Shader Flexibilityįrom shading the corals in pre-production, Pixar discovered that all the corals that needed to be created had some similar shading properties. With so much geometry in the set, optimizations will be required in both modeling and shading to achieve manageable render times. This look would need to be achieved with little setup time and minimal impact to render times.

None of the current illumination models were adequate to handle the subsurface scattering required for the coral. New coral looks will need to be created on short notice. Shading changes for the coral need to be made late in the pipeline, possibly as late as shot lighting. As a result of this test, the studio was able to discover several properties the coral shaders would need to possess.

Due to the many technical challenges facing the production, it was decided that they would build a miniature coral reef and take it all the way through the current pipeline to final film render. In January of 2001, Pixar began some of the initial pre-production tests for coral shading. Preproduction: What You Donʼt Know Can Hurt You These notes look specifically at the process of shading the coral itself, from early shader design through to final optimizations. Through proper planning and the creative use of Pixarʼs PhotoRealistic RenderMan, the studio was able to tackle these challenges and provide a rich backdrop for the story.

Working from pastels and sketches provided by the art department, Pixar was asked to create a completely invented environment yet still maintain a sense of realism.

fixed a bug that would cause a crash when importing textures back onto Groom attributes.HOW VFX AND ANIMATION STUDIOS ARE USING VIRTUAL WORKSTATIONS TODAY.

added fastBoundingBox argument to pgYetiCacheInfo which will return any stored bounding box values in a cache, if they don't exist it will generate a bounding box from all of the input data for a cache.

added storeBoundingBox argument to pgYetiCommand which will store the bounding box of the display preview in the generated cache file.

updated to Arnold 7.x and MtoA 5.x releases.

re-added Rest Influence parameter for strand dynamics.ĭependencies: MtoA 5.0.0.2, Arnold 7.0.0.1, V-Ray 5.10, Renderman 24.0, 3Delight 12.0.113, Redshift 3.0.50, Clarisse 4.0 SP14.

fixed collision response and offset for dynamic strands.

made sure Yeti nodes correctly report cache requirements to Maya to avoid cache based race conditions.

fixed a bug with PRMan 2d motion blur causing a crash when motion blur sample count is set higher than 2.

fixed an issue with Braid's that would cause irregular rotation on individual strands when input surface is deformed.

refactored how the dynamic system handles stiffness for more accurate results.

fixed how the dynamic simulation start frame is handled to avoid incorrect out of scope simulation.ĭependencies: MtoA 5.0.0.2, Arnold 7.0.0.1, V-Ray 5.10, Renderman 24.0, 3Delight 12.0.113, Redshift 3.0.65, Clarisse 4.0 SP14.

made sure Alembic file is properly closed on file write when filePerFrame is used.ĭependencies: MtoA 5.0.0.2, Arnold 7.0.0.1, V-Ray 5.10, Renderman 24.0, 3Delight 12.0.113, Redshift 3.0.65, Clarisse 5.0 SP7b.

updated to MtoA 5.1.1 and Arnold 7.1.1.

Node Inspector correctly updates to a deselected state when no node is selected.ĭependencies: MtoA 5.1.1.0, Arnold 7.1.1.0, V-Ray 5.10, Renderman 24.0, Redshift 3.0.65, Clarisse 5.0 SP8.

updated Redshift extension to correctly output motion blurred un-deformed instances.

updated to MtoA 5.1.3 and Arnold 7.1.2.

Please note, this is the last Redshift 3.0.x release before moving to 3.5.x.

reimplemented pgYetiGraph command nodeType flag.ĭependencies: MtoA 5.1.3.2, Arnold 7.1.2.2, V-Ray 5.20, Renderman 24.4, Redshift 3.0.65, Clarisse 5.0 SP8.

updated Clarisse module version to 1.0 to ensure correct curve tessellation.

Renderman 20