Loren C. Carpenter (born February 7, 1947) is a computer graphics researcher and developer.

Biography

He was a co-founder and chief scientist of Pixar Animation Studios. He is the co-inventor of the Reyes rendering algorithm and is one of the authors of the PhotoRealistic RenderMan software which implements Reyes and renders all of Pixar's movies. Following Disney's acquisition of Pixar, Carpenter became a Senior Research Scientist at Disney Research. He retired in early 2014. In around 1967 Carpenter began work at Boeing Computer Services (a part of aircraft maker Boeing) in Seattle, Washington. During his time there Carpenter studied for a B.S. in Mathematics (1974) and an M.S. in Computer Science (1976), both from the University of Washington. Some of his work concerned using computer technology to improve Boeing's mechanical design processes, which were still entirely done by hand on paper. On July 14, 1980 he gave a presentation at the

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference on computer graphics (CG) organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH, starting in 1974. The main conference is held in North America; SIGGRAPH Asia ...

conference, in which he showed "Vol Libre", a 2-minute computer generated movie.kottke.org. 2009. Vol Libre, an amazing CG film from 1980. nlineAvailable at: http://kottke.org/09/07/vol-libre-an-amazing-cg-film-from-1980 This showcased his software for generating and rendering

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...

ly generated landscapes, and was met with a standing ovation, and (as Carpenter had hoped) he was immediately invited to work at

Lucasfilm Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is best known for creating and producing the ''Star Wars'' and ' ...

's Computer Division (which would become Pixar). There Carpenter worked on the "genesis effect" scene of '' Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'', which featured an entire fractally-landscaped planet. He and his wife Rachel founded Cinematrix, a company that researches computer-assisted interactive audience participation. Carpenter invented the A-buffer hidden surface determination algorithm. The PXR24 compression scheme used in

Industrial Light & Magic Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...

's Open EXR file format is based on Carpenter's work. In 2006 made improvements to the popular Mersenne Twister random number generator.

Computer animation

*'' Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'' (1982) computer graphics:

*''

André and Wally B. André — sometimes transliterated as Andre — is the French and Portuguese form of the name Andrew, and is now also used in the English-speaking world. It used in France, Quebec, Canada and other French-speaking countries. It is a variation ...

'' (1984) 3D rendering *'' Tin Toy'' (1988) elf *'' Toy Story'' (1995) modeling & animation system development/modeling team/renderman software development/shader team *'' A Bug's Life'' (1998) modeling artist *'' Toy Story 2'' (1999) rendering software engineer *''

Monsters, Inc. ''Monsters, Inc.'' (also known as ''Monsters, Incorporated'') is a 2001 American computer-animated Monster movie, monster comedy film produced by Pixar, Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, B ...

'' (2001) additional effects developer *''

Finding Nemo ''Finding Nemo'' is a 2003 American computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton with co-direction by Lee Unkrich, the screenplay was writ ...

'' (2003) studio tools research and development *'' The Incredibles'' (2004) software engineering *'' Cars'' (2006) development team: Renderman *'' Ratatouille'' (2007) renderman development *'' WALL-E'' (2008): (theme parks: Pixar studio team *'' Up'' (2009) theme parks and 360: Pixar studio team *'' Toy Story 3'' (2010) 360 group: Pixar studio team *''

Cars 2 ''Cars 2'' is a 2011 American computer-animated Spy film, spy comedy film produced by Pixar, Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the sequel to ''Cars (film), Cars'' (2006), the second film in the Cars (franchise), ''Cars'' f ...

'' (2011) 360 group: Pixar studio team *''

Brave Brave most commonly refers to: *Brave, an adjective for one who possesses courage *Braves (Native Americans), a EuroAmerican stereotype for Native American warriors Brave(s) or The Brave(s) may also refer to: Film and television * ''Brave'' (199 ...

'' (2012) 360 group: Pixar studio team *''

Monsters University ''Monsters University'' is a 2013 American computer-animated monster comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Dan Scanlon (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Kori ...

'' (2013) researcher: software research and development, Pixar Studio Team

Awards

* 1985, ACM SIGGRAPH Achievement Award. * 1992, Scientific and Technical Academy Award (Plaque) for his contributions to the motion picture industry through the invention and development of the RenderMan software. * 1994, Distinction by the Prix Ars Electronica jury for his entry ''Kinoetic Evolution'' in the category Interactive Art. * 1995, Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

. * 2000, Academy Award of Merit (Statuette). * 2017,

Cayman Islands International Film Festival The Cayman Islands International Film Festival, also called CayFilm, is held annually in the Cayman Islands. The festival opened in June 2015, with an introductory event in 2014 being attended by Terrence Howard and Jon Chu. In the first year ap ...

Lifetime Achievement Award

Bibliography

* Loren Carpenter, "The A -buffer, an antialiased hidden surface method", ''ACM Siggraph Computer Graphics'', vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 103–108, 1984 * Robert L. Cook, Loren Carpenter, and Edwin Catmull. "The Reyes image rendering architecture." ''Computer Graphics (

'87 Proceedings)'', pp. 95–102. * Robert L. Cook,

Thomas K. Porter Thomas K. Porter is the senior vice president of production strategy at Pixar and one of the studio's founding employees. Professional life After receiving a master's degree in computer science at Stanford University in 1975, Porter worked at the ...

, Loren Carpenter, "Distributed ray tracing", ''ACM Siggraph Computer Graphics'', vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 137–145, 1984

References

External links

Cinematrix
from Kevin Kelly's book '' Out of Control'' about Carpenter's Vol Libre animation.
Vol Libre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carpenter, Loren University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences alumni Computer graphics professionals Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 1947 births Living people Pixar people People from Brighton, Michigan Disney Research people Recipients of the Scientific and Technical Academy Award of Merit