Math and Movies (Animation at Pixar)

I find it interesting that the interviewer almost calls out on the disappointing fact that the surface smoothness is essentially just "blobized" interpolation: "It doesn't seem very subtle." It's like when a director has run the film through some colorizing filter to give it a desired tone and you can tell to the point of it becoming distracting.

In case someone is interested in the &quot;eigenanalysis,&quot; the recursion formula is:<p><pre><code> [1&#x2F;2, 1&#x2F;2, 0 ] [A^n] [A^n+1] [1&#x2F;8, 3&#x2F;4, 1&#x2F;8] [B^n] = [B^n+1] [0, 1&#x2F;2, 1&#x2F;2] [C^n] [C^n+1] \_____ _____&#x2F; M </code></pre> And the question is, given [A^0,B^0,C^0], find [A^∞,B^∞,C^∞], which is equivalent to computing the infinite power of M. Waaaat? Enter the eigendecomposition.<p>The eigenvalues of M are 1&#x2F;4, 1&#x2F;2, and 1. If you compute M^∞, the 1&#x2F;4 and 1&#x2F;2 &quot;eigenspaces&quot; will disappear, so you&#x27;re left with the subspace of the eigenvalue 1. <a href="http://bit.ly/eigenex001" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;eigenex001</a> M^∞ = Q<i>L^∞</i>Q.inv(), hence the [1,4,1] appears... very cool.<p>Sometimes procrastinating by reading HN actually helps with your work---today I&#x27;m working on problem sets for book 2 <a href="http://gum.co/noBSLA" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gum.co&#x2F;noBSLA</a>