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
