Pixar Undergraduate Program 2023

Here's a picture of all of the 2023 Pixar interns in front of the studio. I'm fifth from the right in the yellow shirt.

(The password for the videos below should be included with my application, and does not include quotation marks)

This short film was made over the course of two weeks by all nine PUP interns during my internship with Pixar. During this time I wore several different hats, doing simulation work in Houdini for the handles, modeling several assets for exterior set dressing, and dressing parts of the outdoor of the train.

In Between - Short Film

Made in Blender, Maya, Houdini, Flow, Presto, Katana and Nuke in 2023.

I was responsible for the modeling and simulation of the train handles. I also did set dressing work for the scenery outside the train. I also modeled several of the assets seen outside including the houses, telephone wire and fences.

Modeling for In Between

These are some of the assets I created for In Between.

These were made in both Maya and Blender before being textured in Flow using a shading system developed by another intern.

Personal Project

After we finished In Between we were given a week to do a personal project of our choosing.

At the time I was thinking about novel means of interacting with a CG environment that would allow for a more free and playful approach to technical artistry. I wound up conceptualizing the idea of using sensors to capture the motion of sock-puppet style puppetry, similar to Jim Henson's Waldo system. Over the course of the week I built the physical device out of cardboard, duct tape, a door hinge and a stripped Ethernet cable. The device has only two primary sensors, an MPU (an accelerometer and a gyroscope) and a turn pot. These sensors feed into an Arduino that outputs the data to my Linux machine, where Blender reads the raw data into animation data. I then drove a real time scene of a worm character using the device. Below is a screen capture of the puppet in motion.

Cardboard Character Controller

Made using Blender, Houdini and Arduino IDE in 2023.

While I was quite pleased with the result that I got out of Blender with the Character Controller, I was concerned that the system was only viable within Blender. As a proof of concept I adapted the Blender plugin to function within Houdini and was able to show that my system functioned in more traditional pipeline ready tool sets.

Houdini Plugin for Character Controller

Made using Houdini and Arduino IDE in 2023.

Effects Project

As part of the extensive training that we underwent, we were given the task of creating custom fireworks to be inserted into a three second shot from Coco as a means of learning the effects pipeline. We were given a lot of creative freedom, and my mind seemed to give me the idea of creating fireworks that emulated popcorn given popcorn's 'explosive' nature.

Coco Popcorn Fireworks

Made using Houdini in 2023.

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