Ed Catmull.

A major milestone being marked at SIGGRAPH '08 is the 20th anniversary of Pixar's RenderMan software system, which has been used to render the digital graphics in 44 of the last 47 films nominated for an Academy Award for Visual Effects. This anniversary arrives in a year when Pixar is riding high with its latest hit movie, WALL•E, studio co-founder and President Ed Catmull delivered a candid assessment of Pixar's history to an SRO SIGGRAPH crowd, and the company is unveiling the latest version of its software, RenderMan 14.0.

Catmull expresses some amazement as he ponders the evolution of a tool whose development was launched when he led the computer graphics department at Lucasfilm back in the 1980s. "When I realized it's been 20 years, I thought 'Has it really been twenty?' There's a positive thing, and also something that's kind of embarrassing. The positive thing is that a long time ago we set some impossible goals for ourselves. We solved some problems and set down a path that enabled RenderMan. The embarrassing thing -- and it's kind of hard to describe -- is that a lot of credit was given to us for the time that we spent getting it started, which of course had its value. But the place that we've gone to from that initial start is miles ahead of even what we conceived at the time."

Catmull is quick to lavish credit for this on other studios that have used RenderMan over the years. "The impossible goals that we put in front of ourselves were far exceeded, but they were exceeded by the other people who kept on adding to it and changing it. We ended up with the situation where companies like ILM and Sony come in and say 'We need this... and we need that... ' They push us forward."

Catmull notes that the RenderMan Group, which is based in Seattle, Washington, and not at Pixar Animation Studios' headquarters in Emeryville, California, pursues an independent approach to dealing with outside customers. "The RenderMan Group, which has been led for many years by Dana Batali, has had a philosophy that they would treat outside people -- like ILM and WETA and Sony -- the same as Pixar's internal group." He adds wryly, "Being in Seattle probably helped protect the RenderMan people from being grabbed for 'local emergencies' at Pixar.

RenderMan's 20th anniversary comes while Pixar is riding high with its latest hit movie WALL•E, and as the company is unveiling the latest version of its software, RenderMan 14.0. Unless noted, all images © Disney/Pixar. 

"Pixar didn't get things before anybody else, which a lot of people found puzzling because they thought we'd take advantage of things before we made them available to other people. There was one time (a software feature called Deep Shadows) when we did hold something back and we soon realized that we'd made a huge mistake. It was embarrassing, but it helped prove the fact that there's a community out there." For the RenderMan Group to build and maintain healthy relationships within that film community, Catmull believes, "You have to let go of immediate gratification. You basically have to say it's more important to build connections than try to hold on to a secret.

"In trying to serve the film community, we've always had the philosophy that we're not making a consumer product," stresses Catmull. "We're making something that's completely tuned for the film industry. It's been a very clear focus." (This single-mindedness is one of the reasons that the Motion Picture Academy awarded an Oscar statuette for RenderMan, a rare achievement in the history of AMPAS' Scientific and Technical Awards.)