Loren C. Carpenter (born February 7, 1947) is a

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

researcher and developer.

Biography

He was a co-founder and chief scientist of

Pixar Animation Studios Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

. He is the co-inventor of the

Reyes rendering Reyes rendering is a computer software architecture used in 3D computer graphics to render photo-realistic images. It was developed in the mid-1980s by Loren Carpenter and Robert L. Cook at Lucasfilm's Computer Graphics Research Group, which is n ...

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 The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

acquisition of Pixar, Carpenter became a Senior Research Scientist at

Disney Research Disney Research is a network of research labs supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. It has facilities in Los Angeles, Z ...

. He retired in early 2014. In around 1967 Carpenter began work at Boeing Computer Services (a part of aircraft maker

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

) in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

. 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 The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. 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 ...

Open EXR OpenEXR is a high-dynamic range, multi-channel raster file format, released as an open standard along with a set of software tools created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), under a free software license similar to the BSD license. It is no ...

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.'' (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 ''The Incredibles'' is a 2004 American computer-animated superhero film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Written and directed by Brad Bird, it stars the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah V ...

'' (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'' (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 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