Computer Science at Yale

Speaker: Rob Cook, Vice President of Advanced Technology, Pixar Animation Studios, *ACM Fellow
Title: Behind the Scenes at Pixar

Abstract: This talk takes you behind the scenes at Pixar Animation Studios for a look at how its 3D computer graphics films are made. The process starts with the development of the story and continues with modeling the geometry, animating the characters, simulating things like water and cloth and hair, defining the look of the surfaces, putting lights in the scene, and rendering the images. Making a computer animated film requires a close collaboration between artists and technical experts in many areas of expertise and is a great example of the value of bringing different disciplines together.

Bio: Rob Cook has a B.S. in Physics from Duke University and an M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell University. At Cornell, he worked on simulating realistic surfaces, taking computer-generated images beyond the distinctive plastic look they had at the time. In 1981, he joined Lucasfilm / Pixar, where he developed the first programmable shader, which is now an essential part of GPUs and game engines. He was the first to use Monte Carlo techniques in computer graphics, which was essential for the simulation of complex, realistic lights and camera effects. The latter proved particularly important in the special effects industry, because it allowed computer-generated imagery to match the motion blur and depth of field of the live- action footage with which it was combined. In 1987, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Achievement Award in recognition of these contributions. Rob was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which has become the industry standard for photo-realistic rendering; in the last 10 years, every film nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar has used RenderMan. In 2001 he received an Oscar for these contributions, the first ever given for software. He is currently the Vice President of Advanced Technology at Pixar.

*Rob was named an ACM Fellow in 1999. From the fellowship citation,
"Cook invented Monte-Carlo rendering methods for antialiasing, motion blur, depth-of-field, glossy reflections, and translucency. Cook pioneered shading languages and physics-based shading, and co-authored the Renderman software." In addition to the series of highly cited classic papers describing these contributions, he also holds patents on devices for calibrating scanners and printers and measuring and matching colors. His recent research includes novel noise functions and methods for scene simplification.