When lightning strikes
A long with creating feature films, Pixar also produces shorts with Automaton representing a departure in terms of story and production. Premiering at SIGGRAPH 2020 Computer Animation Festival, the four-minute long project, produced by artists from Pixar’s Effects team, can be found on the studio’s official YouTube channel and depicts before, during, and the aftermath of a brushfire through effects simulations created entirely within Houdini for grass, wind, clouds, lightning, fire, smoke and rain.
“It started in 2018 when we had a little downtime and we could use all of the other artists to produce the work,” explains Krzysztof Rost, technical director at Pixar, who conceived and directed Automaton. “Then we continued with compositing and lighting, but that was a much smaller group; that continued for some time. We finally started to cement everything in place with the editorial and sound in 2019.” The concept was
