Pixar: The True Story of the Greatest Computer-Animated Film Studio

The history of Pixar does not begin with its founding, as the history of a technology company rarely does. Rather, the original spark usually comes from a university lab, a renegade group from a large company, or a hobbyist who builds things for fun. Pixar’s story doesn’t even begin with the creation of the Pixar computer graphics group. lucasfilm who developed the Pixar Image Computerthe company’s first product.

The story, instead, dates back to a time when computer graphics researchers spread across the United States they began to see that technology enabled a new art form: the creation of digitally animated movies. A few of us started talking about when someone would make the first “The Movie,” and the enormous computing power it would take to pull it off.

In the mid 1970s, that computing power was not affordable. But with the Moore’s Law advancing steadily, there was every reason to think that the cost of computing power would drop sufficiently in a decade or so. In the meantime, we focused on developing the software that would make it possible”The movie“.

Some unusual beginnings

By definition, “The Movie” could not incorporate any hand drawing. The tools to build it emerged little by little. Software came first that allowed computers to create two-dimensional images and, later, virtual 3D objects. Then we figured out how to move those objects, shade and light them before rendering them as movie frames.

This view began to be investigated in the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) as of 1975. The owner of the NYIT, alexander schurehired Ed Catmull, Malcolm Blanchard and Alvy Ray Smithand soon after added to David DiFrancesco.

DiFrancesco and Alvy Ray had been using and developing software that manipulated pixels by “painting” images into Xerox Park. Catmull and Blanchard had been working at the University of Utah on software designed to build geometric objects in 3D.

The four were given the task of figuring out how to incorporate computers into the traditional cel animation process, a two-dimensional technique that dates back to 1915 and that has changed little over the years. It required an extraordinary amount of time and talent, with teams of animators drawing and then hand-painting each frame, and it was clear that computers could at least facilitate, if not automate, many of the steps.

This NYIT group ended up producing a 22-minute short film using computer-aided cellular animation technology they developed, but not until 1979. And “The Movie” was still a long way off: Not only was it short, it still required a lot of hand drawing.

In 1980, the original four members of the NYIT team had been hired by Lucasfilm to form their Computer Division. This division was in charge of computerizing the editing, sound design and mixing, special effects and accounting of the company, as if this fourth challenge was going to be as difficult as the other three. Catmull, who headed the Computer Divisionappointed Alvy Ray Smith as head of the Computer Graphics Group, who was entrusted with the special effects project.

At Lucasfilm, they were still developing the software needed for computer-generated 3D movies.. And they also worked on specialized hardware, designing a computer, called Pixar Image Computer, which could perform its calculations 4 times faster than comparable general-purpose systems, but only for pixels. They kept hoping that Moore’s Law would get general computers to where they were needed; and so it was, but this strategy gave them a boost for a few years.

They failed to get one of the entirely CG cinematic sequences to appear in a major motion picture until 1982, with the one-minute “Genesis” sequence in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It showed a bare planet burning, melting, and then forming mountains, seas, and green forests. Following this groundbreaking film, in 1983 a short sequence was included in return of the jedi, with a hologram of the Death Star.

The arrival of Lucas Arts

But then the Computer Graphics Group, which already had 40 peoplereceived word that the Informatics Division was going to be trimmed.

George and Marcia Lucas divorced in 1983. Since California is a community property state, George lost half of his fortune overnight. In the next two years, this caused the Computer Division to be divided into different units that could be sold, all except the Games Project, which would become Lucas Arts in 1985.

“We’re going to be fired, Ed. George has never really understood who we are, and he can’t pay us anymore. It would be a sin to let this world-class group disperse. We’re going to start a company to give them a home.”

Alvy Ray entered Ed Catmull’s office and announced to him.

It was about two computer geeks talking to each other. Neither of them had more than an average manager’s sense of budgets and resources, or any detailed notion of raising money. So they bought two books each about how to create companies

“What will the company do?” Ed asked reasonably. They both knew that the infographic group it couldn’t become an independent company that depended on the movies, not yet, or, more importantly, that it would be difficult to capitalize on the company with that prospect. And his calculations convinced them that neither a software company nor a digital and commercial effects house would produce enough income to support the group of 40 people. It had to be the hardware.

They had a prototype computer with a special purpose, the Pixar Image Computer. So Ed and Alvy Ray wrote a business plan for build and sell pixar picture computerscalling them “pixel supercomputers“In-house, they would keep a small team of computer animation experts working for the next 5 years, ready to make ‘The Movie’ once it was realistic by their calculations to make it.”

But first they had to sell the idea of ​​creating a company to the 38 other members of Lucasfilm’s Computer Graphics Group. They described the plan, emphasizing that each employee would own a part of the new companyregardless of your job description.

And Steve Jobs entered the picture…

Later, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray began looking for funds for the new company. The first idea was to go to venture capital investors. Apparently they didn’t fit his idea of ​​a startup company, and they all turned them down, 35 of them.

So they considered making a “strategic partnership” with a large company. Of the 10 they seriously talked to, 8 turned them down. But they almost did a joint deal with two big companies, General Motors and Phillips.

They dealt with the division of General Motors which was previously an independent company, Electronic Data Systemsdirected by H. Ross Perot. GM saw in Pixar’s technology a way to replace its expensive clay modeling technique for new model car designs. Philipswhich entered into a partnership with GM to share the financial burden, was interested in rendering technology that made it possible to obtain three-dimensional internal views of humans from CT scans.

They signed a letter of intent with GM, Philips and Lucasfilm, dated November 7, 1985. But that deal never happened. Three days before the signing, Perot had reprimanded the GM board of directors for the purchase of Hughes Tools worth more than 5,000 million dollars. It was a year before Perot really left General Motorsbut it immediately became clear, when the news appeared in the Wall Street Journal, that anything that happened at GM that implicated Perot was dead. The deal fell right into that crack.

The GM-Philips tandem had been the last hope. Ed and Alvy Ray in the airport limo on their way back to California came up with an “Ave Maria”: go to Steve Jobs.

It was not the first time they spoke with Jobs. Three months earlier, on August 4, Steve had invited Ed, Alvy, and Ajit Gill, the CFO, to to his mansion in Woodside, California. Steve, who had just been fired from Manzanaproposed to them to buy Lucasfilm and direct them as his next company.

they told them nowho wanted to run the company themselves, but would take their money in the form of a venture investment. Lucasfilm accepted, and Steve Jobs became the venture capitalist who financed Pixar.

But when Steve submitted his proposal to Lucasfilm, they ignored him. His number was 7 to 14 million dollars. GM and Philips talked about 20 to 36 million dollars.

Keep in mind that Steve Jobs did not buy Pixar. He financed a spin-off company that was partially owned by employees; Steve kept 70% and the employees 30%. Steve capitalized the company with $10 million. They took the first check for $5 million, and Ed immediately endorsed it to Lucasfilm. That bought them the rights to the technology they had developed there, including the Pixar Image Computer.

The Pixar company was officially born on February 3, 1986, in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. They had managed to keep the team together. And they thought they had an exciting product in the Pixar Image Computer. In the meantime, Steve had started running another computer company, NeXT, an hour and a half away, south of San Francisco. That physical separation turned out to be a blessing.

They kept the possibility of “The Movie” alive for the next 5 years with a series of short films, such as:

• Luxo Jr. (1986), Oscar-nominated
• Tin Toy (1988), Academy Award winner
• Red’s Dream (1987)
• Knick Knack (1989)

These were 4 of the shining jewels who sustained them during these otherwise difficult years.

Each of these pieces represented continuous improvements to the underlying internal technologies. Luxo Jr, for example, it incorporated the first articulated objects that self-shadowed from multiple light sources. Red’s Dream made a show of the Pixar image computer: the main background of the piece, a bike shopit was the most complex CG scene ever rendered at the time.

The fifth jewel was CAPSthe Computer Animation Production System they created for Disney, building on the experience of cellular animation tools at NYIT. This kept Pixar and Disney in a relationship of mutual admiration. and was a major source of income for the fledgling Pixar. All Disney animations of the following years were made with this system, up to a total of 18 feature films.

It used Pixar picture computers running animation software written by the Pixar team and logistics software, used to keep track of the complicated production process, written by the people at Disney. Disney first used CAPS for a scene from The Little Mermaidreleased in 1989, and in 1990 he produced an entire film with the system, The Rescuers Down Under.

The arrival of RenderMan changed everything

Pixar’s sixth gem in the years before the movie was RenderManan innovative software that became an industry standard.

The path to RenderMan it started with individual shading techniques, such as Gouraud shading or Phong shading, both from the 1970s at the University of Utah. Then, in the early 1980s, while at Lucasfilm, Rob Cook generalized the notion into a full shader language that acted as a frontend to Lucasfilm’s in-house rendering solution, a system that ran on specialized Pixar hardware.

The next big leap was freeing the shader language from Lucasfilm’s hardware specificity, turning a specific language into a standard language. This was huge. Created a unified computer graphics industry and gave RenderMan a place in history.

RenderMan freed image creators from having to know the details of any company’s rendering hardware. When you buy RenderMan, you get its shader language, a compiler for that language, and a complete rendering system for any hardware that supports the language. A filmmaker, for example, only needs to know the RenderMan shading language, and the RenderMan system takes care of the rest, a behind-the-scenes pixel generation.

Creating a good standard is difficult: It must be very well designed so that it works universally and is maintained over time. RenderMan, published in 1990, has become a Hollywood staple for visual effects and animation.

But Pixar, at the time, was still a hardware company. And Pixar was a lousy hardware company. They failed several times during their first 5 years. That’s failure measured in the usual way: They ran out of money and couldn’t pay the bills or their employees.

If they had had any other investor than Steve, they would have been dead in the water. But in each failure, supposedly because Steve couldn’t bear the embarrassment that his next venture after Apple’s ouster was a flop.reprimanded those at the address… and then wrote another check.

And each check effectively reduced the employee’s net worth. After several “rollovers”, had invested about 50 million dollars (half of the fortune he had made with Apple) at Pixar. In today’s money, that’s over $100 million. On March 6, 1991, in Pixar’s fifth year, he eventually bought the company from the employees.

But Pixar was still in deep financial trouble. They tried all kinds of ways to earn moneysuch as a television commercial production business, but none of these endeavors had enough revenue-producing capacity to even hope to pay the costs of running the business. Jobs studied the possibility of integrating them into NeXTbut its co-founders wanted no part of it.

Then, at last, Moore’s Law saved them.. The falling cost of processing power made “The Movie” economically viable. The Pixar team said they could make “The Movie,” and Disney stepped forward to finance it, saving Steve Jobs’ face (and investment) and saving Pixar the company. Ed Catmull closed the deal with Disney in July 1991.

The movie wasn’t Steve Jobs’ idea; he never talked about movies. He was a hardware man. The Movie had been the dream and goal of the original Pixar team since the 1970s.

During the next four years, Pixar completed the film Toy Story, which was released in 1995. Toy Story was hugely successful almost from the moment the movie was released. Pixar and Disney brought it to New York for critics to see for the first time, and their enthusiasm was electric.

At the time, Pixar didn’t have a lot of cash, except from the sale of bits of the company’s failing hardware and a few other small deals. Nevertheless, Jobs took Pixar public on November 29, 1995., only with the promise of Toy Story. That saved his reputation and made him a billionaire.

Pixar’s public offering, set the value of the company at 151.8 million, at an opening price of $22; the shares closed that first day at $39. It was the biggest IPO of the year. Disney bought the company in 2006 for more than $7 billion.. This is amazing considering they could have gotten the company for free in the 1970s. Or they could have gotten it for $10 million in the mid-1980s, when Jobs was the “last chance” investor.

By the turn of the millennium, Pixar produced three other successful digital movies:

• A Bug’s Life (1998)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)

At the time of writing this article, Pixar has made 24 movies and counting…