Pixar and Dreamworks!

So today we learned how dumb we are. Quite literally.

Well at least it felt that way for 50% of the time.



Pixar presented a course about the food effects used in Ratatouille. They talked about using soft body simulations versus rigid body simulations, basically the best way to get the food models to settle on the plate realistically. They then talked about lighting the food models with Scatter, in order to allow transparency through the food. This gave everything a more realistic feel, while still maintaining the style of the film.



If there's one thing we learned that you should remember, it is to CHEAT WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

For example, they were having trouble with specular highlights on the food being blown out. To fix the problem, they created blur maps in order to soften the edge of the highlights. They then discussed a multitude of other things such as thickness maps and creating slices of food to match the chopping animation of the characters. If you have any questions about any of them above, don't hesitate to ask me to elaborate.



Later we went to the Shrek course about the evolution of its characters. Anytime a model was used twice, it was called a "legacy" (reused) character. All the cloth from the waste up was simply glued to the characters, while below the waste cloth was treated as a collision object (such as tunic skirts).



Though some of the most interesting things were the hair effects, especially the evolution of hair over the three films. At first, they used clumps to animate hair. While it looked good at the time, it didn't allow for the diversity in character hair come the second movie. On Shrek 2, they implemented a Wig System, where they used magnets to move big areas of influence on the hair. This allowed more dynamic animation, a la Prince Charming.

By the third movie, they were using the legacy Wig System characters from Shrek 2, as well as introducing a new strand system. Strands represent an area of hair direction (it looks like Home Simpsons' hair on the models). It allowed for more flexibility and movement of hair. Sleeping Beauty and Artie were great examples.

Lastly, there were cool, interactive things scattered about the Convention Center. Michael and Man Louk (Visual Language students) took this video below of two technology areas they visited. Tomorrow the rest of us plan to visit this as well.



P.S. Han, our Communications Chair, would like to add that if anyone is interested in OpenGL,
go to www.opengl-redbook.com/s2007

- Alexis