Pixar, an animation company started by Steve Jobs and now owned by Disney open sources its product animation code and patents to the community. The open sourced code is called Open SubDiv and is available on Github for developers. And also has released a software under license allowing any commercial or non commercial use. And it already supports windows, Linux and Mac OS. And the patents related to the code will also be released as open source as to avoid any legal issues in the future.
OpenSubdiv is a set of open source libraries that implement high performance subdivision surface (subdiv) evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures. This codepath is optimized for drawing deforming subdivs with static topology at interactive framerates. The resulting limit surface matches Pixar’s Renderman to numerical precision.
OpenSubdiv is covered by the Microsoft Public License, and is free to use for commercial or non-commercial use. This is the same code that Pixar uses internally for animated film production. Our intent is to encourage high performance accurate subdiv drawing by giving away the “good stuff”.
OpenSubdiv is entering open beta for SIGGRAPH 2012. Feel free to use it and let us know what you think.
For more details about OpenSubdiv, see Pixar Graphics Technologies.
Note that this beta code is live and will undergo significant churn as it approaches release. Expect that APIs will change as the code is continually improved.
Basically the code released by Pixar will help create high detailed surface like edges, smoothness, softness on animated objects much easier. And now which is available for everyone to use.
The source code for Open Sub Div is located here:
https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv/
Here is a video demonstration by Pixar’s Manuel Kraemer of the ability of Open Subdiv in action:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/13/pixar_open_sources_open_subdiv/
