May 25, 2023

Pixar jumps into the technology behind "Elemental" in a newly published paper.

Pixar has published a series of papers detailing the technology behind Peter Sohn's upcoming cg animation feature Elemental. THE PAPER ACCOMPANIES A TALK PIXAR IS SCHEDULED TO PRESENT AT SIGGRAPH, WHICH WILL BE HELD IN LOS ANGELES ON MAY 8 THIS YEAR, 2023.

While some documents deal with very specific aspects of the software, others have a wider focus, and one of the standout features of Ar

Elemental, where Pixar is working on the film, is its vibrant character.1 They move, transform and shine differently from those from previous Pixar films. What matters is that they also do all of those things very differently from each other, meaning that production had different problems to solve for each of its character types.

Some papers specialize in character animation.

Creating Elemental Characters: from sparks to fire

Elemental characters: Bringing water to life

Elemental characters: Making characters from thin air

Elemental characters: Living vegetation of elemental cities

As unique as the characters in the film, so is the world they live in. The environment is inspired by New York City, where Sohn grew up. But in order for the element city to be believed, it was necessary to share some of the features of its inhabitants.

Procedural technologies for large, dynamic sets of Elemental

Other papers published by Pixar touch include particularly compelling works on the company's denoising technology (PDF), volume rendering (PDF), procedural pipelines (PDF) created for Elemental, and procedural approaches to stylized bark shading (PDF). It is not the first time that I have seen this.

All currently available papers can be found here.