The Science Behind Pixar

About the Exhibition

The Science Behind Pixar is a 13,000 square foot exhibition touring two copies — one nationally, and one internationally — with a combined attendance of over 3 million visitors to date. It was created by the Museum of Science, Boston, in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios to give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the process used to create Pixar’s groundbreaking films. The exhibition highlights the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and computer science concepts used every day at Pixar. Screen-based activities and physical interactive exhibits invite visitors to experience different roles, such as lighting designer, animator, or modeler. Videos of Pixar employees give first-hand accounts of the technological innovations that have revolutionized the field of computer animation.

More information can be found on the exhibition website or the Pixar Animation Studios website.

About the Software

In total, The Science Behind Pixar has 18 interactive software experiences. As the lead developer, I created the software for 15 prototypes and 7 exhibit experiences. Throughout the development of the exhibition, I collaborated closely with a cross-disciplinary team of educators, developers, designers, and researchers.

Since opening of the exhibition in June 2015, I have made multiple software updates to improve the experience for visitors and administrators. Some updates include multi-touch support for touchscreen kiosks, multilingual support (English/Japanese/Traditional Chinese), an admin tool for configuring settings, automated installers, and content from new movies.

Programming Natural Variety

This screen-based activity allows visitors to program grass and adjust different grass blade parameters, such as number, distribution, color, length and curvature. After setting the parameters and running the program, visitors will see how the grass changes in appearance.

A version of this activity is available online on The Science Behind Pixar website: Programming Natural Variety | The Science Behind Pixar

Crowd Simulation Workstation

This activity allows visitors to simulate a school fish by adjusting different parameters, such as distance between fish, number of groups, and desire to match the direction of other fish. The simulation updates in real-time as the visitor makes changes to the rules of the simulation.

A version of this activity is available online on The Science Behind Pixar website: Crowd Simulation Workstation | The Science Behind Pixar

Rendering Workstation

This screen-based activity allows visitors to explore the factors that affect render time and image quality in five scenes from Ratatouille.

A version of this activity is available online on The Science Behind Pixar website: Rendering Workstation | The Science Behind Pixar

Virtual Lighting Workstation

This screen-based activity challenges visitors to create a virtual lighting plan that conveys a particular emotion in a virtual diorama of the living room in Up! Visitors can change the sun’s location, color, and brightness, as well as adjust the brightness of two interior lights. They can compare their scene to light scripts from several different scenes of the living room from the movie.

Surfaces Immersive

In a setting reminiscent of Ramon’s House of Body Art, visitors can change the surface appearance of a car hood. Possible textures include non-car finishes such as wood or jellybeans, decals, flames, rust, and different paint finishes.

Rendering Immersive

Visitors can render an individual frame from Inside Out using a method that mimics the Renderman path tracer. As they watch the progressive refinement process, the wireframe geometry incrementally transforms into the final film image.

Lighting Effects Basics

Visitors can compare the light effects in two identical scenes, one physical and one virtual. A physical diorama will contain three spheres with different material properties. The same scene will be recreated on a monitor. Visitors can toggle on and off six fundamental behaviors of light including: direct light, indirect light, caustics, reflection, refraction, and shadows.