"The Rendering Technology Behind the Making of 'Cars'"
Wayne Wooten, GVU Alum
Pixar Animation Studios

12:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 19, 2007
Klaus Advanced Computing Building, 1st Floor, Room 1116

Pixar has developed some of the world's most advanced techniques for generating computer animated feature films, recently receiving an Oscar nomination for "Cars." In this talk, I plan to discuss the rendering research and development that occurs at Pixar and the techniques behind the feature film production process. My talk will touch on a number of topics that students should master in order to be attractive candidates for the feature film industry. Sequences from Pixar's latest feature film, "Cars" will be used as a case study for presenting the various pieces of technology required to create the final product.

Wayne Wooten works in the RenderMan Tools group at Pixar Animation Studios. He works as a member of the research and development team at Pixar to develop new rendering software for use on animated feature films. His film credits include "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story 2," "Monster's Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." Wayne's recent film credit is for "Cars" where he helped develop new rendering techniques for many effects in the film. Wayne currently works for Pixar in Seattle and is busy developing new rendering techniques for Pixar's next movie, "Ratatouille."

Wayne received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998. His graduate research at the Animation Lab involved generating motion for computer animated human athletes by using control systems in combination with physically realistic dynamic simulation.