Presto (animation software)

Presto is the proprietary software developed and used in-house by Pixar Animation Studios in the animation of their feature and short films. Presto is not available for sale and therefore is only used by Pixar. As a result, little is known outside Pixar about the detailed workings of this software. It was initially named Marionette before it was renamed Presto in 2012 with the release of Brave.

Pixar claims that Presto is designed to be intuitive and familiar to animators who have traditional cel animation experience.

Pixar chooses to use a proprietary system instead of the commercial products available and used by other companies because it can edit the software code to meet their needs. One example of this editing is shown in extra features of The Incredibles DVD; it is explained that previous versions of Marionette were not able to stretch models in the ways needed to correctly animate Elastigirl so the in-house Marionette development team created a new version that included this feature.

The Marionette credit included with all Pixar films created on the system.

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