Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
mastodon
4.5.9
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
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Joined November 08, 2022
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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1d ago
@claudius I did write an alt text for this one, although not quite as detailed as the one you've written.
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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1d ago
@axel American Sign Language
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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1d ago
BTW, just in case it wasn't clear: the Disney ASL song remakes were not AI generated or anything like that. Just a ton of hard work from a dedicated team of artists and TDs who cared deeply about doing this properly, with ASL choreography by the Deaf West Theatre.
My wife was one of the TDs who worked on this! Believe you me, things got weird with resurrecting the 8+ year old Frozen 2 pipeline; we're not even on the same OS as back then.
(Behind-the-scenes video is from Cartoon Brew)
My wife was one of the TDs who worked on this! Believe you me, things got weird with resurrecting the 8+ year old Frozen 2 pipeline; we're not even on the same OS as back then.
(Behind-the-scenes video is from Cartoon Brew)
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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2d ago
Disney Animation remade three songs for ASL. For these, we resurrected the original data and pipeline version (which took a ton of work), reanimated (from near scratch in some places), relit where needed, and re-rendered. Probably the hardest way to do this, but definitely the right way to do it, so that's what we did!
No AI shortcuts or anything, just doing it properly all the way.
No AI shortcuts or anything, just doing it properly all the way.
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Apr 04, 2026
Sure Sony/Canon/Leica/Fuji/Hasselblad are cool, but Nikon? Nikon cameras are NASA’s go-to _for space_.
There’s a Z9 on Artemis II. I use a Z8, which is identical to the Z9 minus a bottom grip, and if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for me!
https://petapixel.com/2026/04/02/a-nikon-z9-made-it-aboard-the-artemis-ii-moon-mission-at-the-last-minute/
There’s a Z9 on Artemis II. I use a Z8, which is identical to the Z9 minus a bottom grip, and if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for me!
https://petapixel.com/2026/04/02/a-nikon-z9-made-it-aboard-the-artemis-ii-moon-mission-at-the-last-minute/
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Apr 03, 2026
I have one major bone to pick with baseball at the Olympics: they got the name wrong. The name of the final shouldn’t be “Men’s Baseball Final (Medal)” or whatever it is; it should be “Olympic Baseball Classic”.
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Apr 03, 2026
I think this is a great article that puts to words something I've been thinking for a while about LLMs/AI/etc; as tools they clearly can be useful and are here to stay, but the real concern should be the effect it's having on the talent pipeline. (1/5)
https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Apr 02, 2026
Idle thought: In Harry Potter, it's established that the Minister of Magic is in contact with the regular Prime Minister, so why didn't the Minister or Magic just call up his Muggle counterpart and ask him to cast MQ-9 Reaperarmus or A-10 Thunderbolt IIadavra or Tomahawkius Cruise Missileio on Voldemort? Paper-thin worldbuilding.
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Mar 24, 2026
I’m not surprised by this; I think the huge cash burn rate combined with limited general appeal doomed this from the start. Literally zero non-tech people I know have any interest in a slop video feed and most of them get kind of offended if you ask them to knowingly watch slop.
https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/openai-shutting-down-sora-video-disney-1236698277/
https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/openai-shutting-down-sora-video-disney-1236698277/
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Mar 08, 2026
Stuff like this is infinitely more impressive to me than any AI music, no matter how advanced and complicated the model. Human brainpower is vastly underrated.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jjRbLpnA_0w
https://youtube.com/shorts/jjRbLpnA_0w
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Feb 23, 2026
"Anthropic accuses DeepSeek and other Chinese firms of using Claude to train their AI"
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/883243/anthropic-claude-deepseek-china-ai-distillation
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/883243/anthropic-claude-deepseek-china-ai-distillation
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Jan 07, 2026
Zootopia 2 took hundreds of artists, TDs, and engineers to make; I was lucky enough to be a small part of it all! Here are some of my personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2, along with some pretty pictures.
https://blog.yiningkarlli.com/2025/12/zootopia-2.html
https://blog.yiningkarlli.com/2025/12/zootopia-2.html
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Nov 21, 2025
Ohhhh I get it, Pixar's Hoppers isn't Avatar with beavers, it's Dune with beavers.
But actually I'm really excited for this movie; it looks so much more chaotic than their usual fare!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PypDSyIRRSs
But actually I'm really excited for this movie; it looks so much more chaotic than their usual fare!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PypDSyIRRSs
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Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation, working on Disney’s Hyperion Renderer and more. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
mastodon.gamedev.place
@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place
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Nov 17, 2025
So there was this really great Youtube video that came out over the weekend about why a lot of modern movies just don't feel "real" anymore and generally kind of look terrible.
Anyhow in other news I just saw the trailer for the live action Moana remake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvwPKBXEOKE
Anyhow in other news I just saw the trailer for the live action Moana remake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvwPKBXEOKE
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