Autodesk Inc, Sausolito, California has signed with Pixar Inc the company where Steve Jobs is a major investor – to market Pixar’s Renderman photorealistic imaging software technology and hopes to make it available on 80386-based personal computers. Autodesk is the first company firm to license the Renderman technology, and will offer it as a complement to its AutoCAD and AutoShade products, while future developments may include a photorealistic connection to the company’s high-end AutoSolid solid modelling system. The company is hoping to have Renderman ready for on 80386 boxes sometime in the third quarter of 1989. Pixar is on the dividing line where the computer industry meets showbiz, and works in the sexy field of computer animation for the film industry and for other video graphic art applications. Hand-painting all those technically brilliant Walt Disney full length cartoon features was an enormous undertaking for the army of artists that laboriously painted evey frame – there were tricks that cut the work down a bit, even in the 1930s – but even the use of computers has speeded the process less than might have been expected, with days of top-end computer time needed to produce minutes of film.
