The Tech of Computer Animation

In the mid-80's, "Most people still didn't know that computer graphics was going to become important." According to Edwin Catmull, inventor of several computer animation techniques and programs and a pioneer at Pixar, a computer animation studio that works with Disney, "We were believers; we wanted to be in computer animation."

Originally working with Lucasfilms on special effects in live action films, Pixar later moved on to do commercials and short films. The first of these films, Luxor Jr., was approximately two minutes long and introduced the entertainment industry to computer animation as an independent entity.

In 1986, while Disney's The Great Mouse Detective was being released as the first animated movie to feature a computer generated (CGI) sequence, Pixar still had animation aspirations, but was forced to concentrate on selling hardware and some of its cutting-edge technology to do any business. Disney offered the company its first contract - to create what would later be known as CAPS (computer animation production system) , which was to be used to colour animated cells. After using CAPS for a scene in 1989's The Little Mermaid, the program was used in 1990's The Rescuers Down Under, in which every single frame (24 per second for 77 minutes) was painted by a computer.

In 1995, Pixar's Toy Story became the first completely computer generated film. Far surpassing either company's expectations, the film made a total of $354.3 million worldwide. Following this success, Pixar went on to produce A Bug's Life, which was followed closely by the DreamWorks SKG/PDI effort, Antz. Both movies, which featured insects and other bugs almost exclusively, were highly stylized, as the companies were still in the early stages of developing CGI techniques and were not yet ready to attempt a more realistic style.

1999 saw Pixar's next film, Toy Story 2, and new standards for skin textures. PDI's second film, Shrek, met with popular approval in 2001 as both an entertaining story and a great advancement in computer animation technology. For this movie, three new programs were created. The first, a viscosity program, was used in animating special effects such as realistic-looking mud, lava, milk, and fire. A second program was created for Princess Fiona's hair, which is more responsive to her environment then that of most of her predecessors. A fur-growing program was also created and used in the animation of Donkey, and then employed to grow realistic-looking grass.

But for all of Shrek's advances, Pixar once again pushed back the limits with Monsters, Inc. in late 2001. For this film, the main challenges were the over one million hairs required for each shot of Sulley, the enormous blue monster, and the oversized shirt worn by young "Boo." To meet these challenges, Pixar developed Fiz-T, a program that solved both problems.

In order to create fur which interacts realistically with its environment, Pixar animators divided Sulley's skin into several areas and designated spring-like control hairs in each area. By affecting one control hair, animators could make surrounding hairs react in similar, but not identical, ways. This can be best seen in the shot where Sulley is lying in the snow outside of the Himalayan village.

Boo's shirt differed from previous characters' form-fitting clothing in that it was it was loose and had to react realistically to lighting and environment in much the same way as Sulley's fur. The quality of the animation belies the immense challenge animators saw when first asked to clothe the child thusly.

Finding Nemo, Pixar's newest project, is to be released on May 30, 2003. Very little has been released at this time, however photos and clips from the movie show a new level of depth and detail in the animation. Based on the studio's previous movies, which always strive to make advances in the field, the film promises to be visually complex and stunning.

And even through its groundbreaking technology, Pixar remains committed to quality story telling. "We want technology for the sake of the story," says Catmull. "When you look back, say 10 years from now, current technology will seem quaint, and a movie will be remembered only for its story….I think when they look back at Toy Story, they'll say; 'That's a good movie'."