A frame from Disney Animation's Zootopia 2, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A frame from Disney Animation's Moana 2, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A frame from Disney Animation's Wish, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A frame from Disney Animation's Encanto, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A path through a forest, rendered entirely with my hobby renderer, Takua Renderer.
A Scandinavian room, rendered entirely with my hobby renderer, Takua Renderer.
My entry to Pixar's RenderMan "The Iconoclasts" Art Challenge, for which I got an honorable mention. Blog post coming soon!
My first-place winning entry to Pixar's RenderMan "Shipshape" Art Challenge. See blog post for more.
A frame from Disney Animation's Raya and the Last Dragon, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
Some ferns in a forest, rendered entirely with my hobby renderer, Takua Renderer.
A frame from Disney Animation's Frozen 2, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A vase of purple flowers, rendered entirely with my hobby renderer, Takua Renderer.
A frame from Disney Animation's Moana, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!
A frame from Disney Animation's Zootopia, rendered entirely using Disney's Hyperion Renderer. I worked on this movie!

Hello, I'm Karl (or, in Chinese: 黎忆宁)!

Born in Hannover, Germany and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I am a staff software engineer at Walt Disney Animation Studios working on Disney's Hyperion Renderer. As part of the Hyperion team, I've worked on every Disney Animation theatrical release starting from Zootopia. I work and happily live in Burbank, California with my wife, Harmony M. Li, and our family.

My areas of interest cover all things production rendering, including topics such as advanced light transport, renderer architectures, raytracing on interesting hardware, volume rendering, surface appearance, and more.

I previously was a part of Cornell University's Program of Computer Graphics and have also worked at Pixar Animation Studios and Dreamworks Animation. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was part of CG@Penn and a student at The Wharton School.

News:

2026.07.18: Lea Reichardt and I will be presenting our talk "Path Guiding in Disney's Zootopia 2" at SIGGRAPH 2026. The paper is now available online!

2026.07.18: Andrew Bauer will be presenting our talk "A Hybrid BVH Structure for Interactive GPU Ray Tracing" at SIGGRAPH 2026. The paper is now available online!

2026.06.16: Teaser trailer for Hexed is released!

2026.05.27: New blog post about four new site features: dark mode, a sidebar table of contents, HDR display, and a custom high-performance Knuth-Plass style justified text layout system.

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