PIXAR'S RENDERMAN _________________________________________________________________ RenderMan is the Academy Award-winning software used by motion picture and television studios to create realistic visual effects. Used in conjunction with popular modeling and animation software, Pixar's RenderMan has allowed digital design studios to create landmark visual effects such as the cyborg in Terminator 2, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the animals in Jumanji. Pixar's RenderMan was engineered from the onset to create the world's most compelling and highest quality computer generated images for use in feature film and television effects. RenderMan images are free from the typical computer defects of aliasing, strobing and unrealistic visual simplicity. Instead, RenderMan images are capable of representing rich and subtle visual attributes such as materials and textures, the influence of various types of lights from multiple sources, shadows, camera effects and other features not properly described by shape alone. Master RenderMan technicians at Industrial Light & Magic have dominated film award events in the special effects categories, including numerous Oscars® for Best Achievement in Special Effects. "RenderMan is the only renderer which consistently produces the image quality we demand. From t-rex to tornadoes, RenderMan gives us the flexibility to deliver the kinds of images our clients expect of ILM." Barry Armour Head of Technical Directors Industrial Light & Magic AWARD-WINNING TOOLS, AWARD-WINNING EFFECTS Many of the films in which Pixar's RenderMan has been used have received Academy Awards for the quality of their effects. In 1988, John Lasseter and Bill Reeves of Pixar received Oscars for Best Animated Short Film for Tin Toy, an early RenderMan film. In 1993, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the developers of RenderMan with a Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Award for their contribution to the motion picture industry. In 1995, John Lasseter received an Academy Award for Special Achievement for his "Inspired leadership of the Pixar Toy Story Team resulting in the first feature-length computer animated film." "An artist is only as good as his tools and RenderMan is an amazing tool. I first started using RenderMan in 1987 and I'm still finding new ways to use it. RenderMan extends our creative options by giving us the ability to create an object that doesn't exist so believably that it becomes a reality for the audience." John Lasseter VP Creative Development Pixar Animation Studios INDUSTRY'S MOST POWERFUL, MOST RELIABLE RENDERER In 1995 Pixar released Toy Story, the world's first entirely computer generated feature film. The entire film was rendered with RenderMan, because it is the only renderer currently available that is robust enough to create a feature film. The complex, realistic 112,000 frames in Toy Story contained more than 400 models, more than 1,500 RenderMan shaders and over 2,000 texture maps. A model file for a typical frame in this movie was 15MB, far more complex than can be handled by most commercially available rendering systems. Leading digital effects houses and computer graphics specialists use Pixar's RenderMan because it is the highest quality renderer available anywhere and has been production tested through successful use in feature films for nearly ten years. Pixar's RenderMan is robust, fast, and highly efficient for handling complex surface appearances and images. RenderMan's powerful shading language and anti-aliased motion blur allow designers to believably integrate stunning synthetic effects with live-action footage. In addition, RenderMan is backed by a professional technical staff who know the challenges of creating digital effects. Effects supervisors of digital effects studios prefer Pixar's RenderMan because RenderMan is production-proven software that: * produces photorealistic images without noticeable defects; * provides motion blur to eliminate strobe effects; * provides depth-of-field; * offers an extensible, programmable shading language; * handles very large, complex models at film resolution; * allows seamless integration of synthesized and live action images; and * supports multi-platform distributed rendering. RENDERMAN SHADING LANGUAGE The shading language is one of the most valuable benefits of RenderMan. It is programmable and extensible and allows technical directors to create any surface appearance they can imagine. The procedural nature of the shading language frees it from the resolution and projection difficulties encountered in traditional texture-mapping and allows designers to create realistic effects which could not be duplicated photographically. The RenderMan shading language eliminates the limitations of traditional shading and offers support for arbitrarily complex surface shaders, light sources, atmospheric effects, surface displacement, and pixel processing functions. It also provides an extensive array of texture mapping features for situations in which the use of textures is appropriate. "Passing through the exteriors and interiors of past civilizations proved to be quite a unique challenge in Pathways Productions', 500 Nations for CBS. We reviewed our rendering options and chose Pixar's RenderMan for both its ability to customize shaders and for its realistic rendering qualities. RenderMan was the only renderer capable of defining the natural, organic imagery required of these Native North American sites." Eric Guaglione, Animation Director Santa Barbara Studios DIGITAL CAMERA In order to smoothly integrate special effects into film, computer synthesized frames must accurately simulate the behavior of cameras. RenderMan's motion blur and depth-of-field, which employ a patented technique for anti-aliasing, can smoothly blur synthetic images so that they realistically simulate images which have been traditionally filmed. "We couldn't live without the flexibility and power of RenderMan. In an industry where the technology advances so rapidly, we want our tools to let us stay ahead of the game without compromising the quality of our work. By making the RenderMan Artist Tools so easy to use, it allows us to focus our creative energy towards our animations, giving us the luxury of time to experiment and expand our capabilities." Annabella Serra, Creative Director Rainsound, Inc. RENDERMAN ARTIST TOOLS Pixar's RenderMan software is based on proven algorithms developed by Pixar specifically for the production of the highest quality computer-generated imagery. PhotoRealistic RenderMan supports features like anti-aliasing, texture mapping, motion blur, depth-of-field, transparency, and a wide variety of geometry. All RenderMan images support an alpha or matte channel to facilitate compositing. To provide a smoother integration of RenderMan into the production process, Pixar has developed RenderMan Artist Tools. This software suite provides three powerful modules. * Alfred is a task processing system specifically designed to manage network-distributed rendering. Alfred is most useful when it manages the execution of a long or complex sequence of dependent events. * Combiner is a script-based compositing application that allows the user to specify any number of Still Frame, Image Sequence, Display Server and Alias Wirefile input elements. * ATOR moves Alias model and scene data into the RenderMan environment. Users can apply RenderMan appearances and lights, edit shaders and Looks. "With most renderers, you look through a standard lighting model and try to find some way to trick the renderer into giving you what you had in mind. With RenderMan's shading language, you describe what you want and that's what it gives you. Render-Man lets you violate reality to get the effect you want." Sean O'Gara Effects Animator - ReZ.n8 ACCESSING RENDERMAN The RenderMan procedural interface consists of over 90 procedural calls used to transfer a scene description from a modeling program to a visual rendering program. The calls include complete sets of geometric modeling primitives, modeling transforms and a wide variety of rendering and display attributes. PhotoRealistic RenderMan interprets the RIB files and renders the image. There are a number of commercially available converters which carry data from popular modeling and animation software into RenderMan. For example, conversion software is available for design programs from Alias, Wavefront and SoftImage. Developers can also use the RenderMan procedural interfaces to write their own application that outputs data as RenderMan Interface Bytestream (RIB) files. IMAGE OUTPUT Pixar's RenderMan will output 24-, 32-, or 64-bit color images in a wide variety of formats including TIFF, TGA, Alias, SGI and EPS format. MULTI-PLATFORM DISTRIBUTED RENDERING Pixar's RenderMan operates on most popular UNIX-based workstations. Productivity gains may be achieved by distributing RenderMan jobs across a network of like or unlike rendering servers. Alfred's command language allows the separable components of a final frame rendering, such as shadows or reflections, to be distributed to remote network renderers simultaneously thereby providing the fastest single frame rendering possible. Alfred also acts as a resource manager for network based services. Requests for these services, such as network renderers, are coordinated by Alfred. Availability of these resources is determined by a producer controlled "white-board." This white-board specifies resources, such as rendering machines, groups, users, and times that these will be available. Alfred was designed to be used in conjunctions with ATOR. In addition, developers can create "Alfred savvy" applications, or create distributed services that can be managed by Alfred. "Pixar's RenderMan allows technical directors to get their hands on any part of the image-making process and use it to make decisions about the surface or volume they are rendering. With the added power of a multitude of spatial coordinate systems for decision-making in creating visual detail, RenderMan encourages real-world observation to simulate how things really look." Jim Hillin, CG Supervisor Digital Domain "The hyper-real style we've been able to achieve with these tools has contributed immensely to 'believability' in our spots and is becoming popular with our top clients. ...It's a 'look' that, I believe, is here to stay." James Houk CGI Creative Director - The Edefx Group THE RENDERMAN UNIVERSE There are over 120,000 users of RenderMan products worldwide. Many 3D graphics applications output their modeling data in the RenderMan RIB format. PIXAR'S RENDERMAN The essential renderer for technical professionals who create digital effects. The Abyss AeroSmith Video Aladdin Apollo 13 Balto Batman Forever Batman Returns Beauty and The Beast Bunn Coffee Maker Casper CBS's - Winter Olympics Clear and Present Danger Cliffhanger Congo Convergence Superbowl Death Becomes Her Demolition Man Digital Music Express Forrest Gump Free Willy Indian in the Cupboard Interview with a Vampire Jetsons The Jungle Book Jumanji Jurassic Park Life Savers The Lion King Listerine The Mask Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Minnesota State Lottery Miracle on 34th Street Mortal Combat Outbreak Peter Gabriel CD Pocahantas Species Speed Star Trek VI StarQuest Super Mario Brothers Tall Tale Terminator 2 Time Cop Tin Toy Toy Story Tropicana True Lies Under Siege II Viper Young Sherlock Holmes ZZ Top Video _________________________________________________________________ © 1996 Pixar Animation Studios, All Rights Reserved. .