The mighty animation studio has decided to share its Subd evaluation code as used on its latest feature Brave. Download the software yourself for free!
Pixar has decided to open source its Subd evaluation code, called Open SubDiv.
It’s “a set of open source libraries that implement high performance subdivision surface evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures.”
With the release, Pixar hopes to “encourage high performance accurate subdiv drawing by giving away the ‘good stuff’.”
This is a massive step for Pixar and software development: in making the software open source, anyone and everyone can improve the software. If this release is successful, maybe more software will follow.
“Pixar’s Manuel Kraemer told the Siggrpah conference last week that the code is used at Pixar and that a full release is due late in 2012″, reports The Register. “Kraemer also said the studio has decided to freely licence some of its patents to make it possible to use Open SubDiv without attendant angst about future legal worries.”
The source code is available at GitHub.
We can’t wait to see what you do with it! So show us once you’ve downloaded it and had a play!
Kraemer explains Open SubDiv and shows off some of the ways Pixar has put it to use, including in its recent Brave, in the video on The Register’s site.
Posted on Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 2:50 pm under News, Technology. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: Brave, free, open source, Pixar, software
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