Comments on: DreamWorks announce they’ve found the “Holy Grail” of Digital Animation

By: jon

jon — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:19:00 +0000

“A few seconds of video can take even the most skilled animator a week”…As far as I know, all animators can animate in “realtime” lol… This article is a bit confusing in how it’s worded. Realtime rendering could improve the workflow in getting to the final “look” ie textures, lighting, but the animators are going to spend the same time actually animating. Unless of course Dreamworks has discovered some way to increase an animators skills by 50% – 70% as well.

By: Vittorio Gassman

Vittorio Gassman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:44:00 +0000

so they are breaking Brinn’s Law , my fucking god……

By: Smokezilla

Smokezilla — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:26:00 +0000

Love Dreamworks’ stuff. . . Here’s hoping they do some titles in the future that are aimed more at an adult audience. An ”Heavy Metal”-style animated movie with a rockin’ soundtrack would be awesome!!!

By: Genuis008

Genuis008 — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:14:00 +0000

This article is long on the objectives but NO DETAILS on how this is to be achieved. Is it Dreamworks that is rewriting THEIR SOFTWARE to be able to scale up to use Unlimited Processors Available ??? This seems to be the case in the way it is stated. If so, is it 50-70% increase in the animation Per Processor Core ??? For example, currently it is 100% of current time for 1 core – will it be 150% for 2 cores, 200% for 3 cores, 250% for 4 cores, etc ???

By: Foo

Foo — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 23:27:00 +0000

Picasso’s most amazing talent was he was fabulous at every medium he touched, often to the chagrin of those who dedicated themselves to that medium. Were he in his prime today I have no doubt that he’d dabble in and excel in computer-based art.

By: Fek

Fek — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:56:00 +0000

Antz came out BEFORE “A Bug’s Life”, and has a totally different story.
Eisner forced him to resign in 1994, both movies came out in 1998, and are completely different.
Stealing? Really? Get a clue.

By: Serge Kouch

Serge Kouch — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:31:00 +0000

Wow.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Exactly. The Author simply does not understand the subject. He must have been overloaded with jargon or something.

By: Miliways

Miliways — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:10:00 +0000

This article does not describe the actual improvement at all, and seems to confuse the issues. No wonder people are getting confused reading it.

“Where animating just a few seconds of video can take even the most skilled animator a week to make a reality now, a 50 to 70 percent speed increase in the whole process can be expected”This is simply false. What are you improving? The article doesn’t explain and the author must not know.Speeding up rendering time 50-70% is NOT going to correlate with speeding up artist work time 50-70%, that is absolutely laughable. So which is it? Does it render faster, which allows artists to look over their work easier as they go? That would be nice, but wouldn’t speed up the process THAT much. Did they improve the process of actually animating, instead of rendering? If so, that would be very interesting, but I’d love to know, say, ANYTHING about how it works or what they’re doing.

By: Theobservertellsthetruth

Theobservertellsthetruth — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:51:00 +0000

No rejoicing for animators….

By: Nic

Nic — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:58:00 +0000

“Much rejoicing” for the studio that is, who then can layoff many animators they no longer need and adding to the boatload of money they already have.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:18:00 +0000

A lot of people are confused on this article. They are talking about real time rendering after the scene or tweak has been designed or adjusted – meaning no load time after it has been built. What is confusing to most people is that they are thinking of this as motion capture real time rendering. I think eventually it will be there, but it’ll be 3-5 years until that is designed and developed. Maybe more or less, however, with independent developers using xbox kinect tech to develop incredible motion capture imaging… Without sensors attached to the body. It’ll be a mix of animation, kinect, and avatar like technology to make it happen. Thoughts?

By: Risc_it_all

Risc_it_all — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:11:00 +0000

it’s katzenberg, what would you expect people that talk in riddles, don’t understand the product they are
pitching. good ole jeff trying to reinvent himself as a tecnologist, knock it off guy!

By: Chaseberrier

Chaseberrier — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:51:00 +0000

This is absolutely horrible writing.

By: Chaseberrier

Chaseberrier — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:48:00 +0000

This is just so they can work out the scenes easier. Of course they’ll render it the slow good way when the scene is done.

By: mark

mark — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:47:00 +0000

Very simple answer – because not all algorithms run efficiently on a GPU.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:35:00 +0000

From the original article: “50 to 70 times faster”

50 to 70 “times” is astronomically greater than 50 to 70 “percent”.

:-P

By: Cresta

Cresta — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 06:37:00 +0000

It will take more than a couple of Holy grays to beat pixar

By: Gc2902p

Gc2902p — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 06:28:00 +0000

He stole the idea of antz from pixars a bugs life to start. Also, he almost ruined toy story with his lame-o edgy interpretation of the characters. Katzenberg ruined the digital animation industry more than he ever helped it, and the rest he just plainly stole from Disney and pixar.

By: Animby

Animby — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 06:04:00 +0000

It takes a week to render a few seconds but a 50 to 70% increase makers it near real time? Get your hyperbole straight…

By: Matt Moses

Matt Moses — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Why pre-announce? Just announce it when you are done. And when you say ”Holy Grail” and “realtime”, you have set the bar all the way to the top – fall short of that and it’s more disappointing fr everyone.
I have been tracking the tech involved in fast or near realtime, usable rendering .. and it’s not there… it’s probably only ever going to be 90% there – It is really hard to accept quality that is 90% of what you were doing before.. even if what you did before took 2000 times longer to achieve… it was better.

By: Lon Grove

Lon Grove — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:35:00 +0000

The pertinent quote being “a 50 to 70 percent speed increase in the whole process can be expected”. I believe they are claiming a 50 to 70 percent speed increase in total time of development. So what now takes 30 months to render a finished product might be cut down to 18 to 22 months.

By: Lovar1996

Lovar1996 — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:33:00 +0000

This could be good for video games! Real time rendering of realistic acting water. This is exciting!

By: Salmander

Salmander — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:21:00 +0000

e.g. get that Cray

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:20:00 +0000

First Katzenberg was the head of Disney Animation for a long time before he got in a fight with their CEO Michael Eisner and left. He took many Disney talented people with him to start Dreamworks. He was there when Pixar worked with Disney. He took all he learned to Dreamworks.

Second, as good as computer based animation is, I love the old hand drawn versions better. It is an art form. The hand to paper then to film. A Picasso would not be the same if Pablo used a computer.

By: Darr247

Darr247 — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:19:00 +0000

A 50% to 70% increase from “a few seconds of video taking a week to animate” does NOT even approach ’real time’ animation. From that speed you would need at least a 2000% increase to reach 0.8 of real time.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:17:00 +0000

Why do for thousands of dollars what you can do for tens of millions over 4 years?

By: Woznotwozisadick

Woznotwozisadick — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:41:00 +0000

Antz total box office = $171.8 million, Madagascar total box office = $532.6 million. I would consider those blockbusters.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:33:00 +0000

How exactly is he a thief? Just wondering, because I was interested, I don’t really know much about the company at all.

By: Woznotwoz

Woznotwoz — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:13:00 +0000

Blockbuster hits? Antz? Madagascar? Pixar must be laughing their butts off.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:02:00 +0000

Katzenberg is not a visionary. Katzenberg is a thief.

By: sixthlaw

sixthlaw — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:28:00 +0000

Why not just make a GPU supercomputer and do EVERYTHING real time, texturing, lighting, animation, affects etc.