Pixars"UP"

Hooray!! the new teaser trailer is out for Pixars new animated film "UP". The movie looks great! After watching the trailer I noticed some similarity's from the older films like The Incredibles. The characters have the same kind of 70's look and feel. I love that old pixar style. In this post I had to add several screen shots because I wanted to point out some things you just would not notice unless your a 3d animation nerd like me.


Number one: Balloon Madness
This is a really cool shot in the trailer (shot 1). I am talking about all these balloons shooting out of this bag with ropes attached to each one. In the trailer look at all the balloons as they float out of the super large sac. Notice that none of the balloons cut through each other. That's is some serious math my friends. Those guys at Pixar are brilliant. One of the most difficult things to create in 3D is accurate collisions with 3D objects. See in a 3D world objects do not collide with each other. If you animate a ball bouncing on the floor you have to fake it bouncing on the floor. The only other option is to create a simulation. I am not going to go into details but it takes time to create a good looking sim and a lot of computer power. It's great to see Pixar pushing the limit in 3D. Over the next couple of weeks I will try and create a similar balloon animation and post a video on the blog.


Number two: Nice Global Illumination
Notice the rainbow of colors on the wall being cast from the balloons outside. This effect is very difficult to achieve. Pixar uses its own high-end render engine called RenderMan to create such a beautiful effect .




You can view the new "UP" trailer here.

Cheers

Star Trek 2009 Trailer

The new Star Trek trailer is out. You can view it here. The visual effects are being produced by Bad Robot. The visual effects look amazing! But that does not make a good movie. Watching the trailer I already noticed some live action flaws. If you watch the the kid hanging off the cliff it looks like he is attached to the cliff. I am very surprised they added this to the trailer. The bad guy looks a little fake. I don't know about you but the best Star Trek ever produced was The Wrath of Khan (1982) . Ricardo Montalbon aka Kahn was the bomb and William Shatner was at his best. So I guess we will have to wait and see if the Star Trek 2009 can deliver the goods. In theaters May 2009.

Rock Band 2 Cinematic by Passion Pictures/Pete Candeland

The new Rock Band 2 Cinematic has just been released. You can view a high-res version here.

CGSociety wrote an article about the animation and how it was produced. You can also find more details about the production company that produced it here.

During production they used this awesome new facial software called Image Matrix. I would love to get my hands on this software for my own production company. You can view some of there demos here. Enjoy, Codad

Pixar News

Great article at THR.com about John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer at Disney and Pixar).

Upcoming Pixar movies

• Up Trailer and Info
• Bolt Trailer
  

Animated Shorts

• "For the Birds" is my favorite
• "Geri's Game"
  

Autodesk You MONSTER You

Holy bat dung!!!! Autodesk is taking over the freaking world. AHHHHHH

Autodesk Signs Agreement with Avid Technology to Acquire Softimage

Ok, so I have been using Autodesk 3D Studio Max for over 13 years now and have produced some cool animation in my time but man Autodesk slow down brother. I know you want to be the most powerful CAD software company in the world but I feel your turning into a monster. Don't get me wrong Autodesk I love your software but first off you need to fix the programs you already own. There are more bugs in 3d studio max then in my bed. It drives me crazy. I don't even want to think about all the bugs in the other programs. Who is left? Cinema4D, Lightwave, Blender? You better be careful Autodesk. Artist are very liberal and they don't like monsters. All monsters want to do is eat little children in the middle of the night and that scares them. Codad

Welcome all that enter

Welcome to Animation Needle. My name is Coleman Smith and I will be posting to the world gibberish about animation in the northwest. Its lonely up here in the northwest with all the rain and stuff but it opens up the door to blogging. I am new to this deep dark world of blogging. To tell you the truth blogger started along time ago way back in my college days. This was the year 1995. I remember seeing blogger and saying to myself "I wonder if I will ever use blogger, Naaaa". But anyhoo enough about blogger and more about animation needle. My dream for Animation Needle is to give the outside world a connection to animation in the Seattle and northwestern area. I hope that I can inform and educate all that enter. If you have any news relating to animation submit a post. Thanks for visiting. Codad