Non-commercial Renderman released...

[Hirazi Blue]

RenderMan is now free for all non-commercial purposes, including evaluations, education, research, and personal projects. The non-commercial version of RenderMan is fully functional without watermark or limitation.

(Quoted from here)

Maya and Katana plugin available...
Softimage users could conceivably use 3delight to export rib files to Renderman...

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/non-com ... -renderman

[MauricioPC]

C4D and Houdini plugins in the works. Problem is how long that'll take.

[mc_axe]

I wish that was the case for Redshift too, cause i alrdy had a client that paid too much attention on watermarks.
And if i dont get that job Redshift will loose 500$. Plus a licence like that allows ppl to create 'legal' portfolios. But yea its risky. I guess they just stick to the fact that if many more ppl try it many more will buy it.

[Mathaeus]

Well, imho Softimage users have almost zero reason to export to Renderman, as long as they are able to use 3delight. But, not that much SI people used 3delight, since Arnold times.
In other word (and unevitable 'don't want to be negative'), Renderman is dead, it's only that some people refuses to admit.

[nodeway]

On CGTalk guy from some Box US based company announced that they delivered more than 120 shots for Maze Runner that were rendered straight from modified CryEngine (probably CineBox) in FINAL quality. If it was CineBox, then they have some really cool stuff in it that you will not find in normal Steam version of the engine. Different GI implementation etc.

BTW. Have you seen latest OTOY Brigade Realtime Pathtracing showoff video? That's product aimed for games.

So I say, f*ck Renderman, Arnold etc. They are all dead.

Quote from CGTalk

We used a modifed Cryengine to render 128 shots for Maze Runner, as well as other movies coming this year that I unfortunately can't name yet.
We use the engine on set, previz and for final render. Company name is The Box Creative llc. and we're based on Venice - California.

Used Unreal as well, but we hit too many roadblock after a while.

Our pipeline is designed all around using game engine for rendering and we've been doing it for 3 years now (we presented it to a small professional group at Siggraph 2011). This includes multiple game "pre-rendered" cinematics as well as movies and tv show. All is script based and pretty automatic now, and it doesn't make a difference for us to use cry or unreal or vray, it's all the same. Just the game engine is much much faster, especially during Maze Runner where we needed to render at 6k resolution.

Haven't had time to do a BTS or making of yet, but it is in the work. We have pretty heavy movie title coming this year and we've been quite busy, after that maybe.

I'm quite surprise to see still articles about that thought, or maybe just that articles are talking about "future" possibilities, while many in the industry have been using it for many years. I still believe we were the first one to use it to render and do vfx for a live action AAA movie. But I might be wrong.

Just again, it is being use RIGHT NOW on multiple movies. And it has been for years.

I'm quite happy to actually see that people didn't even think it could be a game engine, and watch movies and tv show rendered with a game engine without even seeing the difference.

[Nox]

Renderman is dead

Renderman 19 for hobbyists/students/personal projects is basically Arnold for free, how it can be dead?

It has some interesting stuff like VCM and cool Disney PBR shader.

It also looks like better integrated into Maya than Arnold.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well. I have been working with "dead software" for almost a year now. It's hard to tell the difference, quite frankly...

[Daniel Brassard]

Renderman is the grand daddy of renderers and the benchmark for quality rendering. It may not be as fast as some of the newer renderers out there, but it is stable and production proven.

ILM/Pixar developed PRMan from day one to produce heavy VFX for film: Jurassic park, Young Sherlock Holmes, Jumanji, Star Wars, Star Trek, Iron man, Forest Gump and the Transformer series (to name a few) have all benefited from this renderer. So calling it dead is a bit premature.

We can now have a go at it (not in Softimage unfortunately). In Maya, it is tightly integrated (more so than Mental ray). So I am glad Pixar finally openned the door to freelancers and hobbyist. It's about time.

And if they do the bridge to Houdini, C4D, Modo and Blender like they planned, well pressure will be on the other renderers. We are going into interesting time, indeed.

[MauricioPC]

Aside from Arnold, Mantra and 3Delight, what other render engine has all the latest tech and support (openVDB, proper hair and fur, etc)?

I think MPC also uses Renderman exclusively for rendering and they are one of the top VFX houses of today.

[Daniel Brassard]

I know of the quality of Mantra and question why Pixar has put Renderman for Houdini as a priority after Max/Maya/Katana. Most likely it is to force the industry into some form of standard or the demand for integration into pipelines is strong enough to warrant this bridge.

Is Mantra renderer available outside Houdini anyway?

[Bullit]

I don't think so.

[nodeway]

In theory, yes. It's a separate process, and Houdini is sending data to Mantra when rendering. But you would need to write your own scene translation for it to other apps. The easiest would be to create IFD file, and of you go.

I think there are couple companies that done it.

[MauricioPC]

I know of the quality of Mantra and question why Renderman has put Houdini as a priority after Max/Maya/Katana. Most likely it is to force the industry into some form of standard.

Is Mantra renderer available outside Houdini anyway?

Maybe they are seeing Houdini as the next scene assembly/lighting/rendering pipeline? Last year I went to a talk from a VFX Supervisor of Vetor Zero (biggest Latin America animation studio) and he said that they were considering putting Houdini as the central hub of their pipeline, since Maya wasn't delivering.

Lots have changed ... but maybe with Mantra, Renderman and Arnold, Houdini can take the place of Maya for it. I would love that!

[Mathaeus]

Renderman is dead

Renderman 19 for hobbyists/students/personal projects is basically Arnold for free, how it can be dead?

It has some interesting stuff like VCM and cool Disney PBR shader.

It also looks like better integrated into Maya than Arnold.

Yeah, 'dead' is a bit too harsh. But, I'm afraid the only connection to Arnold is something like 'renderer who lost its market in favor of Arnold', which itself is most possible negative. Something should be really bad, or really good on Arnold side, to make such a move, against the all inertia of 3d world.
While Prman had almost zero success when it comes to small shop and individuals. More over, there is a list of unsuccessful trials, like Animal Logic Maxman, nVidia Gellato,after all, 'we' refused to support XSI Man..
According to well known next 25 years article, I don't see anything revolutionary, more a mix of frozen food, they already had for long time. Some plans, some promises, usual advertising, new abbreviation which means nothing exact ( REYES, RIS).
Now, almost one year after, hard to find any exact user experience anywhere on internet. They added, what, skin shader and free-non-commercial version. No comment...
All that against around one hundred of renderers all around.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well, the "main event" here never was this non-commercial version, I think.
The "main event" was the earlier price restructuring, which seems to show
they are fully aware of their dwindling significance and try to do something about it.
;)

[luceric]

someone may be missing the irony of cheering Houdini while at the same time jeering Renderman for having the same market position, and the same users, after just as many years. And now they both have very similar low-price strategies to try to expand into small shops and to individuals. It's all the same, both are heavy iron technical tools from the 1990s that are now trying have more one-click results, lower price, to move into markets with heavy competitions.