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posted by on Wednesday January 04 2017, @01:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the still-not-as-tough-as-hair dept.

The hit Disney movie "Moana" features stunning visual effects, including the animation of water to such a degree that it becomes a distinct character in the film.

UCLA mathematics professor Joseph Teran, a Walt Disney consultant on animated movies since 2007, is under no illusion that artists want lengthy mathematics lessons, but many of them realize that the success of animated movies often depends on advanced mathematics.

"In general, the animators and artists at the studios want as little to do with mathematics and physics as possible, but the demands for realism in animated movies are so high," Teran said. "Things are going to look fake if you don't at least start with the correct physics and mathematics for many materials, such as water and snow. If the physics and mathematics are not simulated accurately, it will be very glaring that something is wrong with the animation of the material."

Teran and his research team have helped infuse realism into several Disney movies, including "Frozen," where they used science to animate snow scenes. Most recently, they applied their knowledge of math, physics and computer science to enliven the new 3-D computer-animated hit, "Moana," a tale about an adventurous teenage girl who is drawn to the ocean and is inspired to leave the safety of her island on a daring journey to save her people.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:28AM

    by AudioGuy (24) on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:28AM (#449607) Journal

    I don't think it is possible for people born past a certain point to really understand Star Wars.
    To fully understand Star Wars, you needed to grow up in a certain kind of world:

    Your first experience of science fiction should have been 20+ year old Buck Rogers serials viewed in black and white on a small TV screen. Pure juvenile, escapist stuff with horrible acting, ridiculous plots, and special effects so bad they were funny, like sparklers inside paper rocket ship models a few inches long.

    The world of science fiction was more in print, which was a combination of similar 'space opera' plus some newer hard science fiction that was very good at extrapolating technical trends and exploring the possible results, plus some that also had some good social commentary.

    Movies you had seen were one pretty good one, 2001, with great effects but a plot practically no one understood, B movies with people in ape makeup, a distopian future run by a bunch of hippies controlled by a crystal (Zardoz), a bunch of earlier completely absurd B/W stuff involving shrinking men or flying saucers, and so forth, all with pretty lame bleeps and bloops, Theremins, or 'modern' music. All this followed by practically NO SF in movies for years, except some lame disaster movies.

    So when that first crawl came up, you knew exactly what you were in for, which was this: Someone was doing an old 1930s serial but AS IF it were an 'A' movie. So essentially an amazing piece of 'fan fiction', a sort of send up. (And you wondered later how in the heck someone managed to talk a major studio into funding this. The guy had to be a genius of persusasion, if nothng else). But that was what it was.

    So lame acting? Of course, it would not have been in the genre without this.
    Ridiculous plot? Same.

    But:
    The music - awesome, and completely breaking the current trend.
    The special effects. No one had every seen anything like this anywhere. I remember involuntarily scrunching down in my seat when that huge spaceship flew over me at the beginning (a balcony seat, and remember this was made for THAT experience, not beeng seen on a small compiuter screen)

    I don't think you can get to that same experience today, without that background. You need the old 1930s serials in your memory. And not to have seen the later, better films.

    And it probably would not hurt to have, at one point in your life, believed you would be driving an atomic car as soon as some small technical details were worked out, and that you would likely be retiring on Mars in your old age, because of the lower gravity.

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