>The REAL reason behind the re-release of Toy Story I & II in 3D
Pixar and Disney have just announced that both Toy Story I & II are being re-rendered in actual 3D for re-release in October 2009, as a prelude to March 2010’s release of Toy Story III–also in 3D. But Why would they go through all of the effort re-rendering both I & II when so much is being converted to 3D from an original 2D format. Why? The answer after the break….
For the latest DVD releases of Toy Story I & II, Pixar•Disney raised the technological bar by transferring the film directly from the digital frames instead of going to film, then back into a video transfer. The results were stunning. However, standard DVD has a resolution of 720×486 (with rectangular pixels for those ‘technical’), and that resolution is clearly lower than the master files.
However… Both films were created at 1536 × 922, and are far below the 1900×1080 resolution of 1080p HD (however higher than the 1280×720 of 720p HD), and therefore if they were transferred to 1080p HD, they would look soft and low resolution. (Take a look at the new compilation of Pixar’s shorts recently released on BluRay disc to view some of these lower resolution files on your 1080p quality system.)
It’s my understanding that all of the earlier pixar films were rendered at 1.5k (1526×922); whereas Pixar•Disney’s Cars was their first film to be rendered at 2048×1080; commonly referred to as 2k.
When you consider that the highest resolution of hidef video is 1920×1080, you can clearly see why both Cars and Rattatouie are available in 1080p HD, and none of the previous Pixar•Disney films are as of yet.
So, in order to have nice 1080p HD releases of the previous Pixar•Disney films, it’s going to REQUIRE a re-render of the entire film in a higher resolution to accomodate a new release. Thankfully, a new 3D release will not only impress and satisfy audiences, but will also give the financial support to the motivation to upres these films for HD.
What also excites me about the idea that Pixar•Disney is re-rendering the films, is the fact that rendering/shading technology has improved so dramatically since those films were originally made, and I hope that the original sources can be ‘plugged-into’ the new software and higher and more natural results will be rendered. I’m sure it will be amazing…
Personally, I can’t want for a nice 1080p copy of Monsters Inc. (My bet is that this film will be next for the re-render/3D treatment.)
This is your good friend Sully… signing out.
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