RenderMan Art & Science Fair 2025

Thanks to everyone who made the RenderMan Art & Science Fair a huge success, especially our sponsors Dell, AMD, AWS, and NVIDIA! It was a wonderful night of catching up with old friends, discovering the latest rendering innovations at Pixar, and of course the attendees received the new RenderMan Walking Teapot!

Pixar's head of RenderMan marketing, Dylan Sisson, kicked off the main stage presentation with the latest look at RenderMan XPU, Pixar's new hybrid CPU + GPU renderer, with live demos highlighting creative improvements thanks to interactive gains powered by XPU on AMD CPUs and dual NVIDIA GPUs on a state-of-the-art Dell workstation.

The new RenderMan art challenge was also announced! We're calling it "First Contact," to celebrate Elio and the 30th anniversary of Toy Story.

RenderMan Product Director, Mark Manca, and Pixar’s Supervising Technical Director, Renee Tam, treated the audience to an exclusive first look at the opening 72 seconds of Toy Story 5, rendered entirely in XPU! This was more than just a preview, it was a landmark moment for XPU, showcasing its power and production readiness. They also discussed the challenges of rolling out XPU onto production shots, sharing insights into the struggles, breakthroughs, and new solutions that come with taking Pixar’s production pipeline to the next level.

Pixar Principal RenderMan engineers Per Christensen and Julian Fong showcased the technological leaps XPU offers over RenderMan's current technology, including interesting statistics around resource usage and speedups. 

We were also very lucky to have the great Ian Failes, from Befores and Afters, host a wonderful panel showcasing the future of rendering with panelists:

• Steve May -- Pixar
• Rob Bredow -- Industrial Light & Magic
• Munira Tayabji -- Disney Animation
• Bob Sumner -- Disney Research

A special shout out to Foundry, Greyscalegorilla, and Xencelabs for amazing raffle prizes and support in the new RenderMan art challenge!

Live demos were available all night for attendees to see the latest version of XPU in action before its release later this year and to interact with developers and artists showcasing the latest and greatest RenderMan community projects.

• RenderMan Stylization -- Christos Obretenov, Pixar. Ernst Janssen Groesbeek, 9 to 3 Animation. Fabio Sciedlarczyk, Damn Vizdev.
• Elucidae, a Chris Herrick Project -- Tallee Jo, Think Tank Training Centre. Leif Pedersen, Pixar.
• RenderMan Art Challenge -- Eugene Riecansky, Pixar.
• Elio, live in Katana  -- Tom Nettleship, Pixar.

Thanks for making it a fantastic event in Vancouver. It was awesome to catch up with friends during Siggraph and showcase the wonderful technology we're developing at Pixar.

See you next year!