toy story 1 dog vs toy story 4 cat

Dog vs Cat: Who wins?

In the first "Toy Story," a dog was shown and animated. At the time, it was a remarkable accomplishment, but the fur detail simply isn't there. Consider this cat from "Toy Story 4." The distinction is obvious. However, getting from that dog to this cat entailed a great deal of creativity in the making.

And rendering is one of the most critical aspects of how Pixar creates its magic. Rendering is the process of converting a digital picture into a perfect finished image or video frame, complete with lighting and motion effects. The animators required 117 computers running 24 hours a day to make "Toy Story." Depending on how complex the frame is, it could take anything from 45 minutes to 30 hours to render. There were 114,240 frames to make in total. There are over 77 minutes of animation spread across 1,561 shots in the film. To manage all of this video, they had to create a new program called Renderman,which is proprietary photorealistic 3D rendering software.

According to producer Jonas Rivera, if they had what we have today, they could render "Toy Story" faster than you could watch the entire movie. However, the complexity of "Toy Story 4" means it can take 60 to 160 hours to render one frame.

So how did they make the cat look so real in Toy Story 4? Well, with technology advancing compared to what it was 2 decades ago, it has become more than possible to do this, they created a program called Simulation, in which certain elements that are too difficult to hand-animate are motion-simulated. They also found real-world fur on different animals, like llamas, for reference. By doing this, they found the best way to make hair look and move realistically is to clump it together.

Between November 22nd, 1995 and up until now, a lot has changed for Pixar and on the animation scene in general. Today, technology achieved groundbreaking advances in computer animation, combined with stellar filmmaking. Pixar has evolved dramatically as a top-tier animation studio, as illustrated by Toy Story and Toy Story 4. "Toy Story 4" is a technological achievement that shows how much Pixar movies have changed since "Toy Story" came out in 1995. And we people should also expect the impossible, though it may seem we have reached peak animation, but as technology advances so fast, we might just be scratching the tip of the iceberg.

References:

Desiderio, K., & Phillips, I. (2019, June 20). How Pixar's animation has evolved over 24 years, from 'Toy Story' to 'Toy Story 4'. Retrieved from https://www.insider.com/pixars-animation-evolved-toy-story-2019-6
Ashton, W. (2019, June 27). Toy Story Vs. Toy Story 4: How Pixar's Animation Has Changed Over The Last 24 Years. Retrieved from https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2475686/toy-story-vs-toy-story-4-how-pixars-animation-has-changed-over-the-last-24-years
FAILES, I. A. N. (2018, November 27). RENDERMAN AT 30: A VISUAL HISTORY. VFXV. https://www.vfxvoice.com/renderman-at-30-a-visual-history/.
Desowitz, B. (2019, May 29). 'Toy Story 4' Creators Tell Us Why It Took So Long to Bring Back Bo Peep. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/toy-story-4-bo-peep-return-1202145226/
Galov, N. (2021, January 15). How Fast Is Technology Growing - Moore's Law Can't Keep Up. HostingTribunal. https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/how-fast-is-technology-growing/#gref.