Pixar has added a new cloud-based service to its Renderman software suite called Renderman On Demand. Renderman is the industry dominant rendering engine used by those involved with 3D computer image generation. The software takes the raw 3D data and processes it into a finished image.

The process is very hardware intensive, and a big struggle for small companies in the industry is investing in enough hardware to render their images in a reasonable amount of time. Most companies spent millions of dollars building their own super computers known as Render Farms to handle their processing. This new service through Pixar's Renderman software allows customers to rent server time for 70 cents per processor core per hour all done "in the cloud" over the internet on rendering servers located in France. Pixar partnered with GreenButton, a cloud computing company to make all the magic possible.

A handful of Silicon Valley's top tech companies have come under scorn for the unlawful anti-poaching agreements they've established between themselves. Pixar, Apple, Google, Adobe, Intuit, Intel and Lucasfilm will be facing a class action lawsuit next week in San Jose, CA. The charges allege that these companies had mutual agreements to not mutually recruit each others' employees, to not hire those who voluntarily applied, and report to their employer any employee who was seeking employment at another company in the agreement.

I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we’ll follow a Gentleman’s agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement.

Lori McAdams – Pixar eMail 2007

Similar eMails have been dug up from the archives of other companies. The objective behind these agreements is to eliminate competition between the companies for skilled employees in order to keep employee salaries lower. If found guilty, the companies may be required to provide compensation for damages to employees that might have otherwise been earning more money without such agreements.

The Disney Press is set to release a picture book based on Pixar's upcoming animated short film La Luna. Enrico Casarosa, the short's director, tweeted a preview photo of the cover yesterday. The book is said to feature many beautiful watercolor illustrations from Pixar artists and even Casarosa himself.

The book is already up for pre-order on Amazon with a supposed, but rarely-reliable release date set for May 18th.