June 23, 2015

OpenSubdiv Version 3.0 Released

EMERYVILLE, Calif. – June 23, 2015 – Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation announced today the release of OpenSubdiv version 3.0, the popular subdivision surface library. This joint effort by the studios’ graphics R&D teams brings improved performance and reduced memory consumption, while continuing to leverage the massive parallelism available on modern GPU and CPU architectures.

OpenSubdiv 3.0 takes a bold step forward with a near complete rewrite of the library, greatly improving performance and simplifying the API.

“We learned a lot of lessons from OpenSubdiv 2.0, in terms of design, performance, and especially the importance of usability,” said Jeremy Cowles, GPU team lead at Pixar. “We want OpenSubdiv to be efficient, flexible, and approachable, not just for largescale integrations, but also for smaller projects, students and studio R&Dwith
3.0, we’ve taken huge steps in the right direction for everyone.”

The deep changes to the library have also yielded new levels of performance not previously achievable: GPU subdivision performance has been improved by a factor of 4x, while the core CPU subdivision algorithms have been improved by an order of magnitude, a 10x speedup.

Thanks to a revamp and simplification of the GPU shader architecture, screen-space feature adaptive tessellation in OpenSubdiv 3.0 is faster, simpler and now fits well into any existing rendering architecture, a huge improvement for DCCs and game engines.

More information about the release can be found at the official OpenSubdiv website:
http://www.opensubdiv.org

About Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is an Academy Award®winning film studio with world-renowned
technical, creative and production capabilities in the art of computer animation. Creator of some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time, including “Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL•E,” “Up,” “Toy Story 3” and “Brave,” the Northern California studio has won 30 Academy Awards® and its films have grossed more than $8.7 billion at the worldwide box office to date. “Inside Out,” Pixar’s fifteenth feature, is currently in theaters.

About DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation (Nasdaq: DWA) creates high-quality entertainment, including CG animated feature films, television specials and series and live entertainment properties, meant for audiences around the world. The company has world-class creative talent, a strong and experienced management team and advanced filmmaking technology and techniques. All of DreamWorks Animation’s feature films are produced in 3D. The Company has theatrically released a total of 31 animated feature films, including the franchise properties of Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Puss In Boots , and The Croods.

About OpenSubdiv
OpenSubdiv is a set of open source libraries that implement high-performance subdivision surface (subdiv) evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures. The code embodies decades of research and experience by Pixar, and a collaboration with industry leaders such as Microsoft Research, DreamWorks and others.