Every creative process has its secrets. Japanese companies that are dedicated to entertainment and video games, for example, tend to keep under lock and key sketches, concepts and other material that is generated during the creative process. On the other hand, there are companies with a much more modern and transparent vision that are not afraid to publish them once the expected success has been achieved. In this second group we could highlight Disney, which in recent years has become a totally different company from what we knew. This week, his animation studio has made a very nice gesture, making public the original files that give life to the island of Moana.
Could Moana's Motunui be the new Cinebench?
Do you know Cinebench? It was originally a tool designed by Maxon so that you could measure the performance of your computer's processor and graphics card. The purpose was that you could get to quantify the power of your equipment, and thus, know if your machine was going to be able to move Cinema 4D with ease. However, the software was so good that it soon became one of the basic tools for measuring power for any team, especially for those that were going to be dedicated to racing. Gaming and streaming. Maxon continues to release different versions of his 3D design suite and also of his program benchmarking, but many only know the latter, which has had mythical versions such as Cinebench R15.
Something similar could happen with this interesting gesture that you have made disney studios these days. On its official website, the study has published the necessary files to to render With every little detail motunui island, that is, the place where the film takes place Moana, the animated feature film that hit theaters in 2016.
What does the set contain?
Disney's idea is that we can appreciate the difficulties they had at the time during production. The files are full of geometries and just rendering volumetric light can become quite an odyssey for even the most powerful desktop computers in the world.
Various files have been published on the web: the basis, animation models, two sets PBRT and a file USD. The latter is the most interesting of all. The initials of its extension mean Universal Scene Description, and allows rendering the scene with RenderMan, the official framework of Pixar. In addition, this file is the lightest of all, occupying only 17 gigabytes.
If Cinebench was already a challenge for your computer, we anticipate that with this scene from the island of Moana, your PC is going to fume. The set consisting of 20 items different. In total, they add up to more than 15.000 billion primitives, with millions of different instances recreating leaves, branches, rocks and debris complete with all sorts of Ptex textures.
What does Disney get out of all this?
Surely you are wondering. What does Disney gain by publishing a development data set for a film as complex as Moana? First of all, the American company says that these files are a fantastic base for professionals from all over the world to be able to develop new rendering algorithmsas well as do benchmarking of high performance machines or help small studios are starting to develop for Pixar RenderMan. At the same time, Disney scores big points by showing the world their work without holding back. secrets, something that lately is quite well seen.