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Pixar's RenderMan at SIGGRAPH 2009

Pixar makes several big announcements.

This year at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans, Pixar is making four key announcements of significant importance to the world of rendering.

1. A major change to the RenderMan® licensing policy with the introduction of unlimited threading per license invocation for all RenderMan products. At the release of RenderMan Pro Server v15.0 there will be no longer be any restrictions on the number of threads and cores that can be used by each RenderMan license.  Also, going forwards new purchasers of the current RenderMan Pro Server v14.0 are entitled to a free upgrade when RenderMan Pro Server v15.0 is released.
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2. The first announcement is RenderMan Pro Server v15.0 that will be released in the fall including true volume primitives, major additions to the RenderMan Shader Language (RSL), support for Disney’s forthcoming open-source Ptex per face painted textures, imager shaders, an API for subdivision surfaces, and more. This release also includes significant performance enhancements for rendering production scenes, including optimized memory management and improved thread scalability.
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3. The first public announcement of Tractor™ v1.0, Pixar’s new industrial strength distributed computing solution built from the ground up on an architecture designed to handle the largest multi-core render farms of tens of thousands of cores and more. 
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4. The first public announcement of a major collaboration with academic software specialist Journey Ed Marketing that will for the first time make all RenderMan products available to individual students at an accessible price. If you are at SIGGRAPH, you can also visit Journey Ed at booth #2627 for more details.

Pixar’s main Siggraph booth (#2117) has an “Up” theme and consists of an information desk and front presentation theater in which we will demonstrate RenderMan products, conduct “how to” tutorials, and present customer testimonials.
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Pixar recruitment will also be present with members of Pixar’s production staff who can answer your questions.

On each day of the show Pixar will distribute Up posters at 9.30 am and the ever-popular RenderMan Teapots at 1.00 pm. Long lines are expected so please arrive early if you are attending SIGGRAPH this year.

The RenderMan user's group meeting will take place on Wednesday August 5th 2009. Doors open at 6.30pm at the Armstrong Ballroom, Sheraton New Orleans, 500 Canal Street. (The official SIGGRAPH HQ) We have a full agenda this year, including an update on Pixar's latest products and technology along with the ever-popular annual Stupid Rat Tricks. Spare invitations can be requested from the Pixar booth.

Pixar’s David Laur is also hosting a SIGGRAPH Birds of a Feather meeting on render farming in meeting room 264 on Tuesday at 12.00 pm. All studio artists, TD,s sys-admin’s, vendors, and other interested parties are welcome for a casual get together for socializing, exchanging ideas, and putting faces to names.

Details about this, and other Birds of a Feather meetings, can be found at the Official Siggraph Schedule

Please check back soon for more news about Pixar at SIGGRAPH 2009.

For more details regarding these announcements please contact RenderManSales@Pixar.com

About Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is an Academy Award®-winning film studio with world-renowned technical, creative and production capabilities in the art of computer animation. Creator of some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time, including Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and most recently, WALL•E. The Northern California studio has won 21 Academy Awards® and its nine films have grossed more than $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office to date. The next film release from Disney/Pixar is UP (May 29, 2009).

Pixar & RenderMan are registered trademarks of Pixar Animation Studios.