[degauss]

Around 1996 I worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation (Hercules, Tarzan, Mulan, Dinosaur era). I was talked with implementing the Disney multi plane 2D scanning camera in a digital environment, Maya, a 3D modeling and animation package. I was given full specs and it was straightforward. One thing was odd, the 2D coordinate system used 5000,5000 as the origin, I forget what units. No one seemed to be able to explain why. A while later the original mechanical multi plane scanning camera was put on display. Looking at it, it made sense. It used a 4 digit mechanical counter for the position of each axis with a range of [0,9999] so 5000 is approximately the center. Warner Brothers Animation used software called Animo and it had the same origin. I ended up working with an Animo developer at my next job and asked him about it. He said Warner Brothers told them to implement it that way with 5000,5000 as the origin because that’s how they do it at Disney and Disney must have a good reason.

[atlas_hugged]

Hahaha that’s awesome. Witnessing the formation of a mini-cargo cult, so-to-speak.