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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- What looks like behind "Finding Dory", "Toy Story2" ? How the technology makes cartoon characters vivid and lovely?
The Science Behind Pixar Exhibition debuted to public at the California Science Center for the first time in the west coast of U.S. on Saturday.
Audience can take a close look at the science and technology behind some of the most beloved animated films and their characters there at a 12,000 square foot (about 1115 square meter) hands-on exhibition.
The exhibition showcases the science, technology, engineering and math concepts used by the artists and computer scientists who help bring Pixar's award-winning films to the big screen.
From Modeling, Rigging, Surfaces, Sets & Camera, Animation, Simulation, Lighting to Rendering, the exhibition featured more than 40 interactive elements, which demonstrates the technology that supports the creativity and artistry of Pixar's storytellers, and illustrated different steps of the filmmaking process.
"The Science Behind Pixar Exhibition is a fun, hands-on experience where guests can explore the art and science of animation at Pixar as though they were part of the production team," said Jeffrey N. Rudolph, President and CEO at the California Science Center.
"It's a great opportunity for them to participate in the step-by-step process where art incorporates science, technology, engineering, and math to make all the elements of an animated film seem more believable."
Tom Porter, the SVP of Production of Pixar recalled his experience to Xinhua as he involved in early Pixar animated films.
"We went through ten years there of trying to sell hardware, sell software, do TV commercials, nothing made any money. It really was until 'Toy Story" came out, Pixar became a success."
On "Toy Story" Porter was in charge of surface appearance, "it's very much using high school mathematics, sines and cosines, just manipulating functions in order to describe the variability of colour or texture or anything else on the surfaces of an objects."
Being as supervising technical director on "Monsters, Inc", Porter worked on this film for four and half years. On "Monsters, Inc" , the character Sulley has 25,336 "key" hairs, which are used to guide the motion and shape of the other 2.3 million hairs. To make it to be a very warmly and kindly beats, "fur was very critical, it was a problem we spent a great deal of time on," Porter said. And "Monsters, Inc" was the first film to use simulation technic to make characters softer.
Lindsey Collins, the Producer of "Finding Dory" , said "for 'Dory', it was similar obviously with 'Nemo', focus balance was try to a kind of make everybody really feel that we were in a underwater environment, because what about all this is just fake, it' s all lighting and simulation of movements to make it feel that you not ever questioning that you are in air." What makes the latest Pixar film looks real is the science behind the screen.
The Science Behind Pixar Exhibition was developed by the Museum of Science, Boston in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios, and is part of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative.
Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company has won 30 Academy Awards and its films have grossed more than 10 billion U.S. dollars at the worldwide box office to date. "Finding Dory," the studio's latest feature film, is the highest grossing animated movie of all time in America, which has revenue of over 1 billion dollars worldwide.
