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We watched Monana a couple of weeks ago and afterwards my wife said that she was amazed with how good the water looked. I said, I bet there were a bunch of math
by aidos 10y ago
We watched Monana a couple of weeks ago and afterwards my wife said that she was amazed with how good the water looked. I said, I bet there were a bunch of mathematicians working on that :-)
In another life I'd be doing maths for 3D movies. I went to university in Wellington where Weta are based (Peter Jackson's film companies) and at one point had a look around the digital arm. I seem to recall that they had the SGI machines as desktops and a big unix rendering farm. I just love the way you can use maths to create such magic.
Anyway, if you haven't seen it yet, Moana is fantastic. Incredible animation, catchy pop hooks in the music and a brilliant storyline. It's wonderful to see a Disney film with a strong female lead that needs neither male support nor a love interest.
- raverbashing 10y ago> I seem to recall that they had the SGI machines as desktops and a big unix rendering farm. Is this during LoTR or even before? I though SGI was out by the time of LoTR
- deadlyllama 10y agoI'd guess before, they've been in the CGI business for quite a while. I saw a presentation from Milton back in 2000 (I'm also a VUW CS grad) with pictures of the render wall. At one point they bought the building of an ice cream factory in Miramar because it already had a massive electrical feed. They employ a fair few people in Wellington, my neighbour used to work for Weta as a sysadmin. Everyone was a contractor, doing 10 hour days. Not my scene.
- aidos 10y agoErm, not sure - it would have been 1999 maybe. I can't even remember what I was doing there, meeting a friend of a friend I think. Actually, I seem to recall that there were guys around at the time that were making the monsters for Xena or one of those shows.
- rodgerd 10y agoPretty sure Irix was the _Heavenly Creatures_ era.
- Hondor 10y agoMore trivia - LOTR SGI machines went to the railway afterwards and were used by the engineers for making CAD models of wagons and things.
- spike021 10y agoThe water was certainly incredible when I saw the movie. The cinematography was pretty nice all around.
- woofyman 10y agoTo be pedantic, it's not cinematography. Cinematography is the science or art of motion-picture photography by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as film stock.
- PostOnce 10y agoperhaps it was when that was the only way we could create films I'd call it the art of deciding the movement/placement/focus of the camera, regardless of whether it's a physical camera or a software one. A scene from a different perspective is not as powerful, after all; thus the regard for cinematography.
- woofyman 10y agoIt's definitely an Art form, but if you look in IMDB, there's no cinematographer listed. That function is "visual effects".
- smhost 10y agoRob Dressel ... director of cinematography: layout Adolph Lusinsky ... director of cinematography: lighting
- yodon 10y agoAwesome, go Rob! (Historically cinematography in animation tended to be called simply "layout")
- yodon 10y agoDisney uses a difference organizational design to produce animated films, including going all the way back to the days when they were shot on film with real cameras. The lack of a "cinematographer" title in IMDB for the film has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the organization of the team.
- afarrell 10y agoI saw it and said the same thing to my wife. But also, I'm super glad that the movie is going to lead to more people knowing about Polynesian Dead Reckoning, because it is amazing.
- simonjgreen 10y agoThey used wayfinding by reading what was around them, rather than dead reckoning.
- theoh 10y agoYou're right. "Polynesian Dead Reckoning" doesn't appear to be a thing at all. Maybe the GP was referring to the "cold reading"-like ingenuity of their navigational techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
- visarga 10y agoTake a look at an application of deep learning in accelerating complex 3d rendering. (Two Minute Papers) Stunning Video Game Graphics With Voxel Cone Tracing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOWamCtnwTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOWamCtnwTc
- westoncb 10y agoThe title to the video you linked should be "Neural Network Learns The Physics of Fluids and Smoke"—though he does also have a voxel cone tracing video.
- santaclaus 10y agoThat paper is kind of weird -- linear PDEs are solved by convolutions (yay for Green's functions), so using a CNN seems a bit, well, overkill and obvious?
- ashark 10y ago> a strong female lead that needs neither male support nor a love interest Now I'm trying to think of other Disney leads of either sex without a love interest... is there one? Other than those for whom it's not really applicable (ones who are too young, mostly).
- jimlawruk 10y agoMary Poppins
- hatchoo 10y agoBrave, with its tomboyish princess Merida is one. Disney even got some flak for "glamming" her up to be like other Disney princesses [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/16/disney-princess-merida-makeover https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/16/disney-princess...
- cmdrfred 10y agoThe protagonist in the Force Awakens as well if I'm not mistaken.
- CharlesW 10y agoLilo of Lilo & Stitch!
- mdda 10y agoHome (lead is a teenage girl, other major character is not a love interest, nor actually male). Up (about a guy escaping being sent to an old people's home .. or something).
- jerf 10y agoUp's love interest is, ah, obfuscated for the sake of trying to avoid spoilers, unavailable at the time of the "main plot", but there definitely is one.
- 10y ago
- zump 10y agoHow does Weta compare to Animal Logic?