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.