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Disney open-sources 3D code

Published on 21st January 2010 by Gareth Halfacree

The Ptex texture mapping library - as used in the Disney Pixar film Bolt - is now available for all under a BSD licence.

The cause of open-source 3D rendering just got a shot in the arm from a somewhat surprising source - the Disney corporation.

As announced over on Monophyl.com - via Slashdot - the corporation's animation arm, Walt Disney Animation Studios, has released its Ptex 3D texture mapping code under a BSD open-source licence.

The move - which is thought to be the brainchild of the company's chief technology officer Greg Brandeau - was announced by developer Brent Burley last week, who stated that the open-source edition of Ptex is "the same production-proven code used at disney and included with Pixar's PRMan."

Promising "full support for reading, writing, caching, and filtering Ptex texture files," the project brings the same technology to the open-source community that was first used in Disney Pixar's short Glago's Guest before making its feature-length debut in 2008 kids' film Bolt - and pretty much all subsequent Disney Pixar animations.

According to Burley, the release of Ptex as a BSD-licensed open-source package isn't a one-off event: in a statement the developer claims that "[Walt Disney Animation Studios] expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial," with plans to launch a new page dedicated to its open-source projects on the official Disney Animation site..

The Ptex source code is available now from the official website, and a discussion group has been formed over at Google Groups.

Any 3D coders finding the thought of using Pixar technology in their next project exciting, or is Disney simply trying to get some free help with improving its software from the open source community? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

9 Comments

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woodss 21st January 2010, 14:12

*clap clap disney*

[USRF]Obiwan 21st January 2010, 14:15

If I had oozes of free time and lots of money. I would have used it to happily render all day/week/year. But since I need to work to pay my food and other stuff to live and need my spare time to see the world and sleep. I can't.

mi1ez 21st January 2010, 14:35

If they have released it in order to gain, they are probably giving far more than they will ever gain. Fantastic show Disney!

fodder 21st January 2010, 17:11

This makes a whole lot of sense.

Commercially they are unlikely to make much out of selling the software, but may have come to a dead end with their own development team. This way they get a much larger pool of creativity working on it and will probably gain themselves in the long term with improved tools.

The main income is from the films themselves, so a speedier or improved set of tools is very beneficial.

Big thumbs up to Disney for playing the long game.

Javerh 21st January 2010, 19:12

Plus this way they effectively publish a prior art that prevents their competitors from patenting a similar method.

K.I.T.T. 21st January 2010, 23:13

So they have a large pool of people working on it, thats a huge plus for them...maybe they're considering prospective employees. If they're tools are out there and people want to work for them or even just get to know what the industry uses then you can. Allowing you to apply for jobs and for Disney to hire people who already have experience using their own software and thus removing he time needed for getting used to working with their tools.

I mean, obviously this sits on top of having a huge community of people who will make improvements and changes to it so all in all...nice one Disney, nice to see some companies these days still know how to play the game.

Bede 22nd January 2010, 00:19

Everybody wins. The 'community' gets a damn good toolset to use, and will make beautiful things. Disney gets potential employees pre-trained in their proprietary software, plus possible optimisations and developments in the s/ware, plus happy open-source-save-the-planet kudos, plus may possibly make their Ptex so ubiquitous that other companies license it from them rather than develop their own.

Hezza 25th January 2010, 17:06

They've just released the specifications for the file format, like TIF's, JPG's or openEXR's and the API to get data in and out. I don't think much development will happen to that outside of disney. What this will allow is other companies to intergrate it into their pipelines, and in the next couple of years for it to filter down into commercial packages.

The software shown in the demo is disney's propriety inhouse 3dpaint sofware which they aren't releasing :/ But hopefully Zbrush or Mudbox will support it soon enough, then it just needs to be picked up by more renders than PRman or other renderman compliant one (which I think will probably take the longest out of all the above)

Shagbag 26th January 2010, 23:35

a BSD License