Pixar’s Animation Software – Presto

There seems to be a fair bit of confusion software when it comes to the question of what animation software is used by Pixar Animation Studios. While they have released the open source and widely used RenderMan, that is not the software used by the animators. 

Pixar’s animation software is called Presto, named after their short film for which it was first used. It is completely proprietary and the successor to ‘menv’ (pronounced “MEN-vee” for “Modeling ENVironment) which was used for all the movies that came before that.

Pixar has always been extremely secretive about what’s going on inside their compound in Emeryville, but these days it is common knowledge among animators, what software is in use at the studio. That doesn’t mean, however, that Pixar lost any competitive advantage and there several other proprietary tools in use there.

Since presto isn’t available commercially, your best alternative is still Autodesk Maya. Its the most commonly used software in the industry.
Autodesk has great offers for indie artists with its Indie package being available for somewhere around $300 annually.
Go check out their offers here.

Presto – The Racecar of Animation Softwares

While Pixar started as a hardware company and struggled hard to sell their products, it took the imagination of Steve Jobs to really get their journey going.
The fascinating thing is that so many tools and processes that are now commonly used in the industry had their start at Pixar. Some processes like animating a test with audio from another movie are now used by each and every student trying to learn the craft.

Other things like their animation software remain a closely guarded internal secret. Though we have gotten a few insights at events throughout the years, and I had the honor of getting a demo on site when visiting a few of my friends who work at Pixar, information about all the possibilities are still hard to come by.

To read more about Presto’s availability and what other Pixar software might be available to the public, check out this post i wrote specifically about that.

The predecessor ‘menv’

Menv was the predecessor used at Pixar until it was first used to make the short film Presto and gave it its name in 2012. Before I started doing research for this article I myself actually thought the software was called Marionette. That seems to be a misconception though as Pixar insiders mention that this was only a name used by the press.
Even Wikipedia is getting that fact wrong.
If this name was ever used internally at Pixar then it was more likely to be used derisively.

Here is a great video from the Toy Story 1 days where we see very young Pixar legends and a really nice view at that initial version of menv. Pete Docter even mentions the name Marionette however, he uses it to describe the Woody puppet and not the software itself.

I would not be surprised if some uninterested journalist just quickly watched this footage and mistook Docter’s mention of the Marionette as the name of the software itself.

I love this little look back and the crudeness of the setup yet it still shows a lot of thought as to what is important to an animator that wants complete control over their puppet.

Presto was never intended to be released to the public and has remained in use only at Pixar internally. This is likely also to keep a competitive advantage which Pixar has kept throughout the years, however, with a cutting edge software like this one, it would be hard to provide proper customer service to more than the people on the Pixar campus itself where the developers are on site and take care of it in person.

Some Pixar employees describe Presto as the race car of animation softwares. It needs highly trained mechanics and drivers that have been trained and briefed on how exactly it is going to use the fastest. But due to how finely tuned it is, it is also expected to crash once in a while but no other tool comes close to doing the job as well as Presto.

All other Software that would be commercially available like Maya would be comparable to a BMW. Perfect for everyday traffic, used by lots of different people reliably and without crashes.

Observations

Here is a great demonstration from 2014 where one of the developers shows a few features that make Presto really amazing to work with.

The one thing that sticks out to me the most is the real time environment. Even fur, lights and shadows with multiple characters are real time. No other studio, at least in the Visual Effects industry is close to something like this just yet.

The closest we’ve gotten to this was perhaps working on Avengers: Endgame but since all VFX houses still build their pipelines around Maya, there are some issues that cannot be fixed until Autodesk fixes the software.

These days, there are real time environments in packages like Unreal Engine and even Blender is getting closer to it. What is remarkable nonetheless is that Pixar had this technology back in 2014. That just shows how much ahead of their time they were and perhaps still are.

In regards to the actual animation process itself what I find very interesting is that there seem to be no actual curve controls to select the body parts. All it takes is a click on the geometry which is a fantastic solution to having to turn curves on and off and gives a much clearer view of the character one is working with.

When watching older videos like the one below (timecode 2:15) it seems that back in the ‘menv’ days, they seem to not even have had the geometry selection but only the channels on the right. 

We can see how Bobby Podesta is using each channel on the right for one rotation axis of the head. At Weta Digital we had a similar system for the face rigs on films like Planet of the Apes. I personally loved working like this as it, again, gives a clearer view of the character/face you’re working with, without obstructions.

When watching the behind the scenes footage below, I also noticed another thing.
There are several hotkeys attached to the side of the Cintiq screen which to me indicates that animators would actually use Cintiq’s not just to quickly draw poses, but that they work in 2D long enough so that it makes sense to attach these hotkeys on the side. 

This suggests to me that the 2D capabilities of Presto seem to be more extensive than perhaps has shown in public.
I have seen demonstrations in other software where animators could draw over 3D poses and the software would adjust the model according to the drawing like in the video below for Disney’s Paperman, but perhaps Presto is capable of doing much more that we have not seen just yet.

What software should you learn then?

Since Presto isn’t available to the public, the best alternative is Maya. It has the most advanced animation toolset and is widely available. Blender is catching up quickly but it is not there yet.

I have also written an article about actual Pixar software that IS available to the public.
Check it out here:

If you want to secure a job at Pixar, the software should be the least of your concerns. I have applied to Pixar several times throughout the years and I never even considered the software the issue why I got rejected 7 times and counting.

Learn to animate well. Learn to animate in Pixar’s style. Show your creativity. Show that you have a unique voice and that you are a storyteller above everything else. If you can convince them of that, then they will teach you the software once you’re hired.

Remember that software is just a tool. Tools change and are constantly developing. The thing that makes you unique is your voice as an artist. Spend your time developing that instead of learning new software.