would respond to all the movements the head made. They made their characters have short or tied up hair to avoid this problem. With Violet, a key part of her character was that she hid behind her hair so they really wanted to make her hair long and moving, despite not even knowing if it would be possible. In Cars it was a challenge for them to animate mud, because it doesn’t completely act like a liquid or a solid. They played around in the mud a bunch to figure out how it moved and then they had to animate every single clump of mud individually.
pretty sure they covered it in previous video they made years ago.
if they really got into literally every groundbreaking pixar innovation, the video would be an hour long
I'm quite certain that Edna's refusal of capes for the hero costumes is pretty much the animators saying "NO CAPES". Edna is the designer of all the supeheroes' costumes and the animators have a huge say in what they can do and not do. Violet's hair and capes has sort of the same behavior when it comes to how it looks and how it should be animated.
Lol Pixar playing in mud "You want to do what?" "It's for work, I swear!"
@@Lucy-fn9rj Yeah, I know they intentionally mentioned just one thing for every movie, I just figured if people were interested in the video they’d like to hear more stuff.
This is SO FASCINATING and you really realize how technologically advanced these animators have to be in order to be the best in their field
Not the animators, the software developers and engineers. The animators don't have to do any of this.
@@MrGamelover23 Tech artist have to manage the bridge between engineers and artists, and they get nowhere near enough credit as either titles
Animators just focus on animation or movement of characters, and objects, the simulation part is done by FX artist
As the parent of a young child that used to want to watch the same movie three and four times in a row on rainy days i would like to thank Pixar and all the other high end animation studios for the effort that you put into these modern animated cartoons. Tha ability to spot someting you hadn't seen before on the 10th viewing of a movie kept me sane!
that's why Pixar movies are so good I think. You can watch them again and again and never get tired. I think I've watched Wall.E and Cars more than 10 times each !
You know it’s a Pixar movie when you hear that they put 90% of their time adding realistic imperfections…
The other 10% is the story
@@JeremyBaconThe1st that an insult or compliment to the studio?
@@gustavoaraujopenha8463 It's wall-e, not the most complex Pixar story.
@@levincald we watched the same movie, right? Wall-E deals with incredibly complex emotions
@@stauker.1960 emotions ≠ plot
I rewatched all the cars movies, the original cars was made in 2006 and still holds up for today. In comparison to cars 3 which was made in 2017, it’s a lot better, the lighting, graphics and everything really is a lot better. I still get excited looking at all those reflections from the cars themselves lol
cars 1 came out in 06
@@demolitiongod64 Ah, thank you I couldn’t remember lol
I would say that the most obvious upgrade was in lighting. The vistas in Cars 3 look so great!
@@Trecherousbeast Lighting is a BIG factor in how good animations looks. So its no wonder cars 3 looks so good. I think ts4 might still be the best looking pixar film. Although that might be because its the most recent one i've seen. The cat and the opening scene was just jaw dropping.
@@demolitiongod64 the rain on the road looked so good! And that antique store! I love 2D animation, but I hate it when people say there's no art when it comes to 3D.
The thing about pixar movies from 1995 to 2015 is every time their was something new to gawk at and think "wow that looks incredible", every movie had an innovation. That was in part what made them so special, they looked and were cutting edge, if you grew up watching them you were watching the animation industry innovate and mature with you.
What a way to put it. But really true. They talk about the skin in toy story and I'm like "what? No, it was great!" But realistically I haven't watched it since I was in elementary school; and I don't think you actually see the humans that much.
@@kyrab7914 I think they didnt mean that the movies were bad but how the animation got so much improvement ever since.
It's funny that you can now use all of these things in blender for free
Was thinking the same 😅
Honestly
Yeah but they don't use the new techniques
you mean incredible
I think the reason is that it's an art form. Sure people may sell their advancements but the reality is that those advancements breed bigger ones that benefit the entire industry. Sharing is in their best interest in the long run, after all they are selling movies not tech.
Sometimes I wish there were more Pixar movies - but really its the long, pain-staking process that makes each movie superb. You simply can’t spend that long on a project and not be completely passionate about how it turns out
69th like, Nice
it's absolutely incredible that people can figure out how to do this stuff and make history with it.
Pixar: I need waves Pixar: *proceeds to create an entire programm about waves*
*pushes up glasses at **1:38* That's actually Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
I was looking for the same comment lol
As an animator myself, I am extremely inspired by their approach. Instead of thinking "What scenes are we able to do with our current knowledge?" they went the opposite and though "Okay, what is our biggest flaw right now? Let's make an entire movie around that so that we master that topic too."
I want to be a 2d/ traditional animator. But I have to admit that cgi is so beautiful and impressive. I absolutely adore the technological advances Pixar has made. I would like to get into cgi a little… but it seems really complicated and full of m a t h Edit: thank you all for the advice! I’ll be downloading blender this weekend and watching a bunch of tutorials! I’ll tell y’all how it goes!
I don't really think animators are responsible for all of those researches and hard math calculations. Software engineers, Analysts, and Scientists are more fitting with that set of responsibilities. Pixar currently needs a bunch of Software Engineer to work for them.
@@bullracing1 ah, I see! Thank you for the explanation!
I've done a few very basic test animations. Nothing near anything good, but I've been making them for years, and the math has been minimal so far. (Of course, that's bound to change when I actually get good, but for now, no.)
I'm a 3d animator (not a professional) and i never used math while working. I mean, sometimes you need to work with a few numbers, but nothing beyond that
watch corridor crew's cgi artists react. Learn some of their programs.
My most beloved animated movies are WALL-E , Toy Story , The Polar Express , Finding Dory and Finding Nemo.
wow, no up?
@@rifkzzz no i wasn't a fan of UP.
@@josephbennett3482 wow thats surprising, but i respect your opinion
@@rifkzzz its kinda boring and the kid is annoying to be honest. That one scene gets me everytime though
Another person of culture I see, even though UP is also on my list
As a modeler and animator i fricking respect these people from the bottom of my heart. As should everyone else.
Let’s all appreciate *PIXAR* for our good childhood memories
Despite advances in tech, the first movies of Pixar are still the best and most fondly remembered.
Hair, skin, water and fire were the main obstacles to tackle in the earlier days of CG animation. They've conquered pretty much all of them and so mainly just one thing remains...Something that is seemingly VERY difficult to get right: Animating the eyes and the mouth realistically. Hulk and Thanos in Avengers Infinity War and Endgame have gotten closer than just about anyone else but they're still not perfect. AI and machine learning were used to animate those characters which has brought us tantalizingly close to perfect human-like representation in animated CG.
I think the problem with faces in general is that our brains are so expertly wired to recognize human faces ,speech patterns and eye contact that makes even the most minimal issues easy to notice. faces are the hardest thing to get outside of the "uncanny valley". we know them so well that its easy to notice something off, doesnt matter how little.
@@ciclon5682 I think they will get it eventually, then they'll be able to fool us any way they want!
I think Encanto has the most realistic facial expressions in CGI to date
I know what you mean with hulk, and I don't know that this is the case... But what if it's like finding Nemo's ocean? Like they tried to make it look not real because it's a comic or whatever.
You figured it out without knowing it, animate only misshapen and off-color faces, otherwise don’t bother.
Wow, the cinematographer the got to consult on Wall-e was THE Roger Deakins (Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Blade Runner 2049, 1917)
I really like the idea that the writers went to the FX team and asked them what’s something that’s really hard to do, and then write a plot around those difficulties 😂
Now THIS is a series I'm excited to watch!
Yo as a man who grew up surrounded by water for 26 years that water in Cars 2 looks so realistic!!! The benefit of having the scene take place at night also takes more work out and allows a lot of details to be harder to see
I'm utterly impressed by this! The effort, the innovativeness, goshhhhhh dang it! Such a great work of art!
Can't wait for when tangled takes up a quarter of the entire next part in the series lol
Well that’s Disney, so I don’t think it will be in this series. But yes, the work that went into rendering Repunzel’s hair was *very* impressive!
Walt Disney Animation Studios not Pixar
Even if it were in this series, it would have been either before or after Toy Story 3, so it would've been in this video.
wall-e was the most impressive film ive seen as a kid
A little note: everything that renders color and material is inherently a shader, meaning toy story also had shaders. It seems like the additions you’re mentioning are what’s known as “bump maps” and “subsurface scattering” :)
Maybe. But they already had access to bump maps in TS1; it's how they gave Rex's surface its texture. I remember having a Toy Story picture book where the screen caps they used were so high-res that I could see the individual pixels in Rex's bump map in at least one shot.
Was wondering what they meant by that as well
2:53 it looks like it is staring at your soul
As an animator and 3D artist, it's insane to see that Pixar set the paradigm for which I work in today. I use so many of these techniques in my own work. They have been trailblazers all these years.
It's always fascinating seeing the behind the scenes process on what new groundbaking technological achievements Pixar has made in their various movies since Toy Story onwards.
I think you made one small error. Everything in 3D, including games, cgi and animation, all use polygons still. Subdivisions are just literally dividing those polygons, creating more polygon count, thus, making the quality higher. There is also a smoothening effect that rounds the polygons, rather than flat shapes. That still needs polygons in the first place though.
They’re talking about subdivision surface, an algorithm that automates the process of subdividing polygons.
@@DaSquyd yeh, but when she was introducing subdividing, she suggested that it replaced polygons. "...cgi animated movies and video games *had been* mapped with polygons..." Just that small "had been" was what I was talking about
Or what about ray tracing - is it not the rendering method for all and not just the reflections in cars? I mean i learnd Raytracing in C4D in 2001 - Not in cars
Cars 2 being a spy plot may seem generic to some people, especially since the first film is about racing. But I just enjoy the action scenes like I do with the animation of other Pixar Films. They actually manage to translate the visuals of James Bond sequences perfectly to the studio.
Pixar really said: "Oh, we can't do that yet? Ok let me just quickly write a program that does that thing we needed :)"
4:24 Ah, yes, realistic simulation.
Seems legit
I think it's more amazing they managed to render all those balloons for, like, a still frame, let ALONE a full film!
Pixar: You know that one animation technique? Animator: Yes Sir Pixar: Remake it. Animator: Yes sir
I really really love watching the great progress of what Pixar did to make their animated films looks sooooo good! It inspires me to be an animator!
As a 3D artist, I have realized the work behind these movies is hard to imagine. Glad it's being recognized!
Pixar's motto is: if a software/program doesnt work for the needed vfx, then just create one that does!
😂yep
WOW... SO MUCH MATHS AND ALGORITHMS ARE INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THE CHARACTERS WE LOVE 😯
Ah yes, I too remember when Qui-Gon suddenly came back in Revenge of the Sith and destroyed all those battle droids with Obi Wan.
I so need part 2. This was incredible!!
so crazy how technology is evoling and so fast
Can't believe it only 10 years ago and they had just discovered ray-trace rendering!
Nope lol its actually not a new feature Mario 64 had ray tracing
@@connerwine8257 nope that was an image of a cat in a garden wrapped around mario
Ray trace rendering was discovered decades ago, and the first early CG ray tracing was done already in the 70's
@@KilgoreOnDrugs nah fully cgi didn't exist
@@connerwine8257 They didn't say a fully CG movie. They just said CG.
This was really cool to watch. Never gave much thought to how the animations were evolving over time. Love it ! :)
Can’t wait for part two, I learned so much about animation in this one video
This is so much more complicated than it seems on any Pixar movie. I had no idea it is so layered
This seriously freaked me out though 2:49
I'm just awestruck!!! No other words. Btw, Great job by Insider too to collect and share such detailed information.
Their job is so underrated :(
The Cars movie gets some flak from time to time, but seeing Lightning McQueen roll up onto the raceway for the first time on the big screen, I had never seen anything so smooth and shiny! One of the few moments in CGI cinema that managed to blow me away.
This is the best series of Insider. I love it 😘
Awesome, this is my favourite kind of content. thank you
the world needs more movies and companies like this
Freakin LOVE this stuff!
Imagine how amazed people felt when they saw Computer animation for the first time in Toy Story one. Pixar is incredible!
Interested in the workflow of different types of animators, a deep dive would be great! Still the best Insider vid so far!
One shouldn't forget that more importantly than rendered fur or hair or other graphic innovations, that the characters and their story and the message of the artists who make a film, is the most important part of an animated movie. 🎥🙂
I understood nothing , but kept watching .
Pixar animators: Guys we've hit a snag again with this new detail requiring impossible levels of physical accuracy to look convincing Pixar tech team: Okay so here's a bunch of code...
Still waiting for the part 2, this is so cool.
9:27 that scene right there has a change in perspective
When we simulate so well we realize we could be in a simulation.
8:07 unintended pun? Optional section of comment : If you don't understand the pun, it's that she said "boiled down" when talking about food.
Okay, these details are mind-melting. I sure hope I can apply them to my work sometime! :)
This video deserves over 1 mil views. Please make a part 2
it's kinda funny that for what seems like each film, pixar was like "ok, we gotta make a whole new software to do this" and they just went and made a new software lol
If in the future it's actually usefull, ¿why not?
I was absolutely stunned over the video, but not because of the advanced of Pixar, but because all that technology was already there, there is a bunch of misleading information on the video, Pixar pushed really good on CG animation, but they didn't invented the wheel, most or even all of the technologies that you speak about in the video where already there before pixar used it, and some of them where even a very common used technique way before For sample: - Renderman is NOT the industry standard, was quite used for some time, but not for long time, and nowadays almost nobody use it, I think even Pixar rarely use it. - Subdivision Catmull and Clark was implemented on 1978 and it was in a lot of commercial 3d software's by 1990, 8b years before A Bug's Life movie - Ray tracing technology was implemented in 1980, 26 years before Cars - The technique used for physics simulations was really common before UP, and 10k object is a quite small amount compared with more than 1 million objects simulations bore that movie - Ocean simulations where a standard practice way before Cars 2, creating much more realistic simulations in many movies years before pixar, using mainly the same techniques Please study the topic a bit more before making the video, any CG artist would tell you this, the information is not hard to get
I love this kind of videos... Especially when you are just a viewer, you have no Idea what Problems the creators had to face.
Amazing video again INSIDER! please part 2 :D
5:43 I'm sorry what? 😳
dude stop with the sus stuff 🤦
@@dripciclehe learn to much on social media
6:51 Nooo bald Edna
Great info! Whoever had to program the tools should be given more recognition!
Thank you for the update, Insider..!! That's an amazing 3D work..!! @.@
4:01 NFT artists making new million-dollar NFTs.
The scene at 1:37 is not from Revenge of the Sith. It's from The Phantom Menace.
lmfao, I was about to put it here
I was looking for this comment as soon as I saw the mistake
This was awesome! Thanks!!
You forgot to mention the outstanding achievement to have as many ants as 800 in one single shot!!!
i have so much respect for these animation studios their jobs are just incredible the way they bring these movies to life is amazing!
I love these videos!
11:10 check out the shading here. The color reflecting and passing through the baloons is incredible.
Meanwhile my laptop can’t render a single shadow without becoming a volcano
Now do the same with Dreamworks. The first Shrek was and is beautiful (and all its sequels). In the field of simulating natural environments, they were probably ahead of Pixar for a few years.
People have widely varying opinions on every other aspect of the movies, but we all agree that the animation is awesome.
Pixar deserves awards for its Innovations and Contribution to the film & CGI Industry. 👍
9:44 “consulting with a live-action cinematographer” That’s ROGER DEAKINS, perhaps the greatest director of photography living today. Say his name.
I honestly didn't expect Roger Deakins to be involved in a Pixar movie.
when the impostor is suspended
When the drip is respectable but the source is questionable
@@garin6482 😎😎
@@garin6482 When the impostor is sussin but the cookies is bussin 🥵
Cant wait for part 2!
Very interesting. I went to a vocational school for digital media/animation and used alot of very similar design and rendering programs. Never made anything on the scale of Pixar of course, but still made some very cool short clips, and story's. This was 2003-2006ish. Quite a while ago, and alot has changed sense then. I would love to get back into the digital media/animation. It was alot of fun.
DreamWorks > Disney Pixar
I like both
This video is a way to show a explain to all that dont know what all the settings in a video game for quality does this gives origin and use and also effect its an amazing video right here !
what's almost as amazing as these animation innovations is that a decent amount of them can now be done in real time with consumer hardware.
Bloody fantastic video!
3:07 andys' hand glitches thru buzz lighyears back pack