Pixar celebrates the 25th anniversary of its pioneering computer graphics software, RenderMan.
Emeryville, CA -- Pixar Animation Studios announced a celebration of 25 years of Pixar’s RenderMan and its pioneering contributions to computer graphics, which completely revolutionized the feature film industry and continues to do so. Used in 19 of the last 21 Academy Award-winners for Visual Effects, RenderMan is the industry standard and has been honored with multiple awards for technological innovation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Originally based on the REYES rendering architecture and the RenderMan Shading Language (RSL), RenderMan has developed into a hybrid renderer possessing the most diverse and flexible toolset currently available.
This year, Pixar’s Monsters University and The Blue Umbrella are showcasing new levels of photorealism, including major advancements in lighting that are directly attributable to technological breakthroughs in RenderMan’s system for creating physically-based global illumination. The upcoming release of RenderMan Pro Server 18.0 builds on this rich new feature set to deliver path tracing, accelerated re-rendering, and geometric area lights, as once again RenderMan evolves to meet the ever-increasing challenges of visual effects and animation production.
Pixar is initiating a number of celebratory events and programs to commemorate RenderMan’s 25th anniversary, commencing at the Annecy International Animation Festival and Market (Mifa) in June 2013 with an exclusive event including a behind-the-scenes presentation highlighting the state of the art rendering techniques used in Disney•Pixar’s Monsters University and The Blue Umbrella.
In particular this presentation will demonstrate RenderMan’s exciting new cinematographic tools for lighting and other key features such as RenderMan's Physically Plausible Shading system. Event attendees will also qualify for special promotional access to RenderMan software and RenderMan On Demand, the world’s largest render farm. Throughout 2013, a series of additional special events will explore how RenderMan is continuing to change the way in which movies are being made and how Pixar’s RenderMan is now accessible to everyone.
Source: Pixar Animation Studios
