Matt Pharr is an American

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

researcher and writer, and one of the primary originators of the

physically based rendering Physically based rendering (PBR) is a computer graphics approach that seeks to render images in a way that models the lights and surfaces with optics in the real world. It is often referred to as "Physically Based Lighting" or "Physically Based ...

process. His research focuses on rendering

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s, as well as

scientific illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation, or visual explanation of a text, concept, or process, designed for integration in print and digitally published media, such as posters, Flyer (pamphlet), flyers, magazines, books, teaching material ...

and visualization.

Education and academic work

Pharr graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. from the

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Graphics Lab, working under the supervision of

Pat Hanrahan Patrick M. Hanrahan (born May 8, 1955) is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on render ...

on rendering algorithms and systems. He has taught graduate level classes at Stanford, including Image Synthesis.

Professional career

Pharr joined

Pixar Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney ...

's Rendering R&D group, working on the

RenderMan Interface Specification The RenderMan Interface Specification, or RISpec in short, is an open API developed by Pixar Animation Studios to describe three-dimensional scenes and turn them into digital photorealistic images. It includes the RenderMan Shading Language. A ...

and the

RenderMan Shading Language Renderman Shading Language (abbreviated RSL) is a component of the RenderMan Interface Specification, and is used to define shaders. The language syntax is C-like. A shader written in RSL can be used without changes on any RenderMan-compliant rend ...

. While at Pixar he was a Rendering Software Engineer for the films

A Bug's Life ''A Bug's Life'' (stylized in all lowercase) is a 1998 American animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter from a screenplay written by Andrew Stanton, Donald McEnery, and Bob Shaw, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, and Joe Ran ...

and

Toy Story 2 ''Toy Story 2'' is a 1999 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and the first sequel to Toy Story. It is the second installment in the Toy Story (franchise), ''Toy Story'' franchise and was directed by J ...

. He then became a co-founder of Exluna, whose flagship product was Entropy, a

RenderMan The name RenderMan can cause confusion because it has been used to refer to different things developed by Pixar Animation Studios: * RenderMan Interface Specification (RISpec), an open API An application programming interface (API) is a connec ...

renderer based on

BMRT Blue Moon Rendering Tools, or BMRT, was one of the most famous RenderMan-compliant photorealistic rendering systems and was a precursor to NVIDIA's Gelato renderer. It was distributed as freeware. BMRT was a popular renderer with students and othe ...

. When

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

acquired Exluna and Entropy in early 2002, he worked in their Software Architecture group. Pharr was the founder and the CEO of Neoptica, which worked on new programming models for graphics on heterogeneous CPU+GPU computer systems. Neoptica was acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

in 2007. That acquisition led him to the newly formed Advanced Rendering Technology group at Intel, where he wrote the

SPMD In computing, single program, multiple data (SPMD) is a term that has been used to refer to computational models for exploiting parallelism whereby multiple processors cooperate in the execution of a program in order to obtain results faster. ...

compiler, originally targeting Larrabee. In March 2013 he joined

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, and in May 2018 he moved back to Nvidia to work on

real-time rendering Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface ( GUI) to ...

using Ray tracing and

neural nets In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

Publications and awards

Pharr has received an Academy Award for his work in rendering and computer graphics. He was awarded in 2014, along with Pat Hanrahan and Greg Humphreys, a Technical Achievement

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...

for their formalization and reference implementation of the concepts behind physically based rendering, as shared in their book ''Physically Based Rendering: From Theory To Implementation''. This is the first time this award has been given for a book. He also co-authored ''GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation'' during his time at Nvidia.

References

External links

Matt Pharr's academic home page

Official website for ''Physically Based Rendering: From Theory To Implementation''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pharr, Matt Living people Computer graphics professionals Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners Year of birth missing (living people)