Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli.bsky.social
Rendering Engineer at Disney Animation working on Disney's Hyperion Renderer. Previously at Pixar, Dreamworks, Cornell, Penn. Views here are my own.
https://www.yiningkarlli.com
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@yiningkarlli
https://www.yiningkarlli.com
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@yiningkarlli
Pinned
Yining Karl Li
@yiningkarlli.bsky.social
· Oct 30
Hello everyone! If you already know me, good to see you here!
If you don't know me: I'm a rendering engineer at Disney Animation working on our Hyperion Renderer. I've worked on every Disney Animation film since Zootopia. I post mostly about cool computer graphics and programming stuff.
If you don't know me: I'm a rendering engineer at Disney Animation working on our Hyperion Renderer. I've worked on every Disney Animation film since Zootopia. I post mostly about cool computer graphics and programming stuff.
Avatar Fire and Ash deserves a nomination for Best Animated Feature; don’t @ me.
December 26, 2025 at 2:16 AM
Avatar Fire and Ash deserves a nomination for Best Animated Feature; don’t @ me.
The IMAX trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey being released in 1080p and in a 2.39:1 crop instead of 1.43:1 sure is... uh.... a move.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikli...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikli...
The Odyssey | Official Trailer | Shot Entirely With IMAX® Film Cameras
YouTube video by IMAX
www.youtube.com
December 22, 2025 at 6:36 PM
The IMAX trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey being released in 1080p and in a 2.39:1 crop instead of 1.43:1 sure is... uh.... a move.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikli...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikli...
Scotty built his own Apple Watch in Shenzhen. The CNC milling part blew me away- he worked with a startup making a desktop CNC. This is the kind of startup that seems unfathomable in the US right now; we're at a huge disadvantage for this kind of hardware startup.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsWT...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsWT...
How I Made My Own Apple Watch - in China
YouTube video by Strange Parts
www.youtube.com
December 19, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Scotty built his own Apple Watch in Shenzhen. The CNC milling part blew me away- he worked with a startup making a desktop CNC. This is the kind of startup that seems unfathomable in the US right now; we're at a huge disadvantage for this kind of hardware startup.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsWT...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsWT...
macOS 26.2 adds support for RDMA over Thunderbolt 5; there's a bunch of new articles/videos showing this in Apple's MLX machine learning framework.
Does anyone know if there's proper developer docs yet? The best I can find is the MR adding this to MLX: github.com/ml-explore/m...
Does anyone know if there's proper developer docs yet? The best I can find is the MR adding this to MLX: github.com/ml-explore/m...
Thunderbolt RDMA communications backend by angeloskath · Pull Request #2808 · ml-explore/mlx
This PR adds the JACCL backend that enables low-latency distributed communication via thunderbolt RDMA. The backend is latency optimized for now and only supports full mesh but ring and bandwidth o...
github.com
December 18, 2025 at 6:38 PM
macOS 26.2 adds support for RDMA over Thunderbolt 5; there's a bunch of new articles/videos showing this in Apple's MLX machine learning framework.
Does anyone know if there's proper developer docs yet? The best I can find is the MR adding this to MLX: github.com/ml-explore/m...
Does anyone know if there's proper developer docs yet? The best I can find is the MR adding this to MLX: github.com/ml-explore/m...
Yo this absolutely rules. What a cool idea for a Secret Santa gift!
Also I hadn't thought about this before, but a 2nd gen iPod Nano is absolutely canonically the best way to listen to Brat.
Also I hadn't thought about this before, but a 2nd gen iPod Nano is absolutely canonically the best way to listen to Brat.
December 17, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Yo this absolutely rules. What a cool idea for a Secret Santa gift!
Also I hadn't thought about this before, but a 2nd gen iPod Nano is absolutely canonically the best way to listen to Brat.
Also I hadn't thought about this before, but a 2nd gen iPod Nano is absolutely canonically the best way to listen to Brat.
I don't like big tech getting bigger, but I think Amazon should have been allowed to buy iRobot for national security reasons. Now that iRobot is owned by a Chinese firm, every robo vac maker is Chinese, meaning even more cameras in US homes uploading to China controlled servers.
December 15, 2025 at 7:22 PM
I don't like big tech getting bigger, but I think Amazon should have been allowed to buy iRobot for national security reasons. Now that iRobot is owned by a Chinese firm, every robo vac maker is Chinese, meaning even more cameras in US homes uploading to China controlled servers.
Hey @jonbois.bsky.social, any chance this is how baseball works in the 17776/20020 universe?
December 11, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Hey @jonbois.bsky.social, any chance this is how baseball works in the 17776/20020 universe?
Pretty good news if you are a horse.
In lieu of affordable universal health insurance, Texans will now be given better access to de-worming medication.
December 7, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Pretty good news if you are a horse.
He should be. In every area that John Ternus is in charge of now, Apple has righted the ship and leapt ahead. Just look at how the Mac has completely turned around since the shift to Apple Silicon.
www.macrumors.com/2025/12/05/w...
www.macrumors.com/2025/12/05/w...
Will John Ternus Really Be Apple's Next CEO?
There is uncertainty about Apple's head of hardware engineering John Ternus succeeding Tim Cook as CEO, The Information reports. Some former Apple executives apparently hope that a new "dark-horse" ca...
www.macrumors.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:31 PM
He should be. In every area that John Ternus is in charge of now, Apple has righted the ship and leapt ahead. Just look at how the Mac has completely turned around since the shift to Apple Silicon.
www.macrumors.com/2025/12/05/w...
www.macrumors.com/2025/12/05/w...
Yo this is awesome; really well done!
December 6, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Yo this is awesome; really well done!
Apparently the US Treasury Dept is now run by people who flunked macroeconomics 101 and don’t understand that rising bond total returns are an indicator of recession; bond prices rise and interest rates fall when investors flee stocks for bonds because the economy is slowing down.
December 6, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Apparently the US Treasury Dept is now run by people who flunked macroeconomics 101 and don’t understand that rising bond total returns are an indicator of recession; bond prices rise and interest rates fall when investors flee stocks for bonds because the economy is slowing down.
Oh man I totally forgot about this version of the movie. This was like two maybe three years ago.
The first assignment I did on Zootopia 2. It was a very different story at that point, and Gary’s intro involved a hospital visit, where reptiles were an unknown species (hence the notes on the X-rays and the mash up traction set up). #zootopia2 #animation #disney #conceptart #visdev #art
December 5, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Oh man I totally forgot about this version of the movie. This was like two maybe three years ago.
Gruber has a really well sourced piece about the change of design leads at Apple; it’s a good read. I’m really optimistic about what the new guy might bring; from what I’ve read he’s an actual UI design guy from the Steve Jobs days who loves the Mac.
daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_...
daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_...
Bad Dye Job
It might have made some sense to bring someone from the fashion/brand world to lead software design for Apple Watch, but it sure didn’t seem to make sense for the rest of Apple’s platforms. And the de...
daringfireball.net
December 4, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Gruber has a really well sourced piece about the change of design leads at Apple; it’s a good read. I’m really optimistic about what the new guy might bring; from what I’ve read he’s an actual UI design guy from the Steve Jobs days who loves the Mac.
daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_...
daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_...
To be honest this is probably a net positive for Apple.
Most of Meta’s stuff is already such an unusable mess that for Meta this is a side-grade.
Most of Meta’s stuff is already such an unusable mess that for Meta this is a side-grade.
December 3, 2025 at 8:21 PM
To be honest this is probably a net positive for Apple.
Most of Meta’s stuff is already such an unusable mess that for Meta this is a side-grade.
Most of Meta’s stuff is already such an unusable mess that for Meta this is a side-grade.
To be fair, as far as the Disney Animation production pipeline is concerned, every zebra is a horse because zebra rigs derive from our base generic horse rig.
…Sven from Frozen may or may not be a horse in our pipeline too. I don’t remember if he’s a horse or if he’s a giant dog. 👀
…Sven from Frozen may or may not be a horse in our pipeline too. I don’t remember if he’s a horse or if he’s a giant dog. 👀
December 3, 2025 at 4:40 AM
To be fair, as far as the Disney Animation production pipeline is concerned, every zebra is a horse because zebra rigs derive from our base generic horse rig.
…Sven from Frozen may or may not be a horse in our pipeline too. I don’t remember if he’s a horse or if he’s a giant dog. 👀
…Sven from Frozen may or may not be a horse in our pipeline too. I don’t remember if he’s a horse or if he’s a giant dog. 👀
Holy smokes I now share a film credit with HIDEO KOJIMA. This is so cool.
December 2, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Holy smokes I now share a film credit with HIDEO KOJIMA. This is so cool.
I've always found ancient alchemy interesting to read about; I promise there's a punchline to this. Ancient alchemists convinced kings and such that turning lead to gold was but a breakthrough away, but in reality they had a very poor understanding of what they were doing.
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December 1, 2025 at 9:25 PM
I've always found ancient alchemy interesting to read about; I promise there's a punchline to this. Ancient alchemists convinced kings and such that turning lead to gold was but a breakthrough away, but in reality they had a very poor understanding of what they were doing.
(1/4)
(1/4)
The best quote I’ve heard about AI was a half-joke by a coworker: “is there anything that classical techniques can do that AI can’t pretend to do better?” Sometimes pretending is good enough and sometimes it’s really not! That seems largely lost in the pro/anti AI discourse.
December 1, 2025 at 8:26 PM
The best quote I’ve heard about AI was a half-joke by a coworker: “is there anything that classical techniques can do that AI can’t pretend to do better?” Sometimes pretending is good enough and sometimes it’s really not! That seems largely lost in the pro/anti AI discourse.
Disney Animation's awesome Filmmaking Process site is now updated with our new Zootopia 2 content!
...and if you look very closely, you may notice that all of the Zootopia 2 animation/rigging screenshots/clips show a UI that is not Maya. 👀
disneyanimation.com/process
...and if you look very closely, you may notice that all of the Zootopia 2 animation/rigging screenshots/clips show a UI that is not Maya. 👀
disneyanimation.com/process
Walt Disney Animation Studios - Filmmaking Process - Zootopia 2
From sequence to shot to frame, explore our studio pipeline.
disneyanimation.com
December 1, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Disney Animation's awesome Filmmaking Process site is now updated with our new Zootopia 2 content!
...and if you look very closely, you may notice that all of the Zootopia 2 animation/rigging screenshots/clips show a UI that is not Maya. 👀
disneyanimation.com/process
...and if you look very closely, you may notice that all of the Zootopia 2 animation/rigging screenshots/clips show a UI that is not Maya. 👀
disneyanimation.com/process
Zootopia 2 also has a zillion throwaway background jokes that were put in by the crowds team simply because they could- I doubt any single person, directors included, knows every single one of them.
Example: one of the bars in Marsh Market is an aquarium and it has scuba diving gerbils in it.
Example: one of the bars in Marsh Market is an aquarium and it has scuba diving gerbils in it.
November 28, 2025 at 5:23 AM
Zootopia 2 also has a zillion throwaway background jokes that were put in by the crowds team simply because they could- I doubt any single person, directors included, knows every single one of them.
Example: one of the bars in Marsh Market is an aquarium and it has scuba diving gerbils in it.
Example: one of the bars in Marsh Market is an aquarium and it has scuba diving gerbils in it.
So Apple put out an article this week about how they are now 3D printing titanium parts in large volumes for Apple Watches and iPhone Air; this is a bit of a surprise and really cool!
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www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
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www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
Mapping the future with 3D-printed titanium Apple Watch cases
Apple Watch Ultra 3 and titanium Apple Watch Series 11 cases are now 3D-printed with 100 percent recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder.
www.apple.com
November 27, 2025 at 6:40 AM
So Apple put out an article this week about how they are now 3D printing titanium parts in large volumes for Apple Watches and iPhone Air; this is a bit of a surprise and really cool!
(1/3)
www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
(1/3)
www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
You know all of the old Bionicle CG still holds up decently well today.
November 26, 2025 at 10:02 PM
You know all of the old Bionicle CG still holds up decently well today.
Reposted by Yining Karl Li
This is a great article about ReGIR / World-Space ReSTIR with nice improvements by Tom Clabault:
tomclabault.github.io/blog/2025/re...
tomclabault.github.io/blog/2025/re...
ReGIR - An advanced implementation for many-lights offline rendering | Tom Clabault
Tom Clabault's website
tomclabault.github.io
November 25, 2025 at 12:52 PM
This is a great article about ReGIR / World-Space ReSTIR with nice improvements by Tom Clabault:
tomclabault.github.io/blog/2025/re...
tomclabault.github.io/blog/2025/re...
Reposted by Yining Karl Li
my FX work alone required at least 1 quadrillion of the 3.7 quadrillion rays traced on Zootopia 2. This is FACTUAL and REAL. If you are a journalist, please cite this in your article.
Using some very approximate guesstimate math, I think we traced around 3.7 quadrillion individual rays to produce the final movie. This does not include intermediate / WIP renders. I think this is astronomy-accurate, meaning it's in roughly the correct order of magnitude.
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November 25, 2025 at 6:47 AM
my FX work alone required at least 1 quadrillion of the 3.7 quadrillion rays traced on Zootopia 2. This is FACTUAL and REAL. If you are a journalist, please cite this in your article.
Zootopia 2 comes out this week! I'll have my usual blog post with some personal reflections on working on the movie out probably early next month, but in the meantime, here's a fun pointless super approximate statistic:
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November 25, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Zootopia 2 comes out this week! I'll have my usual blog post with some personal reflections on working on the movie out probably early next month, but in the meantime, here's a fun pointless super approximate statistic:
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