GamesBeat: If you made a comparison to past years at Siggraph, what would you say is new? Is there a lot more presence for Unity films?
Riva: There’s absolutely more presence. We’re humbled to be participating at the table with so many brilliant engineers and artists who’ve been preaching the real-time gospel for years now. We feel we bring some contributions this year. We’ve been able to get a real-time workflow into a steady state for animated series with Disney. We want to share a lot of that knowledge with the community. Our relationship with Autodesk will benefit everyone, and we’re excited to celebrate that as well.
GamesBeat: Is some of this promise, then, that film is becoming democratized in the same way as games? How far along would you say that is?
Riva: I think the greatest leap in terms of democratizing animation and filmmaking rests on the shoulders of two features. One of them is Timeline, which is a sequencer that allows people to edit basically like in Final Cut but inside Unity, so it’s perfect for storytellers. The other is called Cinemachine. It’s an intuitive smart camera system that allows you to compose your shots and track your cameras in a cinematic way. It takes all the headaches out. It can track an object like a character across a complex choreography without you having to do hours of hand animation and camera programming.
Those two things have made it so much easier to tell stories in Unity. The rendering is obviously instant and real time, which makes it much faster. That’s the bedrock of democratizing animation. You can tell stories inside of Unity with tools that animators and CG artists understand. They don’t have to be a game developer.
Simon Smith, the director of the three Baymax episodes, came from Dreamworks. He was the original head of layout on Antz and Shrek, and then, he directed Bee Movie and Penguins of Madagascar. He came from a very traditional way of making animated film. When we tried to introduce him to how we thought we could get this done, he was a bit skeptical because he comes from layout — the camera department, basically, the department that decides where the cameras go and how the story gets told based on the storyboard.
When we showed him Cinemachine and he started using it, he was completely bowled over by the power of it. He said he never wanted to go back to doing things the old way again. It was almost like god mode, being able to use the tools in the edit bay to affect all of the elements in the scene at the same time. Thanks to stacking timeline sequences and Cinemachine cameras being quick and smart — even if you need a change on the north side of the set, the south side of the set stays coherent with all of its camera positions. He thought this was a revolution.
To have a really established director, a man in his 50s, adopt this new technology for telling stories, we felt that really validated this whole thing for us. It made us feel that this could go mainstream.
Above: Baymax shorts were made with Unity.
GamesBeat: Is film becoming a category you guys track and gather statistics around?
Riva: It is. It’s one of our new verticals, if you will. It’s a place where we feel our engine can do a lot of good and bring a lot of benefit to creators. We just want to educate people and support them in exploring these tools.
GamesBeat: What are some of the next milestones you’d like to see filmmakers reach?
Riva: What will be really powerful — this feels like the engine will be the tool of choice for episodic animation. Of course, eventually, what we’d love to see is not only VR filmmakers using us but feature filmmakers as well. We’re seeing that on the VFX side already. It would be fantastic to see us meet that bar for features in the future.
GamesBeat: I’ve been writing about the Academy Software Foundation — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation getting together to get a bunch of open-source software together for films. It seems like that effort is all in the same cause, this democratization?
Riva: I can’t speak to that directly, but I definitely think that the future of film, like we said, is here. The vision is that, as John Riccitiello often says, the world is a better place with more creators in it. It feels like if we can put tools in the hands of more people that normally might not have them, then it’s all the better. A great story, a great animated story, can come from anywhere.
GamesBeat: How far are we from something like a Pixar feature, a two-hour animated film in theaters, made with Unity?
Riva: [Laughs] If it were up to me, I’d love to see it next week. I can’t say more about what’s in the works right now. It’s definitely coming, though. We’re excited to be part of some of those groundbreaking projects. We definitely want to see that in the future.
GamesBeat: Anything else you’d like to call out while we have the chance?
Riva: We’re well positioned to fuel the next generation of filmmakers. Our scriptable render pipeline allows for the kind of control filmmakers need. Our graphics aren’t even in question. The graphics are inspiring people who come from feature animation to produce with our engine. The performance is great. The creativity that comes from the tools and working together makes filmmaking more fun. We have something great here to contribute to the community, and we’re very excited to share some of that at Siggraph.
The Baymax shorts, actually, are going to be premiering on YouTube on September 15. There’s more information to come around that as well.
