BURBANK & SAN FRANCISCO
– Disney Television Animation
and Unity Technologies have announced a unique collaboration, “Baymax Dreams,” a series of three broadcast-quality shorts based on the Emmy Award-nominated television series “Big Hero 6 The Series.”
The two- to three-minute-long shorts are being created using Unity’s real-time rendering technology that enhances traditional animation pipelines by employing non-linear workflows and tools traditionally used in the gaming industry.
Directed by Simon J. Smith (Bee Movie, Penguins of Madagascar and Shrek 4D), “Baymax Dreams” features the cutting-edge robot, Baymax, dreaming of electric sheep, bedbugs, and duplicates of himself. The shorts will debut on DisneyNOW and Disney Channel YouTube Saturday, September 15.
“We are always looking at how our teams can innovate in ways that help move the industry forward -- it’s in our Disney DNA,” said JR Grant, Senior Vice President, Product and Technology, Direct to Consumer and International, The Walt Disney Company. “‘Baymax Dreams’ and the technology used to create these shorts represent an evolution of the traditional animation production process that allows for greater freedom, creativity and the ability to easily produce content across multiple platforms.”
The power of Unity’s real-time rendering technology brings speed and creative freedom to film and content makers for real-world work. The tech gives studios the freedom to do layout, animation blending, light, VFX, render, and composite all in one place, at the same time.
“Working in Unity is like having every department at your fingertips -- it completely revolutionizes the production process,” said Smith. “The results of Unity’s parallel, non-linear workflow and real-time rendering meant we were able to make ‘Baymax Dreams’ in half the time -- allowing us to spend the other half on experimentation and the creative process.”
Unity will dive deeper into the collaboration with Disney Television Animation with a series of hands-on demos and discussions at in Unity’s breakout sessions in Room 18 in the East Building:
“Baymax Dreams: Real Time Directing for Episode Animation” - Director Simon J. Smith and Adam Myhill will direct an animated scene from “Baymax Dreams” live in Unity.
“’Baymax Dreams: Pipeline Tooling for Episodic Animation” - Made with Unity’s Mike Wuetherick and “Baymax Dreams” technical supervisor Michael Breymann will present on the benefits and challenges of real-time workflows for episodic animation.
“’Baymax Dreams’: Graphics, Lighting & FX for real-time animation, in Unity” - Unity graphics programmer, John Parsaie, will walk through best practices in shading and real-time lighting for episodic animation.