Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation studio based in Emeryville, California (USA) notable for its eight Academy Awards. It is best known for its CGI animated feature films—such as Toy Story, Cars, and Ratatouille—achieved through PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard Renderman image rendering API, which is used to generate high-quality images.
On January 24, 2006, The Walt Disney Company agreed to buy Pixar for $7.4 billion from Steve Jobs - who had previously acquired it from Lucasfilm - through an all-stock transaction. The acquisition was completed on May 5, 2006 (swapping one Pixar share for 2.3 shares of Disney), making Pixar a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney.
