The Austin Film Festival (AFF) is proud to announce that this year’s recipient of the 2011 Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award will be John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. He will accept the Award, along with the other awardees, at AFF’s annual Award Luncheon held on Saturday, October 22, 2011 at the Austin Club. The Awards Luncheon is presented by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation. Lasseter will also speak on panels during the Conference, including “A Conversation with John Lasseter” and “The Art of Storytelling with Caroline Thompson, Hart Hanson and John Lasseter.”

Glare Technologies, a New Zealand-based company which specialises in high-end 3D visualisation software have announced the release of a new version of their flagship rendering product: Indigo Renderer version 3.0. Also being introduced is a brand new member of their software line-up, Indigo RT.

Indigo Renderer 3.0 is a generational improvement on all fronts: real-time scene editing, GPU acceleration, render queue support and many other impressive changes lie under the hood!