Every creative process has its secrets. Japanese companies that are dedicated to entertainment and video games, for example, usually keep sketches , concepts and other material that is generated during the creative process under lock and key. 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, your animation studio has made a very nice gesture, releasing the original files that bring Moana ‘s island to life.
Could Motunui from Moana be the new Cinebench?
Do you know Cinebench ? It was originally a tool designed by Maxon so 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 to measure the power of any computer, especially for those that were going to be dedicated to gaming and streaming . Maxon continues to release different versions of its 3D design suite and also of its benchmarking program , but many only know about the latter, which has had mythical versions such as Cinebench R15.
Something similar could happen with this interesting gesture that Disney Studios has made these days. On its official website, the studio has published the necessary files to render the island of Motunui in great detail , that is, the place where the movie Moana takes place, 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 representing volumetric light can be an odyssey even for the most powerful desktop computers in the world.
Several files have been published on the web: the base , the animation models , two PBRT sets and a USD file. This last one is the most interesting of all. The acronym of its extension stands for Universal Scene Description , and it allows rendering the scene with RenderMan , the official Pixar framework. 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 smoke. The set consists of 20 different elements . In total, there are over 15 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 data set of the development of a film as complex as Moana ? In the first place, the American company says that these files are a fantastic base for professionals from all over the world to develop new rendering algorithms , as well as benchmark high-performance machines or help small studios that are starting to develop for Pixar RenderMan. . At the same time, Disney earns a lot of points by showing the world its work without keeping secrets , something that is quite well seen lately.