Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
at 5:30PM

This talk presents an overview of the technical departments and processes at Pixar Animation Studios, describing various roles that computer science plays in the development of our films. While it may be obvious that computer science is crucial to tools development for a computer graphics animation studio, the dual artistic-technical role of the TD may not be as well understood. Using Disney/Pixar's WALL-E as an example, technical challenges which are faced and solved by TDs making a feature animated film will be described. Attendees will come away with a sense of what kinds of roles TDs in various areas of production play, and how computer science training can be applied in each of these areas.

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj is a generalist Technical Director working at Pixar Animation Studios since 2002. Working on The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and WALL-E, he has primarily done shading, cloth and hair simulation, rendering and compositing, and software development. Prior to Pixar, Stephan worked in the game and web industries, as Deputy CTO at artificial intelligence R&D company Webmind, and as a multimedia Research MTS at Bell Labs