Background

RenderWorld was (is? - I do not know if anyone maintains the code anymore) a combination of natural phenomenon simulator and renderer. The renderer was tightly coupled to the physical effects. RenderWorld could simulate/render oceans, clouds, atmospheres, and land. It was probably to most extremely realistic software product on the market for those particular types of scenes. It was also a very closed system - without shaders, plugins, or api - and hence doomed to failure as a commercial product. But even 15+ years later the image and animation quality from RenderWorld still hold up.

What made RenderWorld different at the time was that it came directly from a scientific engineering world, in which simulation and rendering quality were extremely important, but only within a very narrow range of performance requirements. It was a bit lucky and amazing that we were able to take those algorithms and apply them to the field of feature film graphics, where imperfections and limitations have a way of being laid bare and pounded on.

List of Movies, TV Shows, Games, and Commericials that used RenderWorld

RenderWorld was used in a number of feature films, tv shows, games, and commercials. I am trying to keep a fairly comprehensive list of those projects, so if you know of one that is not on the list below, please let me know at jerrytessendorf@gmail.com.

The images and movies below are from RenderWorld tests, and from productions that used RenderWorld. The images were generated between 1993 and 1996. Click on the thumbnail to get a larger version. Click on that larger version to get the original full size image.

RenderWorld Images

RenderWorld Movies

Reel.mov boat.mov clouds.mov lighthouse.mov
oceanAnimation.mov splash.mov splash2.mov stormy.mov
underwater.mov wake.mov whitecaps.mov