Why was the 4K release of "Toy Story" upscaled instead of re-rendered?
According to this article, the 4K release of Toy Story has been upscaled from the original resolution it has been rendered at. They also cropped the video instead of letter-boxing it.
If it were shot on video (not film which can be re-scanned) I could understand why Disney would choose to upscale it, however this is a CGI movie and they still have the original files. In fact, according to this Quora Q&A, they have already re-rendered it at some point in time according to a Pixar employee. In addition, the Wikipedia article summarises how they created a second camera for each shot using the original files. Because of this, I don't understand the reason they upscaled the movie instead of re-rendering it.
Edit: I received a comment asked if they had the original files. I've already mentioned this but you can read here in this New York Times article.
The process of taking the original files from the first two movies and getting them to a place where they could be enhanced was one that Mr. Lasseter called “digital archaeology.” “We had to have some very, very smart people at Pixar go back in and write some software and figure out a way to make it so that those files would render on our current computers,” he said.
Emphasis added. This was done for the 3D re-release so they could have built off of what they did for that to make a 4K re-release. They've already put the work into it. That's why this baffles me so much.
Best Answer
According to his review of Coco on the Digital Bits, author Bill Hunt spoke with Pixar's Lee Unkrich who reported that "Pixar has tested rendering their animation at full native 4K and found that there isn’t enough of a visual benefit vs 2K. Doing so would also increase both the processing power required and rendering time significantly."
This appears to be a blanket statement about Pixar's rendering process generally, and not specific to Coco.
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What resolution was Toy Story 2 rendered at?
When Toy Story was made it used state of the art equipment, to render the final presentation at a resolution of 1536 \xd7 922 pixels.What resolution is Toy Story 1 rendered?
It was the first feature film entirely produced by computers and helped to push the technology into the limelight. While ground-breaking, it's worth remembering that Toy Story was rendered at only 1,536 x 922 pixels - that's a third fewer pixels than a full HD (1080p) resolution and a fraction of what 4K can achieve.What resolution does Pixar render?
Disney Pixar - \u201cIt typically takes at least 50 CPU hours to render one frame at 2K resolution. We render 24 frames per second for a 90-minute film and render each shot many times as the artists iterate.The BEST 4K Animated Movie Yet? | Toy Story 4 4K UltraHD Blu-ray Review
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