Pixar's renowned shorts
Satyakam Khadilkar
Does anybody know a website where I can see the award winning short
animations. I was browsing Pixar page and they have a short description
for the animation but not the animations themselves. I found the 'Geri's
Game' on Lycos web site, but coundn't find other animations like Luxo
Jr. etc.
satyakam
forkazoo
>soon. As GG was released as a lead in for A Bug's Life, so
>Luxo Jr. is for Toy Story 2. And since GG was included on
>the ABL video, there's no reason to doubt that LJ will not
>accompany the tape of TS2.
>
Was there any talk of rerendering Luxo Jr. For rerelease? Does it even still
exist on disk anymore?
---------------------------------------
Formerly fork...@aol.com
Now fork...@yahoo.com
Stephen H. Westin
> On 02 Jan 2000 02:59:25 GMT, flutter...@aol.com
> (forkazoo) wrote:
>
> >>Geri's Game is loose? Patience, Luxo will probably show up
> >>soon. As GG was released as a lead in for A Bug's Life, so
> >>Luxo Jr. is for Toy Story 2. And since GG was included on
> >>the ABL video, there's no reason to doubt that LJ will not
> >>accompany the tape of TS2.
> >>
> >
> >Was there any talk of rerendering Luxo Jr. For rerelease? Does it even still
> >exist on disk anymore?
I would be surprised. Disk space was rather more expensive in those
days, y'know. And backups were slow, and folks were probably busy with
other stuff...
> What I saw presented with Toy Story 2 looked like the
> original -- what? 1986? -- version. Pixar used it as an
> explanation of their hopping lamp logo.
And it looked like it was blown up from 16mm: fairly grainy. Which
surprised me. I don't think it's even necessary to blow up to
wide-screen; my video copy is letterboxed, which suggests that the
original was wide-screen 35mm.
Anyone know the inside story on this one? Maybe the original neg. was
lost or something.
As for getting a copy of all the shorts (except "Geri's Game" and "The
Adventures of Andre and Wally B."), see
<http://www.pixar.com/funstuff/sh_videodescrip.html> for pointers to
sources for the videotape. My copy of "Geri" was a handout at
SIGGRAPH.
I also found it interesting that "Luxo Jr." was billed as Pixar's
first short. But then forgetting "Andre and Wally" is perhaps the
kindest thing to do, from a cinematic point of view.
--
-Stephen H. Westin
Any information or opinions in this message are mine: they do not
represent the position of Cornell University or any of its sponsors.
Michael B. Johnson
> I also found it interesting that "Luxo Jr." was billed as Pixar's
> first short. But then forgetting "Andre and Wally" is perhaps the
> kindest thing to do, from a cinematic point of view.
>
I wasn't around then, but I believe that technically, "Andre and Wally" was done at/by Lucasfilm,
and that Luxo Jr. *was* Pixar's (as in the same group of people, now reconstituted as a separate
company named Pixar) first short.
--
--> Michael B. Johnson, Ph.D. -- wa...@pixar.com
--> Studio Tools, Pixar Animation Studios
--> http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~wave
Tom Duff
> Was there any talk of rerendering Luxo Jr. For rerelease? Does it even still
> exist on disk anymore?
I asked around & this is what I heard:
Nobody can find the tiff files of the frames, so
the version attached to TS2 had to be printed from
an archived negative. That's why it's so grainy
& the rendering is generally not up to current standards.
(I believe it was rendered on 4 old VAX/780s. Our
current renderfarm could probably redo the frames in
about ten minutes.)
The version of the animation system used to create it
hasn't existed for more than 10 years, so even if the
original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
no plausible way to convert it to RIB files. There are
no archived RIB files because the movie was made before
the Renderman Interface coalesced. I believe that there
wasn't even a shading language then, just the old shade
tree interface.
--
Tom Duff. I can't take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing
department.
Bjorke
westin*nos...@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin) wrote:
> > >Was there any talk of rerendering Luxo Jr. For rerelease? Does it even still
> > >exist on disk anymore?
>
> days, y'know. And backups were slow, and folks were probably busy with
> other stuff...
Luxo has made some other cameos (in TS as well as the Sesame Street
"Heavy/Light" clips, etc), but each successive edition of the animation
software requires some level of retooling on the model -- I can't check
now but would be pretty sure that the original animation files for Luxo
are long gone. Why would you want to rerender the original, anyway? It's
obviously fine just as-is.
kb
(former Luxo retooler, 1995 edition)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
forkazoo
>
>Nobody can find the tiff files of the frames, so
>the version attached to TS2 had to be printed from
>an archived negative. That's why it's so grainy
>& the rendering is generally not up to current standards.
>(I believe it was rendered on 4 old VAX/780s. Our
>current renderfarm could probably redo the frames in
>about ten minutes.)
>The version of the animation system used to create it
>hasn't existed for more than 10 years, so even if the
>original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
>no plausible way to convert it to RIB files.
I suppose that kills the question I just asked about whether or not the RIB
files + shaders still existed! ::Big Amused Grin::
>There are
>no archived RIB files because the movie was made before
>the Renderman Interface coalesced.
Are there any references related to what renderman used to be? If RIB didn't
exist yet (something that I realise now -- thinking about the chronology of it
(RIB is post renderman companion, yes?))
How did you render it?
>I believe that there
>wasn't even a shading language then, just the old shade
>tree interface.
What were you guys thinking -- I mean jeez, didn't you know anything about
computer graphics... ;)
forkazoo
>Tom Duff. I can't take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing
>department.
Oh no -- he is in my math class.
Sorry -- if you knew Ed, you would understand why he just doesn't belong in
marketing.
:)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posting while in need of way too much sleep...
Colin Doncaster
> Why, so that you can play with it, of course! Seriously, it would be
> interesting if there were still the original files laying around, and Pixar
> made them public. If nothing else, it could make for an interesting 'real
> world' benchmark, I suppose. Anybody know how long the original frames took to
> render?
Wasn't there, at some point a ways back, a .rib from Reds Dream that was used
for benchmarking?
--
Colin Doncaster
Bent Animation Inc.
"I can't make a cow, I can only make sausage." - Tim Schafer
forkazoo
>"Heavy/Light" clips, etc), but each successive edition of the animation
>software requires some level of retooling on the model -- I can't check
>now but would be pretty sure that the original animation files for Luxo
>are long gone. Why would you want to rerender the original, anyway? It's
>obviously fine just as-is.
Why, so that you can play with it, of course! Seriously, it would be
interesting if there were still the original files laying around, and Pixar
made them public. If nothing else, it could make for an interesting 'real
world' benchmark, I suppose. Anybody know how long the original frames took to
render?
>kb
>(former Luxo retooler, 1995 edition)
Stephen H. Westin
<snip>
> Luxo has made some other cameos (in TS as well as the Sesame Street
> "Heavy/Light" clips, etc),
And "Red's Dream". Didn't spot it in "Tin Toy" or "knick knack", though...
<snip>
Malcolm Blanchard
> Are there any references related to what renderman used to be? If RIB didn't
> exist yet (something that I realise now -- thinking about the chronology of it
> (RIB is post renderman companion, yes?))
No. RIB predates the Companion. My contributions to the examples therein were
created in RIB using my favorite modeller at the time---vi. Steve Upstill then
translated them into the procedural interface.
-Malcolm Blanchard
Larry Gritz
Malcolm is quite right -- the RIP metafile existed quite early on, but
was not part of the published standard, nor was it syntactically
identical to the RIB we see today (though it's easy to see how it's
related). Nearly all the major RenderMan components had ancestral
precursors long before there was really "RenderMan".
The RenderMan Interface 3.0 spec, dated May 1988, doesn't even mention
RIB by name, but has only this to say (p. 3):
"A byte stream representation of the RenderMan interface will also
be defined in a separate document. This byte stream is meant to
serve as an external file format and network transport protocol
for passing information between modeling systems and rendering
systems."
The Companion, printed in Spring 1989 but obviously written somewhat
earlier, doesn't mention it at all, but the 3.1 spec, dated September
1989, has RIB throughout.
Here's where the nomenclature gets rather tricky, but it's probably
fair to say that RIB did not appear as a first-class part of the
published standard until 1989. Obviously, the concept and even use
of such a metafile predated this by several years.
-- lg
--
Larry Gritz Pixar Animation Studios
l...@pixar.com Richmond, CA
Andrew
I don't know if this helps but five of them are on the Toy Story LD
boxed set. Off the top of my head they are...
The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.
Luxo Jr
Tin-toy
Knick-knack
Reds Dream
ANdrew
Paul LeBeau
> so even if the
> original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
> no plausible way to convert it to RIB files.
I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a
'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be
a pretty hard task otherwise ;)
Out of curiosity, which of the shorts (or longs) was
the first to be done with a version of Renderman that
*could* be rendered (more or less) today - Tin Toy?
Just curious
Paul
PS. Knick knack was always my favorite. That poor
damn snowman :/
Tom Duff
> Out of curiosity, which of the shorts (or longs) was
> the first to be done with a version of Renderman that
> *could* be rendered (more or less) today - Tin Toy?
I'm pretty sure everything after Luxo, Jr. was done with
(essentially) modern prman, that is anything from Red's
Dream on. Of course, there are probably renderer changes
(particularly shading language updates) that would require
a pass over the data to get it in shape.
--
Tom Duff. Expert-system profilers are adding all kinds of unwritten
rules to our lives.
Jonathan Merritt
news:m07lhnf...@brutus.caverock.co.nz...
> Tom Duff <t...@pixar.com> writes:
>
> > so even if the
> > original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
> > no plausible way to convert it to RIB files.
>
> I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a
> 'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be
> a pretty hard task otherwise ;)
OK, just for the heck of it... I volunteer!!! :-)
It would be an extremely cool thing to do. Maybe we could
rival the IRTC Group Image Project (GIP) with a c.g.r.r.
Luxo Jr Restoration Project (LJRP)?
That said, I still find that the animation in Luxo is
rather impressive. Despite lacking the physical "realness"
of modern productions, some of it is very nice: like the
power lead ripples, and when Jr goes bouncing on the ball
for all he's worth... :-) The character expression is
really good.
--
Jonathan Merritt
Nicholas Yue
news:853iag$rh5$1...@perki.connect.com.au...
> Paul LeBeau <pa...@caverock.com.SPAMHATERS.ORG> wrote in message
> news:m07lhnf...@brutus.caverock.co.nz...
> > Tom Duff <t...@pixar.com> writes:
> >
> > > so even if the
> > > original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
> > > no plausible way to convert it to RIB files.
> >
> > I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a
> > 'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be
> > a pretty hard task otherwise ;)
>
> OK, just for the heck of it... I volunteer!!! :-)
Me too...
Cheers
--
Nicholas Yue | RenderMan.
nich...@ermapper.com.au | Rendered Once, Showcased Everywhere (C)
http://www.ermapper.com | +61 8 9388-2900 (Office)
Earth Resource Mapping | +61 8 9388-2901 (Fax)
Timm Dapper
>
> Jonathan Merritt <jmer...@warpax.com> wrote in message
> news:853iag$rh5$1...@perki.connect.com.au...
> > Paul LeBeau <pa...@caverock.com.SPAMHATERS.ORG> wrote in message
> > news:m07lhnf...@brutus.caverock.co.nz...
> > > Tom Duff <t...@pixar.com> writes:
> > >
> > > > so even if the
> > > > original animation data were saved somewhere, we'd have
> > > > no plausible way to convert it to RIB files.
> > >
> > > I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a
> > > 'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be
> > > a pretty hard task otherwise ;)
> >
> > OK, just for the heck of it... I volunteer!!! :-)
>
> Me too...
Dito!
--
>\|/<
/(@ @)\
----------------o00-(_)-00o------------------
Timm Dapper
Gabelsberger Str. 26
47198 Duisburg
Germany
Tel: +49-2066-54357
---------------------------------------------
www: http://www.mirage-3d.de
e-mail: t...@mirage-3d.de
ti...@meshfactory.com
.ooO 0oo.
( ) ( )
--------------- \ ( --- ) / -----------------
\_) (_/
Stephen H. Westin
<snip>
> That said, I still find that the animation in Luxo is
> rather impressive. Despite lacking the physical "realness"
> of modern productions, some of it is very nice: like the
> power lead ripples, and when Jr goes bouncing on the ball
> for all he's worth... :-) The character expression is
> really good.
I recall hearing a talk by John Lasseter, where he described visitors
walking through his area at Pixar as he was whipping a power cord,
over and over, to get the look and feel for "Luxo Jr." He was
speculating on the impression he left to the uninitiated...
BIT 20 Ensemble
[FNIP]
> > > > I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a
> > > > 'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be
> > > > a pretty hard task otherwise ;)
> > >
> > > OK, just for the heck of it... I volunteer!!! :-)
> >
> > Me too...
>
> Dito!
Me too!
AL, anyone?
--
Mvh, Thomas Sivertsen