Disney's Impressive Rendering Technology

As Joseph Volpe of Engadget reports, the technology that went into creating Disney's upcoming movie Big Hero 6 is insane. Here, he writes about their proprietary rendering software, Hyperion:

“It’s responsible for environmental effects — stuff most audiences might take for granted, like when they see Baymax, the soft, vinyl robot featured in the film, illuminated from behind.That seemingly mundane lighting trick is no small feat; it required the use of a 55,000-core supercomputer spread across four geographic locations.”


To put the enormity of this computational effort into perspective, Hendrickson says that Hyperion “could render Tangled from scratch every 10 days.”

Even more impressive to me as a moviegoer is the invisibility of such wizardry. Most people will never notice or even think about what it took to build and illuminate the complex world of the film, and that's what makes it so magical.