UPDATED June 13 at 5:42 PM PST: We have posted an in-depth wrap-up review of the entire speech on our post titled, Pixar’s Speech at the Apple WWDC Demonstrating MARI on the New Mac Pro.
During today’s 2013 Apple World Wide Developer Conference, Phil Schiller (Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing) announced that Apple would be releasing a new Mac Pro desktop later this year. Although that’s not Pixar news in and of itself, Phil also informed the crowd that Pixar would be putting the new pro computer through “the paces” at a special lunchtime session tomorrow. The session will highlight some great character animation from the soon-to-be-released Monsters University. Are any of our readers going to the session tomorrow? We’d love to hear a first-hand account of which Pixarian was present, as well as how Pixar highlighted the power of the new Mac Pro through the animation tests.
UPDATED: We have also found out that it will be one of Pixar’s Technical Directors who will be presenting tomorrow (though we still do not know the Pixarian’s name). Additionally, Pixar will also be co-presenting with The Foundry demonstrating its Mari software which is coming to Mac for the first time. According to The Foundry’s website, “MARI is the most fluid and natural way to paint in 3D. It makes life simple for artists by allowing them to paint directly onto 3D models and is capable of handling super high-resolution textures and millions of polygons”.
UPDATED June 11 at 9:00 AM PST: We have learned that the event will officially take place at 12:45 PM PST and will be headed up by Pixarian Jonathan Hoffman (Character Shading Artist). We have also learned that the event is planned to be recorded so we’ll keep everyone up to date if we’re able to pass along a link to the presentation.
UPDATED June 12 at 7:30 AM PST: As of now the video recording of the session has not been posted to the Apple Developer website – we’ll keep watching to see if it gets posted and update our readers if it does.
UPDATED June 12 at 1:05 PM PST: An additional comment from Jack Greaser (presented with The Foundry at the event) was posted on the Luxology Forum (UPDATED: Removed as the link is no longer active) this afternoon at 11:08 PM PST. In addition to Jack mentioning that the video should be updated this afternoon, he also said, “Jonathan (from Pixar) worked wonders with Mari on the New Mac Pros, No crashes, no slow downs! Phew“.
To view the video (as well as many of the other pre-recorded sessions from the WWDC) you will need to sign up for a free Apple Developer account – you can use your existing iTunes or iCloud ID if you have one to sign up. Once you are signed up, the video will be posted on the WWDC event video page.
UPDATED June 13 at 11:46 AM PST: The great news is that the video has now been uploaded to the Apple WWDC Developer Video page. For anyone looking to watch, you will need a free developer account – instructions are included in our last update above (June 12 at 1:05 PM). We’ll also be summarizing the event in a separate post that we’ll link to shortly – stay tuned.
UPDATED June 13 at 5:42 PM PST: We have posted an in-depth wrap-up review of the entire speech on our post titled, Pixar’s Speech at the Apple WWDC Demonstrating MARI on the New Mac Pro.