TED總結 皮克斯的光影魔法

The magic ingredient that brings Pixar movies to life

Danielle Feinberg

at TED Talks Live

When I was seven years old, some well-meaning（好心的） adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Proudly, I said: "An artist." "No, you dont," he said, "You cant make a living being an artist!"（以藝術家為生）

My little seven-year-old Picasso dreams were crushed.（我七歲時的小畢加索夢破滅了） But I gathered myself（重整旗鼓）, went off in search of a new dream（尋找一個新夢想）, eventually settling on being a scientist（settle on doing決定做某事）, perhaps something like the next Albert Einstein.

(Laughter)

I have always loved math and science, later, coding. And so I decided to study computer programming in college. In my junior year（在我大學三年級的時候）, my computer graphics professor showed us these wonderful short films. It was the first computer animation any of us had ever seen.（我們全班都是第一次見到電腦動畫） I watched these films in wonder, transfixed（驚呆了）, fireworks going off in my head,（火花在我的腦中迸發） thinking, "That is what I want to do with my life." The idea that all the math, science and code I had been learning could come together to create these worlds and characters and stories I connected with, was pure magic for me.

Just two years later, I started working at the place that made those films, Pixar Animation Studios. It was here I learned how we actually execute those films（製作這些電影）. To create our movies, we create a three-dimensional world inside the computer. We start with a point that makes a line that makes a face that creates characters, or trees and rocks that eventually become a forest. And because its a three-dimensional world, we can move a camera around inside that world. I was fascinated by all of it. But then I got my first taste of lighting.（第一次嘗試到了…的滋味）

Lighting in practice is placing lights inside this three-dimensional world. I actually have icons of lights I move around in there. Here you can see Ive added a light, Im turning on the rough version of lighting in our software, turn on shadows and placing the light. As I place a light, I think about what it might look like in real life, but balance that out with（與…平衡） what we need artistically（在藝術上） and for the story. So it might look like this at first, but as we adjust this and move that in weeks of work, in rough form（在粗略的版本） it might look like this, and in final form（在最終的版本）, like this.

Theres this moment in lighting that made me fall utterly（完全地） in love with it. Its where we go from this to this. Its the moment where all the pieces come together, and suddenly the world comes to life as if its an actual place that exists. （整個世界都活了起來，就好像是一個真實存在的地方）This moment never gets old,（這個時刻從來不會被淡忘） especially for that little seven-year-old girl that wanted to be an artist.

As I learned to light, I learned about using light to help tell story, to set the time of day（設置一天中的時間）, to create the mood（去創造這樣的氛圍）, to guide the audiences eye（引導關注的視線）, how to make a character look appealing（讓一個角色有感染力） or stand out in a busy set.（在一個凌亂的場景里顯得突出）

Did you see WALL-E?

(Laughter)

There he is.

As you can see, we can create any world that we want inside the computer. We can make a world with monsters, with robots that fall in love, we can even make pigs fly.

(Laughter)

While this is an incredible thing, this untethered（不受限制的） artistic freedom, it can create chaos. It can create unbelievable worlds, unbelievable movement, things that are jarring to the audience.（使觀眾覺得不舒服）

So to combat（反對） this, we tether ourselves with science.（我們用科學約束自己） We use science and the world we know as a backbone（支柱，決定）, to ground ourselves in something relatable and recognizable. （讓我們更加接近一些可關聯與可識別的事物）"Finding Nemo" is an excellent example of this. A major portion of the movie takes place underwater. But how do you make it look underwater?

In early research and development, we took a clip of underwater footage（一段連續的水下鏡頭） and recreated（再創造） it in the computer. Then we broke it back down to see which elements make up that underwater look. One of the most critical elements（重要的元素，決定性的元素）was how the light travels through the water. So we coded up a light that mimics this physics（模擬物理現象） -- first, the visibility of the water（水的能見度）, and then what happens with the color. Objects close to the eye have their full, rich colors. As light travels deeper into the water, we lose the red wavelengths, then the green wavelengths, leaving us with blue at the far depths.

In this clip（剪輯的片段） you can see two other important elements. The first is the surge（涌動） and swell, or the invisible underwater current that pushes the bits of particulate around in the water. The second is the caustics（光的散射）. These are the ribbons of light, like you might see on the bottom of a pool, that are created when the sun bends through the crests of the ripples and waves（波峰） on the oceans surface. Here we have the fog beams. These give us color depth cues, but also tells which direction is up in shots where we dont see the water surface. The other really cool thing you can see here is that we lit that particulate only with the caustics, so that as it goes in and out of those ribbons of light, it appears and disappears, lending a subtle, magical sparkle to the underwater.

You can see how were using the science -- the physics of water, light and movement -- to tether that artistic freedom（與藝術的自由相聯繫）. But we are not beholden to it（不會被它禁錮）. We considered each of these elements and which ones had to be scientifically accurate and which ones we could push and pull to suit the story and the mood.（符合這個故事以及氛圍）

We realized early on that color was one we had some leeway with（有迴旋餘地，有發揮空間）. So heres a traditionally colored underwater scene. But here, we can take Sydney Harbor and push it fairly green to suit the sad mood of whats happening. In this scene, its really important we see deep into the underwater, so we understand what the East Australian Current is, that the turtles are diving into and going on this roller coaster ride. So we pushed the visibility of the water well past anything you would ever see in real life. Because in the end, we are not trying to recreate the scientifically correct real world, were trying to create a believable world, one the audience can immerse themselves in to experience the story. （讓他們能夠融入這個故事）

We use science to create something wonderful. We use story and artistic touch（藝術修飾） to get us to a place of wonder. This guy, WALL-E, is a great example of that. He finds beauty in the simplest things. But when he came in to lighting, we knew we had a big problem. We got so geeked-out on making WALL-E this convincing robot, that we made his binoculars（雙筒望遠鏡） practically optically perfect.

(Laughter)

His binoculars are one of the most critical acting devices he has. He doesnt have a face or even traditional dialogue, for that matter. So the animators（動畫製作者） were heavily dependent on the binoculars to sell his acting and emotions.

We started lighting and we realized the triple lenses inside his binoculars were a mess of reflections. He was starting to look glassy-eyed.

(Laughter)

Now, glassy-eyed is a fundamentally awful thing when you are trying to convince an audience that a robot has a personality and hes capable of falling in love. So we went to work on these optically perfect binoculars, trying to find a solution that would maintain his true robot materials but solve this reflection problem.

So we started with the lenses. Heres the flat-front lens, we have a concave lens and a convex lens. And here you see all three together, showing us all these reflections. We tried turning them down, we tried blocking them, nothing was working. You can see here, sometimes we needed something specific reflected in his eyes -- usually Eve. So we couldnt just use some faked abstract image on the lenses. So here we have Eve on the first lens, we put Eve on the second lens, its not working. We turn it down, its still not working.

And then we have our eureka（有了，找到了） moment. We add a light to WALL-E that accidentally leaks（泄露） into his eyes. You can see it light up these gray aperture blades. Suddenly, those aperture blades are poking through that reflection the way nothing else has. Now we recognize WALL-E as having an eye. As humans we have the white of our eye, the colored iris and the black pupil. Now WALL-E has the black of an eye, the gray aperture blades and the black pupil. Suddenly, WALL-E feels like he has a soul, like theres a character with emotion inside. Later in the movie towards the end, WALL-E loses his personality, essentially going dead. This is the perfect time to bring back that glassy-eyed look. In the next scene, WALL-E comes back to life. We bring that light back to bring the aperture blades back, and he returns to that sweet, soulful（充滿精神的） robot weve come to love.

(Video) WALL-E: Eva?

Danielle Feinberg: Theres a beauty in these unexpected moments -- when you find the key to unlocking a robots soul, the moment when you discover what you want to do with your life. The jellyfish in "Finding Nemo" was one of those moments for me.

There are scenes in every movie that struggle to come together. This was one of those scenes. The director had a vision for this scene based on some wonderful footage of jellyfish in the South Pacific. As we went along, we were floundering.（我們變得焦頭爛額） The reviews with the director turned from the normal look-and-feel conversation into more and more questions about numbers and percentages. Maybe because unlike normal, we were basing it on something in real life, or maybe just because we had lost our way. But it had become about using our brain without our eyes, the science without the art. That scientific tether was strangling the scene.（科學的束縛扼殺了場景）

But even through all the frustrations, I still believed it could be beautiful. So when it came in to lighting, I dug in.（我專註於此） As I worked to balance the blues and the pinks, the caustics dancing on the jellyfish bells, the undulating fog beams, something promising began to appear.（一些希望開始出現了） I came in one morning and checked the previous nights work. And I got excited. And then I showed it to the lighting director and she got excited. Soon, I was showing to the director in a dark room full of 50 people.

In director review, you hope you might get some nice words, then you get some notes and fixes, generally. And then, hopefully, you get a final, signaling to move on to the next stage. I gave my intro, and I played the jellyfish scene. And the director was silent for an uncomfortably long amount of time.（持續了很長的一段時間） Just long enough for me to think, "Oh no, this is doomed." And then he started clapping. And then the production designer started clapping. And then the whole room was clapping. This is the moment that I live for in lighting. The moment where it all comes together and we get a world that we can believe in.

We use math, science and code to create these amazing worlds. We use storytelling and art to bring them to life. Its this interweaving of art and science（這是科學和藝術的交織） that elevates the world to a place of wonder, a place with soul, a place we can believe in, a place where the things you imagine can become real -- and a world where a girl suddenly realizes not only is she a scientist, but also an artist.

Thank you.

(Applause)