One of the first things a visitor sees is a quote from John Lasseter, who in addition to having directed the first two “Toy Story” movies and the two “Cars” movies is chief creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. “The art challenges the technology,” Lasseter has said, “and the technology inspires the art.” Those words set a tone for the show and neatly summarize it. What that summary leaves out, of course, is just how the challenge and inspiration work. That’s where the rest of the show comes in. You could argue that it’s like one big ad for the studio. But that’s OK, since that’s like saying it’s one big ad for magic.

Since every Pixar movie consists of computer-generated animation, every Pixar movie is an act of science. As for the really good Pixar movies, which is to say most of them, they’re miracles of science. So “The Science Behind Pixar,” the exhibition that runs at the Museum of Science through Jan. 10, is a natural.

“The Science Behind Pixar,” which the studio and the museum jointly developed, will tour nationally after its Boston debut. Smartly organized, the show begins with a five-minute introductory video. A pair of Pixar employees offer an overview of how the studio works, taking us into its Emeryville, Calif., operation. Like the show as a whole, the intro is lively, humorous, and informative.


The rest of the exhibition is divided into eight sections or clusters. Each focuses on a key element in the production process of a Pixar film. Examples come from all 15 of the studio’s features, including the latest, “Inside Out,” and at least one Pixar short, “Geri’s Game.”

The elements are modeling, rigging, surfaces, sets and cameras, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering. Lighting is self-explanatory, as are sets and cameras, and surfaces. Well, sometimes not so self-explanatory. For “A Bug’s Life,” Pixar technicians came up with what they called a “bug cam”: a miniature camera that rolled on Lego wheels so animators could see what the world looked like from an ant’s perspective.


Mike from “Monsters University.” Dina Rudick/Globe Staff/Globe Staff

Simulation, another simple enough concept, can sound nightmarish in execution. In “Monsters, Inc.” and “Monsters University,” Sulley’s fur consists of 2.3 million hairs. In “Brave,” the movement of Merida’s hair was based on the physics of springs — and kept from being too flyaway with the help of “digital hairspray.”

Some of the elements mean something different from what viewers might expect. Although there are actual physical maquettes in the show, modeling doesn’t refer to them. It’s about how mathematics is employed to create models in the computer. This is sculpting by the numbers, quite literally. Let’s hear it for algorithms! Rigging, in another context, might mean how lights and other equipment are set up. Here it describes how characters’ motions are manipulated in the computer.

The most complex element is rendering. That’s where the computer’s virtual 3-D becomes a 2-D film. Each frame consists of 1.5 million pixels. Rendering a frame takes 29 hours. There are 24 frames per second. “Ratatouille” has a running time of 115 minutes. That’s an awful lot of rendering.

Each of the eight clusters has text describing the process, interactive displays (involving both screens and objects), and video interviews with Pixar employees describing what they do and how they do it. With the displays, viewers can change the lighting in a scene or alter the shape or motion of a character, and so on. Some are simple enough for small children to enjoy. Others are fairly sophisticated.


The range and variety of interactive options are impressive, but the videos may be the best part of the show. Whether intentionally or not, they frequently do educational missionary work. Again and again, Pixar staffers talk of how important studying drawing or programming or, in one case, music was to them when young — and how much they have benefited from that in their work for the studio.

A Buzz Lightyear model on display. Dina Rudick/Globe Staff/Globe Staff

Throughout the exhibition there are life-size models of Pixar characters. Who knew that Buzz Lightyear was kind of short? You can tell that the model of Mike is from “Monsters University” rather than “Monsters, Inc.” because he’s wearing a retainer.

That’s just one example of the chief lesson the show has to offer: the absolute importance of detail to Pixar. From the gradations of hue among the house-lifting balloons in “Up” to the various ways water can shimmer in “Finding Nemo,” the focus is on getting the smallest thing just right.

That eye for fine detail extends to the show itself. In the animation section, museumgoers can manipulate and photograph a copy of the Pixar extension lamp, the studio’s “mascot,” then digitally assemble the photos to create a film. On the wall is a series of sepia-toned images of the lamp, presented in such a way that they resemble Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th-century photographic studies of motion. Instead of horses galloping, we see a lamp leaping.


Muybridge’s images are some of the most famous in the history of photography, in part because they helped point the way to movies. In explaining the science behind its films, Pixar also makes a point of paying a little tribute to the science behind its medium.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND PIXAR

Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, through Jan. 10

617-723-2500, www.mos.org

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.