As the images progressed, the character began to resemble the irreplaceable Buzz Lightyear. Other vastly different appearances were considered for the character alongside many sketches that slowly amounted to the final rendition of the loveable space ranger. For starters, the aspect ratio used for the previous films, 1.85:1, was changed to 2.39:1 for Toy Story 4, creating a larger depth of field. performance, I had heard that Sun had smaller CPU enclosures allowing the render farm to be much smaller, and that this was another factor in the decision. Lunar Larry doesn't quite have the same ring to it as Buzz Lightyear, but early sketches are interesting reminders of just how far the Buzz Lightyear development has come.Īs seen in early designs (pictured above), Lunar Larry features the "LL" insignia on his spacesuit, which shows the complete redesign of Buzz Lightyear's entire concept - including the name - to give life to the image that Disney ultimately agreed upon. The Pixar team traveled to infinity and beyond to build sets as dynamic as the characters who inhabit them in the all-new animated adventure Toy Story 4, in theaters today. In 1995 Pixar rendered Toy Story on a 294 x 100MHz CPU Sun SPARCstation 20 cluster. Pixar only switched over to it in the early 2000s and it took other firms even longer.
Sure, ray tracing already existed, but it wasn't feasible for a feature-length animated movie yet. What Disney fanatics may not be aware of is the fact that Buzz Lightyear was originally named "Lunar Larry," and his early sketches look almost unrecognizable from the Toy Story fan favorite that audiences have come to know and adore. It's conventional raster graphics, as was common at the time. As with most initial design concepts, they tend to change over time.