Toy Story is a 1995 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the franchise of the same name, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. It was directed by John Lasseter and produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, from a screenplay written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow and a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft. The film features music by Randy Newman, and was executive-produced by Steve Jobs and Edwin Catmull. The film features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, and Erik von Detten.
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya, is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications, animated films, TV series, and visual effects.
Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities and a flexible plugin architecture and must be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is frequently used by video game developers, many TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. 3ds Max features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, and its own scripting language.
Traditional animation is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the end of the 20th century, when there was a shift to computer animation in the industry, specifically 3D computer animation.
Tin Toy is a 1988 American animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs for five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, trying to escape from Billy, a human baby. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division, it was a risky investment: due to the low revenue produced by Pixar's main product, the Pixar Image Computer, the company was under financial constraints.
Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American animated short film produced and released by Pixar. Written and directed by John Lasseter, the two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, "younger" Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball to the extent that it accidentally deflates. Luxo Jr. was Pixar's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left the Lucasfilm Computer Division. The film is the source of Luxo Jr., the mascot of Pixar.
Geri's Game is a 1997 American animated short film produced by Pixar and written and directed by Jan Pinkava. The short, which shows an elderly man named Geri who competes with himself in a game of chess, was Pixar's first film to feature a human being as its main character; Geri later made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 2 as "The Cleaner", here voiced by Jonathan Harris instead of Bob Peterson.
Pixar RenderMan is proprietary photorealistic 3D rendering software produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar uses RenderMan to render their in-house 3D animated movie productions and it is also available as a commercial product licensed to third parties. In 2015, a free non-commercial version of RenderMan became available.
The Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) was a proprietary collection of software, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company and Pixar in the late 1980s. Although outmoded by the mid-2000s, it succeeded in reducing labor costs for ink and paint and post-production processes of traditionally animated feature films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). It also provided an entirely new palette of digital tools to the animation filmmakers.
Red's Dream is a 1987 American animated short film written and directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar. The short film, which runs four minutes, stars Red, a unicycle. Propped up in the corner of a bicycle store on a rainy night, Red dreams of a fantasy where it becomes the star of a circus. Red's Dream was Pixar's second computer-animated short following Luxo Jr. in 1986, also directed by Lasseter.
Loren C. Carpenter is a computer graphics researcher and developer.
SpeedTree is a group of vegetation programming and modeling software products developed and sold by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) that generates virtual foliage for animations, architecture and in real time for video games and demanding real time simulations.
A marionette is a type of puppet moved by strings.
Eben Fiske Ostby is a pioneer computer graphics software developer, animator, and technical director for motion pictures.
Softimage|3D was a high-end 3D graphics application developed by Softimage, Co., which was used predominantly in the film, broadcasting, gaming, and advertising industries for the production of 3D animation. It was superseded by Softimage XSI in 2000.
Presto is a 2008 American animated short film by Pixar, shown in theaters before their feature-length film WALL-E. The short is about Presto, a magician who is trying to perform a show, but his rabbit, Alec, would not cooperate with him until he gets his carrot. The short is a gag-filled homage to classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, as well as the work of Tex Avery. Presto was written and directed by veteran Pixar animator Doug Sweetland, in his directorial debut with the story written by Ted Mathot, Valerie Lapointe and Justin Wright.
Doug Sweetland is an American animator and filmmaker. He directed the short film Presto (2008) and the feature film Storks (2016).
The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when people began to experiment with computer graphics – most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established, that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s – most notably by Dr. Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-D imagery, though increasingly as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-D realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3-D was beginning to appear in film movies, and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3-D animation could be used for entire feature film production.
A character technical director (TD), also referred to as a creature TD or technical animator (Imageworks), is a type of technical director in film and video games who is specifically concerned with characters, creatures, and mechanical objects.
