00:00:11
hey I need I need
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to talk about
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[Music]
00:00:20
cartoons I think we all take for granted
00:00:23
just how easy it is to make stuff these
00:00:28
days I'd consider myself an amateur
00:00:31
animator at this
00:00:32
[Music]
00:00:36
point the first animated thing I ever
00:00:39
made was in this video from a while back
00:00:42
and even though it might look
00:00:47
complicated that's just because of the
00:00:49
fancy compositing the animation itself
00:00:51
was pretty simplistic all things
00:00:52
considered the goal here was to come up
00:00:54
with a unique looking 2D 3D hybrid style
00:00:58
I absolutely love traditional animation
00:01:00
but I'm not nearly patient enough to do
00:01:02
it myself which is why I'm actually
00:01:04
completely
00:01:06
3D you're looking at a screen grab of
00:01:08
the animation viewport in blender right
00:01:10
now and this is what it looks like
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rendered the blue lines are to
00:01:14
differentiate the characters outline
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from the background and the red skin and
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green shirt are so we can create
00:01:19
separate masks for the two different
00:01:21
textures of paper then we just motion
00:01:23
track the face so that way the paper
00:01:25
moves naturally with the movements of
00:01:26
the character Sam was the one who
00:01:28
figured all that stuff out he's my VFX
00:01:30
guy I pretty much just stick to blender
00:01:32
hey s oh oh that was unlocked yeah all
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right well did my explanation cover
00:01:39
everything yep so when I say something
00:01:43
like animation has never been easier am
00:01:46
I saying that any of this was
00:01:51
easy but what I am saying is that it was
00:01:55
accessible blender and da Vinci resolve
00:01:57
both cost a combined total of0
00:02:00
resolve has a paid license for 300
00:02:02
that'll get you some fancy features
00:02:04
which admittedly we did pay for but all
00:02:05
of the effects demonstrated here are
00:02:07
available in the free version the fact
00:02:09
that a couple of amateurs can watch some
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tutorials on YouTube and figure all this
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stuff out without paying a dime is
00:02:15
insanely cool the tools to create pretty
00:02:17
much whatever you want have never been
00:02:19
more readily available which is why
00:02:20
we've seen such a Renaissance of
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independent animation in recent years
00:02:24
but it didn't used to be this way he
00:02:27
just going back 10 years ago in
00:02:28
blender's 2D animation tools were still
00:02:30
in their infancy going back 20 years
00:02:33
dingi resolve doesn't even exist and
00:02:35
blender 2.3 is basically unrecognizable
00:02:38
from what it is now you could still make
00:02:40
some pretty impressive stuff with it
00:02:42
especially for the year 2004 but it was
00:02:44
far from intuitive and if you know
00:02:46
anything about blender that's dang a lot
00:02:49
going back 30 years to 1994 and the
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production of the original Toy Story is
00:02:54
near incompletion for being the first
00:02:56
featurelength 3D animated film it holds
00:02:58
up surprisingly well me no most of the
00:03:02
time at least but the visuals aren't the
00:03:05
part I find the most impressive it's the
00:03:06
fact that this movie even exists in the
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first place back in the ' 80s and '90s
00:03:12
Pixar was most well known for their
00:03:14
animated shorts such as Luxo Jr which
00:03:16
you probably recognize knickknack which
00:03:19
was remastered in 2003 to be a little
00:03:21
bit
00:03:22
less a little bit less or tin toy the
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one with the most terrifying Baby that
00:03:29
had has ever existed surprisingly they
00:03:32
didn't actually get their start as an
00:03:34
animation studio even though it was
00:03:35
always their goal to become one in fact
00:03:38
these shorts mostly existed as a tech
00:03:40
demo to show off the Pixar image
00:03:42
computer which was designed with purpose
00:03:44
built hardware for displaying 3D
00:03:45
Graphics before they made movies they
00:03:48
made
00:03:49
computers really really expensive
00:03:52
computers if you've ever wondered why
00:03:54
Steve Jobs had anything to do with Pixar
00:03:57
now you know the production of toy St
00:03:59
story would have never been possible
00:04:01
were it not for the animation tools that
00:04:02
Pixar's Engineers built from the ground
00:04:04
up Hardware included and it all started
00:04:07
with one Ed catmull you might know him
00:04:10
as the now retired president of Disney
00:04:12
Animation where previously he served as
00:04:14
the president and co-founder of Pixar
00:04:16
and if you know anything about me you
00:04:18
might know that I'm not a fan of giant
00:04:21
publicly traded Mega corporations I
00:04:24
think they're uh very bad actually we'll
00:04:27
touch on his business philosophies later
00:04:29
don't you worry but before he sat in an
00:04:30
executive seat catl was a software
00:04:32
engineer with a focus on computer
00:04:34
visuals something which at the time he
00:04:35
studied it didn't really exist a few
00:04:38
years after receiving his PhD in
00:04:40
Computer Sciences catl drew the
00:04:42
attention of George Lucas who brought
00:04:44
him on to work as the head of the newly
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founded Lucas film computer division
00:04:47
called the graphics group it was staffed
00:04:50
with the best and brightest in the
00:04:51
science of making a computer show you an
00:04:53
image that 1979 had to offer and while
00:04:56
the original Star Wars featured a teeny
00:04:58
tiny bit of computerated
00:05:01
visuals destroy St there it is Lucas
00:05:06
realized that CGI wouldn't really be
00:05:08
necessary for its sequel instead he had
00:05:10
cill and his team focus on developing
00:05:12
what would eventually be called edit
00:05:14
Droid one of the first pieces of digital
00:05:16
video editing software ever prior to
00:05:19
nonlinear editing on a computer film
00:05:21
reels were physically edited by cutting
00:05:23
and pasting strips into the finished
00:05:25
product the ability to do this all
00:05:27
digitally was probably a pretty big deal
00:05:30
and while edit Droid was undeniably
00:05:33
groundbreaking it isn't what I want to
00:05:34
focus on here and not coincidentally
00:05:36
catmull and the rest of the graphics
00:05:37
group felt exactly the same way everyone
00:05:40
in the lab was in awe of Star Wars one
00:05:43
weekend in the summer of 1977 during one
00:05:46
of their excursions to Manhattan the
00:05:47
group took in a matina of the film it
00:05:49
amazed them so much they saw it again
00:05:52
that same day they assumed they could
00:05:54
only dream of getting a call from Lucas
00:05:56
film to their frustration although Lucas
00:05:58
now had on his payroll perhaps the
00:06:00
world's top technical talent in 3D
00:06:02
animation he wasn't asking the group to
00:06:04
do any his special effects group at
00:06:06
industrial Light and Magic saw no use
00:06:08
for computer Graphics either boy the
00:06:10
irony of industrial Light and Magic who
00:06:13
are today the most ubiquit visual effect
00:06:16
studio in Hollywood seeing no use for
00:06:19
computer Graphics is kind of hilarious
00:06:22
indeed from the standpoint of computer
00:06:24
Graphics Lucas's Second Star Wars film
00:06:26
The Empire Strikes Back was a step
00:06:28
backward from the first it included no
00:06:30
computer Graphics at all it became
00:06:32
pretty clear fairly early on that there
00:06:34
wasn't a lot of enthusiasm that we
00:06:35
thought there would be inside Lucas film
00:06:37
for computer Graphics where it was
00:06:40
extensively utilized was in Star Trek 2
00:06:42
the Wrath of con Paramount Pictures
00:06:44
commissioned the lucasfilm's graphics
00:06:46
group to create this one minute sequence
00:06:48
which required months of work with
00:06:50
contributions from some of the era's
00:06:52
greatest Minds in
00:06:54
CGI matter is reorganized with life this
00:06:57
might look pretty primitive by today's
00:06:59
standards but in 1982 audiences were
00:07:01
blown away but I want to go back even
00:07:04
earlier to a 1976 sci-fi thriller called
00:07:07
future world I won't go into the story
00:07:09
too much here but its main plot centers
00:07:11
around a fictional Mega Corporation
00:07:13
creating artificial humans for
00:07:14
entertainment and a sequence in a
00:07:16
control room full of computers features
00:07:18
this little animation on most of its
00:07:20
screens it was created by Ed catmull and
00:07:22
his classmate Fred Park in 1972 as part
00:07:25
of their postgraduate course in computer
00:07:27
science and it is widely considered to
00:07:29
be the first piece of computer generated
00:07:32
3D
00:07:33
animation ever it's kind of astonishing
00:07:36
to think that in less than 10 years we
00:07:38
went from
00:07:40
this to
00:07:44
this I don't think it's an exaggeration
00:07:46
to say that the research paper that
00:07:48
spawned this little video kind of
00:07:51
changed everything computer animation
00:07:54
was sort of on The Lunatic Fringe at
00:07:56
that time Said Fred Park a fellow PhD
00:07:58
student in cat class who also worked on
00:08:00
animation people were just barely to the
00:08:02
point where they could get a computer to
00:08:04
put out still images it was obvious that
00:08:06
it would take years for the
00:08:07
state-of-the-art in computer hardware to
00:08:09
catch up with this ambition and there
00:08:10
was no end of problems to be solved on
00:08:13
the mathematical and programming side
00:08:15
nonetheless from kill's point of view
00:08:17
there was no better time or place to get
00:08:18
started than right here and now in 1972
00:08:22
3D modeling software obviously didn't
00:08:25
exist so in order to create the 3D model
00:08:27
a mold of Ed's hand was cast of plaster
00:08:30
the surface of it was coated in latex
00:08:31
and 350 polygons were meticulously drawn
00:08:34
onto it if this thing still existed it
00:08:36
would be in a museum but according to
00:08:39
catell unfortunately um the hand hasn't
00:08:42
survived part of it was because over
00:08:45
time latex turns into a goo although I I
00:08:48
wish I had actually clean cleaned it off
00:08:50
and kept the hand every single point of
00:08:53
every polygon had to be mapped out
00:08:54
before it could be rendered in 3D this
00:08:57
machine that Ed is using in the video
00:08:58
was a mechanical digitizer which
00:09:00
provided a readout of each X Y and Z
00:09:02
coordinate as three distinct numbers
00:09:05
which were captured with a mouse or
00:09:08
Mouse for some perspective according to
00:09:11
kill's research paper this entire hand
00:09:13
was covered in 350 total polygons and
00:09:15
each polygon had three vertices minimum
00:09:17
four Max there ended up being 270
00:09:20
intersecting Corners times three
00:09:22
coordinates that's 810 data points to
00:09:25
keep track of for those unfamiliar with
00:09:27
3D modeling terms I'll use the default
00:09:28
Cube Tu and blender as a reference this
00:09:31
point here is a vertex it's where two
00:09:33
edges which are the lines that make up a
00:09:35
polygon intersect a polygon is a flat
00:09:37
surface composed of edges and vertices
00:09:39
that join together so the face of this
00:09:41
cube is a polygon made of four edges and
00:09:44
four vertices a four-sided polygon is
00:09:47
usually called a quad with a three-sided
00:09:48
polygon called a tri this hand was made
00:09:52
of 350 polygons in total so not only did
00:09:55
they have to graph out every single
00:09:57
point on this model they had to man
00:09:59
ually measure the X Y and Z coordinates
00:10:02
of every single vertex of every single
00:10:04
polygon with everything in this process
00:10:07
being as manual as it was it should come
00:10:09
as no surprise that rendering the
00:10:10
animation into something you could
00:10:12
actually watch was manual as well when
00:10:14
I'm done with the video I go to the
00:10:16
render page in Da Vinci resolve uh then
00:10:19
I hit the render button and and then it
00:10:22
um and then it renders
00:10:24
it but digital video codex didn't exist
00:10:27
in 1972 remember this is back when
00:10:29
computers were barely able to display a
00:10:31
single static image let alone real-time
00:10:33
playback on a video file just getting a
00:10:36
look at his imagery was a task in itself
00:10:38
because the display Hardware never
00:10:39
showed the entire image on screen at any
00:10:41
one moment it took 30 seconds or so to
00:10:44
cycle through the image cill could see a
00:10:46
frame of his work only by taking a long
00:10:48
exposure Polaroid of the screen and
00:10:50
looking at the snapshot once he was
00:10:52
satisfied he then shot the footage using
00:10:53
a 35mm movie camera that the department
00:10:56
had rigged to take pictures of a CRT
00:10:58
screen
00:11:00
this passage makes it sound easier than
00:11:03
it actually was I've been digging around
00:11:05
through research papers to try and find
00:11:06
exactly how this photography rig was set
00:11:08
up and they all gloss over that
00:11:10
particular detail but to put it into
00:11:11
perspective each frame of this animation
00:11:13
took about 30 seconds to display on the
00:11:15
computer screen because the computer
00:11:17
only had enough memory to show a sliver
00:11:19
of it this means that in order to see a
00:11:22
single frame of Animation a rolling
00:11:24
slice of the image was slowly displayed
00:11:27
over the course of 30 seconds and a long
00:11:29
exposure photo was required to see the
00:11:31
entire frame all at once they couldn't
00:11:33
just hit play and turn the camera on to
00:11:36
record it they had to wait for every
00:11:38
frame to be fully exposed before they
00:11:40
could move on to the next one I think
00:11:42
it's a bit of an understatement to say
00:11:44
that this experiment was ahead of its
00:11:46
time these days it seems like the second
00:11:48
a new piece of technology shows up every
00:11:50
Fortune 500 company drops everything and
00:11:53
restructures their entire business
00:11:54
around it the
00:11:56
metaverse nfts and
00:12:00
cryptocurrency AI generated text and
00:12:03
imagery who knows what's
00:12:08
next my money is on
00:12:14
artisanal bread
00:12:16
making but back in the 1970s computer
00:12:19
Graphics were seen as more of a neat
00:12:21
little experiment than anything
00:12:23
revolutionary they were very disparaging
00:12:25
about it how what they were doing was
00:12:26
wildly impractical and didn't have
00:12:28
anything to do with
00:12:29
real world or whatever I thought it was
00:12:31
great because I knew that we were offing
00:12:34
something really big and and somehow
00:12:35
these people were were missing it in
00:12:37
fact in computer science departments
00:12:40
Across the Nation computer Graphics was
00:12:42
not considered a legitimate area of
00:12:44
research it was an application was off
00:12:47
to the side that the graphics wasn't
00:12:49
legitimate they couldn't imagine what
00:12:50
would happen when we were producing so
00:12:52
much data that we needed other ways of
00:12:54
being able to to see and understand what
00:12:56
they were working with eventually after
00:12:59
receiving funding from Steve Jobs Ed
00:13:01
catmull and his co-worker Alvi Ray Smith
00:13:03
would co-found Pixar breaking away from
00:13:05
lucas films and focusing on Independent
00:13:07
animation work Alvi Ray Smith would then
00:13:09
go on to be royally screwed over by
00:13:10
Steve Jobs and kicked out of the company
00:13:12
but that's another story for another
00:13:13
time cat's goal from the very beginning
00:13:16
even in 1972 was to use computers to
00:13:19
create movies and I don't think Pixar
00:13:21
gets nearly enough credit for being able
00:13:23
to do what they did yes they are
00:13:25
credited as the studio that made the
00:13:27
first fully CGI feature length film but
00:13:29
the steps they had to take to get to
00:13:31
that point don't get talked about nearly
00:13:33
enough 3D animation as it is now can
00:13:36
largely be traced back to the pioneering
00:13:38
advances made by a small handful of
00:13:40
people and most of them worked with Ed
00:13:41
catl at some point or another sure
00:13:43
blender can be intimidating at first but
00:13:46
you can only learn how to use a tool if
00:13:48
that tool exists and in 1991 when Toy
00:13:51
Story was officially greenlet by Disney
00:13:54
most of them didn't a lot of the
00:13:56
characters you see throughout the film
00:13:58
were hands sculpted into giant clay
00:14:00
busts and digitized with a probe using a
00:14:02
much more advanced version of the same
00:14:04
process that catl used to create the
00:14:05
model of his hand 3D modeling has never
00:14:09
been easier with all the technology we
00:14:11
have access to now I could do all of
00:14:13
that on my iPad Nomad sculpt is only 15
00:14:17
bucks which is still insane to me
00:14:18
considering everything it can do it's
00:14:20
the only digital sculpting tool I've
00:14:22
ever seen where you can just kind of
00:14:24
pick it up and start using it you don't
00:14:25
need to take a course just to navigate
00:14:27
through its menus
00:14:29
if you tried learning blender or zbrush
00:14:31
but couldn't figure out it sculpting
00:14:32
tool set this is definitely your next
00:14:34
best bet if you have an iPad or an
00:14:36
Android tablet at that price there's
00:14:37
really no reason not to pick it up even
00:14:39
if you're just curious about making art
00:14:41
I'm not sponsored by them I promise I
00:14:43
just I just really like this program
00:14:45
making the model itself was a pretty
00:14:46
simple process but it was sculpted with
00:14:48
Dynamic topology you don't need to know
00:14:50
what that means all that matters is that
00:14:51
if we look at the mesh it is not
00:14:53
animation ready that's where the process
00:14:55
called retopology comes in what I'm
00:14:57
doing here is essentially recreating the
00:14:59
model with a cleaner grid of polygons by
00:15:02
drawing them on top of the original one
00:15:04
which is also in an app on my iPad
00:15:06
called cozy blanket retopology is
00:15:08
normally an obnoxious timec consuming
00:15:10
process but look at how easy this is
00:15:12
comparing that to physically probing
00:15:14
every polygon manually and it's actually
00:15:16
kind of relaxing and in just a couple
00:15:19
hours of work I've got myself a little
00:15:25
Woody anyway kml's contributions to
00:15:28
computer Imaging are still being used to
00:15:30
this day by me right
00:15:33
now on his Wikipedia page under the
00:15:35
known for Section it lists the
00:15:37
algorithms he helped to develop and it
00:15:39
doesn't even mention his time spent as
00:15:40
company president and I got to say it's
00:15:42
pretty refreshing to see somebody in an
00:15:44
engineering position who actually
00:15:46
understands the industry because he kind
00:15:48
of helped build it put into an executive
00:15:50
position instead of some callous un
00:15:52
feeling
00:15:54
businessman what's that Pixar animators
00:15:58
despite being widely regarded as the
00:15:59
best in the industry were typically paid
00:16:01
less than their contemporaries at other
00:16:03
Studios and Not only was this well known
00:16:06
within the company but there was
00:16:07
collusion with lucasfilm to ensure that
00:16:09
employees wouldn't be recruited away
00:16:10
from Pixar or vice versa and that both
00:16:12
companies were artificially limiting
00:16:14
their
00:16:15
salaries and additionally as president
00:16:18
of Pixar catl ballooned this agreement
00:16:20
into a cartel of other Animation Studios
00:16:22
as well as Silicon Valley businesses
00:16:23
such as Apple and Google that fixed
00:16:26
employee wages something which is not
00:16:27
only anti competitive and illegal but
00:16:30
when questioned about it he callously
00:16:31
refused to apologize
00:16:34
for I should stop repeating everything
00:16:37
you say verbatim and suddenly receiving
00:16:38
information via phone call in a heavily
00:16:40
scripted medium is an overused Trope and
00:16:41
that acknowledging the Trope doesn't
00:16:43
actually make it
00:16:44
funny okay yeah I love you too
00:16:51
bye-bye to quote the Bloomberg article
00:16:53
that broke this story catmull said he
00:16:55
saw it as his duty to insulate Northern
00:16:58
California film companies from salary
00:16:59
bidding wars that drive costs up move
00:17:01
the animation jobs overseas and destroy
00:17:04
the US industry like somehow we're
00:17:06
hurting some employees we're not cill
00:17:09
said while I have the responsibility for
00:17:11
the payroll I have the responsibility
00:17:13
for the long-term also I don't apologize
00:17:15
for this and while I can understand his
00:17:19
position San Francisco is pretty
00:17:21
famously one of the most expensive
00:17:23
places to live and Pixar kept breaking
00:17:26
box office record after record
00:17:29
but Playing devil's advocate here he
00:17:31
does actually raise a decent Point Pixar
00:17:34
to this day doesn't Outsource any of
00:17:36
their animation to lower wage countries
00:17:39
anything that could possibly be done
00:17:41
inhouse is something that cannot be said
00:17:44
for basically any other production
00:17:46
company so they have to be doing
00:17:47
something right and who knows as a
00:17:50
studio operating under Disney it
00:17:52
wouldn't surprise me if their Executives
00:17:53
were trying to cut salaries to decrease
00:17:55
budgets Pixar's number one operating
00:17:57
expense is wage after all that's the
00:17:59
main reason their movies are so
00:18:01
expensive now obviously this is a pretty
00:18:03
complicated issue that goes beyond the
00:18:04
scope of this video so I'm dramatically
00:18:06
simplifying things but I kind of feel
00:18:09
like and this might be a controversial
00:18:11
opinion here but the people who actually
00:18:14
make the movies should probably be
00:18:17
appropriately compensated for
00:18:20
making the
00:18:22
movies I'm looking at you DreamWorks
00:18:25
whether you enjoy their more recent
00:18:27
output or not and if you say anything
00:18:29
bad about Luca I will make fun of you
00:18:31
Pixar well and truly pioneered 3D
00:18:33
animation as a medium something that the
00:18:35
entire world gets to benefit from
00:18:37
outside of entertainment and it all
00:18:39
started with a handful of brilliant
00:18:40
Engineers who just wanted to make
00:18:45
movies if you liked this video I'd love
00:18:48
to turn it into a series of sorts the
00:18:50
history of 3D animation is pretty
00:18:51
fascinating and one that I don't think
00:18:53
gets nearly enough recognition I've seen
00:18:55
a handful of videos talking about
00:18:57
animation itself but hardly any going
00:18:59
into the people who made it or how it
00:19:01
was actually made if that's something
00:19:03
you want to see please let me know in
00:19:04
the comments this isn't shallow
00:19:06
engagement bait I legitimately just want
00:19:08
to know what people want to see out of
00:19:09
this channel uh if you enjoyed this
00:19:11
you'll probably like our video on the
00:19:12
newspaper comic turned web coma Keith
00:19:14
Cliff that
