Pythonis a programming language that has become integral to the movie making process over the last few years. There’s rarely an animated feature or visual effects film, if any, that hasn’t had Python play a large part in getting it to the screen
When people think about movies, even programmers often think about the artistry involved in bringing those images to life. However, the technical side of the film industry is something that often goes unnoticed outside a small group of people.
To that end, I’ve written a few blog posts about how I’ve used Python on several major films that I’ve been lucky enough to work on. Hopefully this shows how much it contributes to the entire life of a movie.
I’ve also recently released a course on Udemy to teach artists how to learn Python For Maya since it’s becoming an increasingly valuable skill in the industry. These blog posts serve as companion material to the course as well.
With that intro out of the way let’s continue…
What is Python?Some of you may not be familiar with Python.
Python is a programming language designed to be very easy to read and write. It’s incredibly popular in the feature film industry as well as other groups, like mathematics, science and machine learning.
You can learn more about Python on the official website .
Additionally, it’s important to note that the film industry uses Python 2.7 and not Python 3. There has been significant code developed with Python 2 and it’s not easy to switch forward yet, despite Python 2 no longer being actively developed and Python 3 having many useful features.
The Feature Film PipelineThe biggest use of Python is in our feature film pipeline.
This is an image that describes the pipeline at most major studios.
The Pipeline is the arrows that link each department together. It’s responsible for making sure that data flows between each department and that everyone can play well together. It’s also responsible for the toolsets in each department so that the artists themselves can work efficiently, but for now lets focus on the inter-department flow.
A more visual demonstration of this graph is in this video of the making of Ratatouille by Pixar
Here you can see the various stages of a visual effects film or animated feature. Studios may differ slightly from this, but it’s the general workflow.
The storyboards/footage/previs represent the data we get, and Compositing/Lighting are the last stages of the film for us.
Visual Effects Films differ slightly from animated films because you have to deal with the extra added element of film footage in the form of plates.
The Pipeline is responsible for getting the data between departments. Here’s the gist of how it works (though it is more organic a process than the one described):
We get data from the client or story artists in form of plates, previsualization (previs) or storyboards that tell us what is happening in the scene. Modeling look at all of this and generate 3D models of all the assets that will be required. Rigging take the modelled assets for characters and apply a virtual skeleton to make it animatable. Matchmove are in charge of creating virtual cameras that match the ones used to shoot the film as well as any standin characters or geometry Layout take the rigs, and either create their own cameras or take matchmoves cameras and set up the scene. They’re the equivalent of a virtual director of photography. The scene is then handed off to Animation , who are the equivalent of the actors. They are in charge of the movement of the characters, and bring the inanimate skeletons to life. CharacterFX are in charge of all the technical parts of animation. Muscle simulations, making cloth move realistically, the hair, grass etc… all comes from CharacterFX. FX then handle the non animation related effects. Weather it be destruction, fire, voxelization, etc… there’s a lot that FX is in charge of. While this is happening, Texturing are in charge of giving color to the 3D Assets so they aren’t just grey objects. Shading then takes these textures and gives the assets a material that tells it how light should interact with it. Matte Painting are the department we use when it is not logical or feasible to build an environment. We realistically can only build so much, and past that point it’s more efficient to have someone make a very high quality painting instead. This all gets funnelled into Lighting who are in charge of adding lights to the shot and rendering the image out. They also do a little bit of compositing to sweeten the image. On an animated feature this may be the end of the show. On a visual effects show, we have to prepare the plates by either removing unwanted elements, removing noise or removing the lens warp. This is handled by Plate Prep ,also known as RotoPaint . Finally everything goes to Compositing who take all the images and integrate our CG renders into the actual film plate. On a visual effects show, this will be the last stage.We use Python to tie all these bits together.
In the next section I’ll go over publishing before moving onto describing how Python is used for the individual departments.
Case Studies of Feature FilmsHere are a few posts I’ve done about movies that I’ve worked on, and the role Python played for those films.
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