Renderman - System Requirements?
Louis J.M
I was just reading about Renderman on Pixar's site. So this is what
motion picture industry uses to do all those sharp, lifelike CGI
effects.
And $8500! Just out of curiosity. I have a few questions about it.
Q1: What kind of system requirements do you need to run Renderman?
Q2: Is the interface easy to use? Or awkward and nearly impossible
(Pov-Ray). I assume the interface has to be intuitive in order to
pull off some of the things I've seen people do with it.
.-~~-.____ Louis J.M
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Roy Schulz
renderers on every PC to render nice still images and little animations. If
you want to produce high quality films for the big screen, you'll need a
huge render farm of course. I read somewhere that Pixar has about 1000
worksations only for rendering.
Q2: RenderMan is a kind of bridge between modeling programs and renderers.
There are several language bindings (e.g. C) and the RIB representation. The
latter is to some extent comparable to the POV-Ray scripting language. So
you could type it into some text editor and send it to a renderer to make
images. Of course the special effects studios use modelers and appropriate
plug-ins or self written tools to output RIB, which is then send to the
renderer.
Roy
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email: roys...@gmx.de
Steve Martin
> Q2: Is the interface easy to use?
Short answer: No.
Long (and more complete) answer:
RenderMan (strictly speaking) is a specification for the interface
between modelling and rendering programs. It has been likened to
"PostScript for 3D programs" (although this is perhaps confusing,
as it bears no similarity to PostScript per se). What many people
refer to as "RenderMan" is in fact Pixar's software titled
"PhotoRealistic RenderMan", or "PrMan" for short. This is a renderer
that accepts input adhering to the aforementioned spec, and produces
photorealistic graphic output.
PrMan itself is not a modeller, nor does it have a nice GUI
for creating objects. Its purpose is to render the scene you
build into a photorealistic image. You'll need a modeller of
some sort that will output RIB (RenderMan Interface Bytestream,
the ASCII character stream that is accepted by RenderMan-
compliant renderers). Many of the high-end graphics packages
can export to RIB, and there are quite a few shareware modellers
and commercial lower-end packages that can do so. Check the
RenderMan Repository, www.renderman.org, for more information.
As you noted in your original spec, the output of PrMan can be
incredibly realistic and quite breathtaking. However, all that
power comes at a price, that being the work it takes to learn
how to use it. PrMan (and the RenderMan Interface in general)
is not alone in that regard; other 3D packages have similar
requirements. (The stack of books that come with Maya sits
two feet tall!)
If you're truly interested in learning about RenderMan, I'd suggest
(and I think many will agree) that a good place to start is "The
RenderMan Companion" by Steve Upstill. You can find this book on
amazon.com and probably other good bookstores. It's the classic
introduction to RenderMan. After you work your way through that
book, you'll be in a better position to decide whether you want
to dedicate the time and effort needed to work with RenderMan.
(As for being "awkward and nearly impossible (like) POV-Ray"
as you mentioned in your original post, for what it's worth,
POV-Ray in my opinion was easier to learn than RenderMan. However,
you can do so much more with a RenderMan-compliant renderer than
you can do in POV-Ray.)
Larry Gritz
Louis J.M <Loui...@Bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> I assume the interface has to be intuitive in order to
>pull off some of the things I've seen people do with it.
Never having seen one, you might think that a violin has
an intuitive interface in order to pull off some of the
things you've heard people do with it.
-- lg
--
Larry Gritz
l...@bmrt.org
Steve Martin
> > I assume the interface has to be intuitive in order to
> >pull off some of the things I've seen people do with it.
>
> Never having seen one, you might think that a violin has
> an intuitive interface in order to pull off some of the
> things you've heard people do with it.
Good answer, Larry. Reminds me of all the times someone
(who found out I was into amateur photography) asked me
to recommend a camera to them for purchase, stating that
they wanted "a camera that would take good pictures".
A software package does not automatically make one a
talented 3D artist, any more than a $2000 Nikon makes
one a good photographer or a $3000 computer with a
word processor makes one a better author. Takes talent
and knowing how to use your tools to their fullest.
Will R
writes:
>Good answer, Larry. Reminds me of all the times someone
>(who found out I was into amateur photography) asked me
>to recommend a camera to them for purchase, stating that
>they wanted "a camera that would take good pictures".
>A software package does not automatically make one a
>talented 3D artist, any more than a $2000 Nikon makes
>one a good photographer or a $3000 computer with a
>word processor makes one a better author. Takes talent
>and knowing how to use your tools to their fullest.
I agree that this is true, but it does have limits. If you took away
renderman, and told everybody at pixar to hand code the binary sequences for
evry frame in the next movie, it would never happen. Good tools help, but a
bad artist will never make good art, no matter how big his paint brush. OTOH,
if he doesn't have a paint brush, a good artist will probably not take up oil
painting...
---------------------------
"I /want/ Moofeus!"
-The V E C T O R-
Steve Martin
Goes back to what I was saying about knowing your tools. The tools are
an essential part of the process, but by no means the only part, nor
are they sufficient in themselves.
Larry Gritz
>
>Goes back to what I was saying about knowing your tools. The tools are
>an essential part of the process, but by no means the only part, nor
>are they sufficient in themselves.
This is very true, though actually quite orthogonal to the point I was
trying to make, which is that you cannot use output quality to infer
interface ease of use. (The original poster seemed to say something
along the lines of "I've seen so much great work done with RenderMan,
it must have a really good interface," which I found to be an
extremely curious leap of faith.)
Most musical instruments, despite hundreds of years of refinement,
have about the most difficult user interfaces known to man. It's fair
to say that a untrained person of average intelligence who is given a
violin and a piece of sheet music has *no prayer* of ever making the
proper music (or indeed anything remotely interesting to hear). The
interface is entirely unobvious, and takes years to master even when
somebody explains it to you. And yet, learning the interface is only
an enabling step in making great music -- the rest lies in the skill
of the musician.
On the other end of the spectrum, it's hard to imagine a user
interface any simpler than a pencil or a paint brush. But great
drawings of paintings cannot honestly be credited very much to the
simplicity of the interface. Yet again, it becomes obvious that
having access to the technology and even understanding the interface
doesn't really get you very far. Once again, it's all up to the user.
MG
Satyakam Khadilkar
> Never having seen one, you might think that a violin has
> an intuitive interface in order to pull off some of the
> things you've heard people do with it.
I totally agree with the concept. I also feel that in a way its good
that the violins interface does not change into a 'user-friendly'
software like interface thus giving access to only those who do have
skills to play it. I have been doing html design for quite a few years
and the best interface i feel is notepad/vi. Nowadays there are many
tools which give a intutive interface for html design. But what most
people don't realize it in giving such an interface they also add lot of
redundant garbage in the html code and also go against the concept of
generic layout. The result is larger files targetted for only specific
browsers !
satyakam
Steve Martin
>
> LOL!
> Is this philosofy or 3D graphics?
Sometimes the two overlap.
arwal...@gmail.com
Andy
MG
how I found out that I'm not seeing them... I guess I'll have
to try Google Groups, or so.
- MG
MG
> Strange, I can't see most of the messages. Only yours, which is
> how I found out that I'm not seeing them... I guess I'll have
> to try Google Groups, or so.
ISP's and Google Groups' USENET offerings don't seem to be ideal.
- MG
MG
Never mind, what the hell, you quoted something from ~14 years
ago.
- MG