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Pixar Celebrates 20 Years of RenderMan at SIGGRAPH 2008

Announcing RenderMan Pro Server 14.0

EMERYVILLE, CA - (August 11th, 2008) Pixar Animation Studios today announced full details of the latest version of its Academy Award winning RenderMan Pro Server software to mark the occasion of RenderMan's 20th anniversary.

RenderMan Pro Server 14.0 introduces significant performance enhancements including accelerated ray-tracing, faster processing of large polygon datasets, optimized hair performance, faster AOV's, and enhanced threading scalability. New core features that facilitate the development of custom tools include a re-rendering mode for accelerated interactive shading and lighting, a new SDK for easy linking, a Python binding for simplified integration, user-defined structures in the RenderMan shading language, (RSL 2.0) an API for reading brick maps, and a new format for point clouds. RenderMan Pro Server 14.0 also offers full compatibility with 64-bit Windows Vista desktop and 64-bit Windows HPC Server 2008, increasing the choice of available render-farm pipeline configurations. RenderMan Pro Server 14.0 will ship in the fall of 2008.

The product of 20 years of continuous research, development, and production usage, RenderMan with its singular focus on high performance photo-realistic imagery has played a pivotal role in the ongoing revolution in cinematic special effects and animation. Pixar's family of RenderMan products is currently the most comprehensive, dependable, and production tested rendering solution available.

"What began as an interesting artistic exercise is now an indispensable tool," said George Lucas. "It's notable that twenty years after putting its first pixels on the screen, RenderMan remains the benchmark for all rendering technology."

"The fact that RenderMan's REYES architecture can now take full advantage of the performance offered by 64-bit Windows Vista and Windows HPC Server 2008, means that extremely large datasets, impossibly large for 32-bit systems can be rendered. This makes it possible to create images with incredible complexity and raises the bar once again for cinematic imagery and visual effects." said Turner Whitted, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research.

"RenderMan's widespread use among facilities whose reputation depends on creating consistently excellent imagery is telling." said John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. "RenderMan's extreme flexibility, quality, robustness and scalability, has made it the gold standard for film production."

Availability
RenderMan Pro Server 14.0 is compatible with Mac OS X, Linux, Windows XP, Windows Vista 64 bit, and Windows HPC Server 2008. Upgrade pricing from RenderMan Pro Server 13.5 will be available. In addition, Pixar's maintenance program benefits customers with access to ongoing support and upgrades for an annual fee. For more information visit www.pixar.com or 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 DisneyoPixar is UP (May 29, 2009).