General News

Pixar Guest Speaker Schedule, SIGGRAPH 2009

Artist's Visualization of Pixar booth (#2117) at SIGGRAPH 2009

Talk Descriptions

RenderMan Shaders for Production

Laurent Charbonnel – Rendering Consultant

Presentation – Laurent will reveal some of the strategies for using Pixar's RenderMan in production environments. From writing efficient shaders to optimizing renders Laurent will show how to get the most from Pixar's RenderMan toolset.

Bio – Laurent Charbonnel – Started as a rendering software engineer for IPR–Render at TDI / Alias–Wavefront. Moved on to do look development and shader writing for movie studios. Started a consulting company for shading and rendering. Credits (partial list): Dinosaur, HollowMan, SharkTale, The Wild, Surf's Up.

Realflow RenderKit: Making BIG splashes

Andy Cochrane – VFX Consultant/Artist

Presentation – Andy Cochrane will be introducing the RealFlow RenderKit, a plugin from NextLimit that uses RenderMan's DSOs to generate meshes or shaded particles at render time from particles simulated in RealFlow.  Andy will walk through the old mesh and particle based pipelines that were required before this tool existed, and then he will introduce the powerful capabilities of this new method of rendering fluid effects.

Bio –  Andy Cochrane is a CG artist and filmmaker working in feature film and commercial production in Los Angeles.  His credits include recent fluid FX work on National Treasure 2, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Friday the 13th.  As a 3D generalist, he has worked in every aspect of VFX, including previs, particle FX, matchmoving, animating, rigging, lighting, and even compositing.

Production Rendering at Weta Digital

Luca Fascione – Senior RnD Software Engineer, Weta Digital
Martin Hill – Head of Shaders, Weta Digital

Presentation – Examining a few shots from production at Weta Digital, Luca and Martin will describe how they used Pixar’s RenderMan to develop solutions for overcoming technical challenges.

Bios:
   Luca Fascione – Software engineer at Weta Digital, working primarily on rendering technologies.  Holds a MS in Mathematics from University of Rome.
   Martin Hill – Shader writer at Weta Digital, on projects such as King Kong, Waterhorse, currently working on Avatar.

ZBrush to RenderMan: The Boxer

Paul Gaboury – 3D Technical Specialist, Pixologic

Presentation – Paul Baboury will introduce you to the intuitive sculpting power of ZBrush and show how these complex ZBrush models can be rendered efficiently in RenderMan. The demo will give you an understanding how quick you can change a sculpt and then output a Texture Map, Normal Map and Displacement from ZBrush to RenderMan all with using Pixologic's newest installment GoZ.

Bio – Paul Gaboury is the 3D Technical Specialist for Pixologic the makers of ZBrush. Paul offers support to studios such as Blur Studios, Legacy Effects, Bad Robot, and etc to integrate a digital sculpting atmosphere within their pipeline. As a member of the development as well at Pixologic Paul is involved with creating new innovative tools for ZBrush. This also gives Paul an opportunity to work with schools on incorporating ZBrush into their curriculum. Paul has studied art at Bowling Green State University and was an extension student at Gnomon School of Special Effects.

Introducing Student Pricing for RenderMan!

Greg Lamkin – Director of Sales, JourneyEd

Presentation – Pixar's RenderMan products are now available to students, educators and schools at discounted educational pricing. These offers are available exclusively from Journey Education Marketing (JourneyEd.com), the nations leading provider of software and technology products to students, educators and schools. Students, educators and school buyers should attend this session to learn all the details. In addition to a deeply discounted student price, we will provide exciting news to educators. For more information, visit www.JourneyEd.com/RenderMan

Bio – Greg Lamkin is the Director of Sales, North America for Journey Education. He began working for JourneyEd in 2001 as a regional account manager, then left for a few years to help head up the education channel sales team for Mindjet, returning to JourneyEd as Director in 2006. He is versed on how the education market operates and pleased to begin the partnership with Pixar.

RenderMan in the Real World

Francis Liu – CG Supervisor, Digital Domain
Kevin Smith – CG Supervisor, Weta Digital

Presentation – With over 30 years of combined experience in CGI, Francis and Kevin will share their stories, tales and anecdotes from the trenches of feature film effects. Come and gain insight into how shading and lighting is approached in real-world productions.

Bios: 
   Francis Liu – He is a 14 year veteran of the Visual Effects Industry.  Over the years his extensive Lighting and Rendering background has contributed to many characters and environments in films such as: Volcano; The X–Files; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; Spiderman 1; Bad Boys 2; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and Beowulf.  He has worked at several FX facilities including Dream Quest Images, Disney's Secret Lab, and Sony Imageworks.  Francis is currently a CG Supervisor at Digital Domain working on Tron Legacy.
   Kevin Smith – Since working as a sysadmin at Boss Film Studios, I've spent the last 16 years working in visual effects, the last 12 as a TD. I've done roto, textures, rig and wire removal, comped animated, coded, shaded and lit, although not all for the same shot, and spend most of my time now lighting shots and writing shaders. I've spent time at Boss Film, Warner Digital, Pac Title, Cinesite and Imageworks and I'm currently a CG supervisor at Weta Digital in New Zealand.

CineMan, Integration of Pixar's RenderMan for CINEMA 4D

Kai Pedersen, Tech Support Manager, MAXON Computer Inc.

Presentation – MAXON's CINEMA 4D Release 11 Advanced Render Module includes CineMan, a RenderMan–compliant RIB exporter that integrates Pixar's RenderMan directly into the CINEMA 4D GUI. This presentation will be a brief introduction to CINEMA 4D, the CineMan workflow, and the exciting new integration of Pixar's RenderMan technology for users of CINEMA 4D.

Bio – Kai has worked as a Technical Director in commercials and film at a Vancouver studio, LucentDreams Animation. He was an R&D TD for One Night With the King, a production that served as the development test bed for CineMan. Kai joined MAXON Computer Inc. as the Tech Support Manager to aid in highend studio level technical support and training for features such as CineMan.

Shading the Many: How we used Slim to shade Crowd Robots on Pixar's WALL•E

Maxwell Planck, Tech Supervisor, Pixar Animation Studios

Presentation – The challenge with shading crowds is creating a population that is believably complex and detailed in as little time as possible. During the making of Pixar’s WALL•E, we were tasked with filling a city–sized spaceship with robotic and human characters. Art direction called for visual uniformity, showing conformism had set in amongst characters marooned in space for 700 years, but with enough visual difference to create a believably rich population. On top of the visual requirements, we needed to shade the 200+ characters quickly, ensure render efficiency, and work with a reduced set of our shading tools. To do this, we developed a flexible global shading palette, an automatic approach for driving shading features based on curvature and gprim proximity, and a process for baking customized surface details into a more efficient data set, using Slim as the backbone tool of our approaches.

Bio – Maxwell Planck – BS from MIT in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.  Graduated in 2004.  Have worked at Pixar for 5 years.
Filmography:

• 2004–2006 : Illumination Engineer (Cars)
• 2006–2007 : Global Tech Engineer (Wall*e)
• 2007–2008 : Shading Artist (Wall*e)
• 2008–2009 : Sets Technical Lead (Up)
• 2009–Present : Pipeline/Global Tech Supervisor

 

What's "Up" with RenderMan?
An intro to Pixar's rendering technology

Dylan Sisson – Technical Marketing Specialist, Pixar Animation Studios
Presentation – Come learn more about Pixar's RenderMan and how Pixar uses this rendering technology in production, including shading and lighting examples from Pixar's, Up. Additionally, you'll learn in what ways Pixar's RenderMan can enhance your own 3D projects with a demonstration of RenderMan for Maya. From feature–length films to small independent animations, you'll see how your own projects can immediately benefit from the power of RenderMan. 
Bio – Since his arrival at Pixar in 1999, Dylan Sissonhas been engaged in the development of the RenderMan Products. He is also the creator of RenderMan's infamous walking teapot. Prior to Pixar, Dylan began his career writing and illustrating comic books. From there it was a short step into 2D animation, which led into working in all apects of 3D production for games and commercials. An active artist, Dylan's digital artwork and animated shorts have been shown at industry events such as SIGGRAPH.

Massive and RenderMan in Production

Presentation:
Part 1 – Shading the Masses
Mark Thielen - CG Supervisor, Radium
Learn how to maximize the look of crowds of characters with well designed shaders and textures. Using Massive Software, one can create unique looks quickly with the ability to make adjustments at the shot level.
Part 2 – 'Filtration'
Daniel Maskit - Senior Technical Director, Digital Domain
This is a discussion of a set of tools designed to allow lighter's visualization and control over rendering of Massive crowds while working in Maya. This presentation shows a portion of the lighting pipeline for 'Mummy 3.'
Bios:
   Mark Thielen – Mark is the CG supervisor at Radium. He has a character animation background with over 10 years of CG experience. His experience ranges from film and television to commercials. He has been using Massive Software for almost 6 years. He was the Massive supervisor for The Ant Bully, Blades of Glory, The Leatherheads and many commercials.
   Daniel Maskit – is a Lead Technical Director at Digital Domain. He has worked on films such as 'Flags of Our Fathers,' 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End,' 'I, Robot,' The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,' and 'GI JOE.' He is currently Technical Lead for 'Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief.' He has a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and both an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Caltech.

Foreign Language Demo (Japanese)

Introduction to RenderMan for Maya

(Japanese Language Demo)
Ichiro Tanaka – Indyzone, Japan
Presentation – Ichiro Tanaka will give an overview of the new RenderMan products. Additionally he will give demonstration of RenderMan for Maya. This presentation is in Japanese.

Pixar & RenderMan are registered trademarks of Pixar Animation Studios.