Computers make people cry. No, I am not talking about the blue-screen bawl or the raining of reboot tears.

I am describing what happens when animators deliver a omputer-generated film every bit as stimulating and emotionally satisfying as a live action endeavour.

I am talking about how the relationship between Monster Inc's shaggy-haired Sulley and baby Boo has brought tears to the eyes of cinema audiences worldwide.

When I saw the film even the Odeon's surround sound couldn't disguise the sound of rustling handkerchiefs.

Computers used to be described in the harshest terms but animation studio Pixar, which also gave us Toy Story and A Bug's Life, has proved bits and bytes can move us when in the hands of creative artists.

In fact, judging by the box office results, the future of animated films seems decidedly computer-biased. Disney's most recent offerings, The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis, have underperformed, while Shrek finished 2001 as one of the top five grossing films.

Of course, prising tears - and money - out of today's world-weary film audiences is far from easy, which is where some pretty amazing technology comes in useful.

To conjure up Sulley's three million hairs, Pixar created a new animation software called Fizt, pronounced Fiz-tee, which reduced the process from weeks to just hours.

The film's characters were brought to life - modelled and rendered - on Pixar's 250 Sun Microsystems servers, each using 14 processors, 14Gb of memory and 196Gb of disk space.

This means a total of 3,500 processors, almost four terabytes of system memory and a massive 25 terabytes (25,000Gb) of storage, housed in a 4,000sqft data centre.

Modelling determines, for example, how a patch of hair will move in the breeze, while rendering is the process by which the correct lighting, textures and shading are applied to 3D computer models.

Pixar is now working on ways to improve the depiction of underwater movements in its next animated film, Finding Nemo, a father-son adventure scheduled for release next year.

Which is good news for audiences and even better news for Sun, which has suffered greatly from the downturn in all things dot.com.

So keep crying. Your tears keep computer guys smiling.

disney.go.com/disneypictures/monstersinc/
www.pixar.com
www.sun.com