Source: ACM SIGGRAPH Citation
ACM SIGGRAPH is pleased to recognize Brent Burley with the 2021 Practitioner Award. The Practitioner Award is given annually to practitioners who have had an impact on computer graphics and interactive techniques.
Since the early 2000’s, Brent has had a tremendous impact on technology and tools at Walt Disney Animation Studios. In addition to turning rendering on its head with his radical design of the Hyperion renderer, he has contributed to many other tools at Walt Disney Animation Studios such as Ptex and SeExpr.
As a true engineer, he has strived for simplicity and elegance, creating the Disney Principled BRDF that is now used throughout the industry. His work on hair/fur shading and subsurface scattering have also had widespread industry influence.
Brent made the Ptex and SeExpr libraries open source, allowing practitioners around the world to easily adopt this technology. In addition to his engineering practice and innovation, Brent has both shared his knowledge and sparked ideas within the community, presenting courses and participating in panels at SIGGRAPH.
For his contributions to rendering and production workflows everywhere, ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to present the 2021 Practitioner Award to Brent Burley.