Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/457057
j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 c g w 3 9 (originally released in 2001 and 2003, respectively) impossible without overcoming the so - ware rot that had occurred in the meantime. This eff ort, though costly, pales in comparison with the original eff ort of creating the movie, since all the animation, graphics, sound, and music are unchanged. Only the resulting product format (that is, the "3D") has changed. Similarly, the array of mobile touch-screen tablets and phones provided an opportunity to revive some of the "timeless" Wanderful Living Books as fully functional, interactive children's books for the iPad and iPhone, and Android mobile tablets and phones. (These were classic interactive storybooks origi- nally published by Broderbund So ware in the 1990s for Mac and Windows computers.) As with Pixar's movies, the eff ort, though costly, pales in compar- ison with the original work of creating these products, since once again, all the animation, graphics, sound, and music are unchanged. Only the product platforms are diff erent. The term "digital alchemy" has been adopted to apply to eff orts such as these. Digital alchemy requires archaeology – locating and resurrecting so ware/code and digital assets (images, ani- mations, sound fi les, music fi les, and so forth) that have long been lost or archived but not accessed. It also requires the invention of new so ware and processes to "morph" the old products into new ones suitable for distribution and release in today's markets. On the technical level, when looking at some of these suc- cessful digital alchemy projects, lessons emerge regarding best practices for so ware architec- ture. There is a common theme of data-driven so ware that makes such projects possible. This is the story of what it took to make these projects happen, and the challenges and technical diffi culties that had to be over- come to resurrect the systems, code, and digital assets in order to revive and make them better than the original products. D E F I N I N G T H E P R O J E C T As with all good projects, it is im- portant to make sure that there is a clear set of "requirements" before embarking on the project. For Pixar's 3D movie endeavors, this meant avoiding the tempta- tion to add new scenes or revisit scenes that could be artistically enhanced. (Each movie would contain exactly the same frames – no more, no less). It also meant being open to re- working a scene to make it "bet- ter" in 3D. Because the sound track would not be modifi ed, any reworking of scenes had to be limited to making the imagery work better stereoscopically. For Wanderful's new Living Books project, this meant making decisions about what else, besides having the interactive storybooks working on iOS and Android platforms, would have to be added to make the products viable in today's markets. This meant dynamically resized graphics to fi t the screen resolution for any new phone or tablet; improved interaction and touch/gesture support; dynamic language changing capabilities; dynamic page selection support via scrolling page thumbnails; and new options pages that provided valuable, new information re- garding the apps as well as hiding obsolete information presented in the original options pages. T H E P I X A R 3 D P R O J E C T S Pixar 3D projects require two new frames be rendered from two new viewpoints for each frame in the original movie. Therefore, the Pixar team needed to begin the production process by re-gener- ating scene descriptions from the animation system (MENV) out- put, rather than just re-rendering the existing scene descriptions from two new viewpoints, as shown in Figure 1 (on this page). FIGURE 1: PIXAR FOLLOWED THIS 3D DATA-DRIVEN ARCHITECTURE BLOCK DIAGRAM TO RENDER STEREOSCOPIC IMAGES.