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My mind is continually blown when I read about the sheer volume of innovation from the animation industry over the last 3 decades. I would love to learn more ab

My mind is continually blown when I read about the sheer volume of innovation from the animation industry over the last 3 decades. I would love to learn more about these scalable solutions you're talking about though, since I'm not familiar with them. Do you have any pointers?

bsenftner 5y ago
I've not worked in VFX since '02, but I was both at Rhythm & Hues Studios through multiple VFX Oscars as well as an early 3D graphics researcher during the 80's. I have no idea which tools are still around. For example, a film compositor I know that is now dead and was revolutionary, called Shake: it pioneered both off loading heavy compute tasks to the GPU (not just graphics, but what is called scientific computing now) and it hid the GCC Compiler inside itself and used a macro-transformed version of C as it's "scripting language" that was actually hot-loaded C++ dlls compiled on the fly. It was also the first "node based programming environment" with graphical nodes the end-users connect with splines to define the I/O between the nodes. If you are seriously interested, find someone working in the industry today and ask them. That industry has been changing a lot. Since I left the VFX/Animation fields have been moving towards more framework-like production environments, similar to how the web uses frameworks. The issue with these frameworks is they define the tasks to be performed, and those tasks are simplistic and rigid - meaning the actual production work has eliminated in as many places as possible the requirement for an art degree. The VFX/Animation industries are driving production towards something approaching more and more the work of being a burger flipper. The processes are being standardized and reduced in complexity so the studios can hire non-artists, they can hire anyone and work them like an automobile assembly line. Twenty years ago this was starting, and that is when I left.

bsenftner 5y ago

I've not worked in VFX since '02, but I was both at Rhythm & Hues Studios through multiple VFX Oscars as well as an early 3D graphics researcher during the 80's. I have no idea which tools are still around. For example, a film compositor I know that is now dead and was revolutionary, called Shake: it pioneered both off loading heavy compute tasks to the GPU (not just graphics, but what is called scientific computing now) and it hid the GCC Compiler inside itself and used a macro-transformed version of C as it's "scripting language" that was actually hot-loaded C++ dlls compiled on the fly. It was also the first "node based programming environment" with graphical nodes the end-users connect with splines to define the I/O between the nodes. If you are seriously interested, find someone working in the industry today and ask them. That industry has been changing a lot. Since I left the VFX/Animation fields have been moving towards more framework-like production environments, similar to how the web uses frameworks. The issue with these frameworks is they define the tasks to be performed, and those tasks are simplistic and rigid - meaning the actual production work has eliminated in as many places as possible the requirement for an art degree. The VFX/Animation industries are driving production towards something approaching more and more the work of being a burger flipper. The processes are being standardized and reduced in complexity so the studios can hire non-artists, they can hire anyone and work them like an automobile assembly line. Twenty years ago this was starting, and that is when I left.