Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Disney Animation vs. Pixar -- Sibling Rivalry (Hollywood Reporter)

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Topic: Disney Animation vs. Pixar -- Sibling Rivalry (Hollywood Reporter)

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 12-15-2013 10:30 PM

quote: Marcel Birgelen
I don’t have any numbers to back it up (because Disney isn’t really publishing them or I'm just to stupid/lazy to find them), but I doubt that Pixar is really making a lot of money on their software business, they already left the high-end workstation market around the time they started working on Toy Story.

Pixar has never been a computer hardware company. They engineer software, not hardware. And there is considerable money to be made selling industry specific software. Rendering software isn't used solely for movie making purposes. For one thing I know for a fact defense technology companies use it extensively in various simulation systems. It's a very important tool for architects, civil engineers, etc.

Pixar has used workstations and servers from Silicon Graphics, Sun, Apple and even some Windoze based machines for their feature movie work.

quote: Marcel Birgelen
In the past, 3D modeling, animation, rendering software and high-end workstations were prohibitively expensive and margins on those products were still huge, but since the market has been dominated by a few big players that went for higher volumes, like e.g. Autodesk, Avid and Newtek to a much lesser extent and workstation prices have been slashed, there is only real money left in volume.

High end 3D modeling, animation and rendering software is still pretty expensive. It's not as insanely expensive as it was in the early 1990s, but that's only because a lot more people are using that type of software now. The usage numbers aren't big enough to push professional level 3D app prices down into more mainstream price levels, such as a few hundred dollars versus a few thousand. Same goes for effects compositing software. After Effects is good for mainstream use, but for high quality work a node-based compositing application, such as Nuke or Fusion, is required. Renderman is still, arguably, at the top as far as rendering applications are concerned.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 12-15-2013 11:57 PM

Hey Bobby...

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 12-16-2013 09:26 AM

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 12-17-2013 11:33 AM

quote: Bobby Henderson
Pixar has never been a computer hardware company.

Pixar was never a leading hardware manufacturer in terms of units, but they sure produced some extremely dedicated hardware.

Every company that Steve Jobs has been involved in seems to have been a hardware company at one time...

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 12-17-2013 04:38 PM

Pixar's software business has been more important. I'm not sure if my point about this was obvious enough in my last post, but Pixar's innovation (specifically what it has done with Renderman) has given it a noticeable advantage over rival animation studios.

Pixar's movies have usually looked better than the output of rival studios like PDI/Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Animation, Blue Sky Studios, etc. Pixar would use its movies to debut its latest technological innovations.

Lately Pixar's lead over its rivals has narrowed quite a lot. Rival studios are doing great looking work. I thought the movie Rango was a bit on the slow side, but I loved how great it looked (incidentally ILM used Renderman on much of Rango). What can Pixar do to maintain its innovative lead over its competitors?

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