Renderman for maya 4

[oglu]

something new to play with on the horizon... :bouncy:

https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/eval/

[El Burritoh]

Wasn't Maya 4.0 like 10 years ago?

Just kidding! I just like the way they title these things.

[PaulAdams]

Surely it should be Renderman 4 Maya? :p

Might give this a try, though I expect its more complicated than a NASA control panel.

[PascalR]

I just discovered this section, a renderman gallery! :)
http://renderman.pixar.com/confluence/display/rman/RenderMan+Galleries

[jack_sparow]

yeah it will come in few months, we are beta testing rms 3 actually, I have to say most o the impressive feature are in rms and not much rfm 4 but it's a way far better plugin, and we are still working on some improvements for next beta coming soon. pixar do some nice work on his plugin.

[tonytrout]

Better start saving now for RMS3 :love:

[oglu]

Might give this a try, though I expect its more complicated than a NASA control panel.

hopefully not... :(

[jack_sparow]

Don't be afraid guys pixar did a realy nice job with this release, it's a lot better integrated into maya with a maya 2011 support and lot of good stuff.
It's still in beta so it's still feature opened, that's what is cool with pixar you ask a thing and few months later you have the tools in your app.

[tonytrout]

Be afraid... be very afraid. No just kidding, just the price. I have tried the demo of RFM but I think rMS is the real deal, its on my shopping list but I have to wait for my end of year bonus and talk really really fast with the domestic manager ha ha.

[BrettSinclair]

I wonder if they will have support for shave and a haircut in the maya version. But yea the version to have is the studio version. Pity :/

[jack_sparow]

The thing is you need Rib file export support to render shave stuff, and that's feature is only available on the pro version of rfm.
rfm is internal release inside maya to play with renderman, rfm pro is much more standalone apps with all the control over RPS feature.
it's not the same goal or price for products.

[skyrick]

Hi JS,

Do you know the RFM4/RMS3 release date ?
I heard in the fall ? True or False ? :)

Bye,
Sky

[jack_sparow]

We are just on beta 3 now so I think pixar need more time to polish the software and add lot of feature and debug most of the issue.

So we are waiting a beta 4 and probably An RC1 then followed by a release In september or october.

All of this depend on the progress and needs from customers, pixar is making a nice piece of software with exactly what we want for the production.
This coming to be a rock solid version for production, lot of new feature, better integration into maya and a big list of past bugs are gone.

be patient until this fall.

[skyrick]

Thanks a lot JS ! :notWorthy:

Waiting for this fall :)
Do you have informations about compatibilities from RFM4 with maya 2011 ? RFM4 with Shave&Haircut ? :love:

[jack_sparow]

rfm 4 and rms 3 will be compatible with maya 2011, 2009 and 2010. And the core of the renderer will be the new 15.2 rps not yet released, only for beta tester and few studios.

The new shave and haircut 5.5 has been released just a month ago and its fully compatibe with maya 2011, I think it should work by default with rms 3 because you need rib to work with shave. I didn't test it because I'm using custom tool with shave to export the fur, but that should work.

hope that help.

[oglu]

thanks for info jack...

[Garrick]

Will their be any realtime renderer included or GPU/Cuda accelerated magic going on with RFM 4.0 ?

[skyrick]

The new shave and haircut 5.5 has been released just a month ago and its fully compatibe with maya 2011, I think it should work by default with rms 3 because you need rib to work with shave. I didn't test it because I'm using custom tool with shave to export the fur, but that should work.hope that help.

Thanks JS, a last question : your custom tool work with RMS or with RFM ?
Is it compatible with RFM "not PRO" 4 ?
Is it a company owner tool or can you share it ? :)

[oglu]

some news...
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/rms3.0_announce.html

[jack_sparow]

sorry but I can't speak a lot about the detailed feature, Im under beta policy, but as you can see in the pixar news you have lumiere relighting IPR inside rms 3 only because it use RPS to connect the IPR. We are still in beta and many things are going to change in the next release in the workflow. Many things are still in beta stage of devellopement, that would be ok for october for the final release.

[oglu]

more news...
http://renderman.pixar.com/products/tools/rms-new.html
https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/eval/

and 3delight seams also ready for maya2011...
http://www.3delight.com/en/modules/PunBB/viewtopic.php?pid=12847#p12847

[jack_sparow]

Yes Renderman studio 3 is out and the new rps 15.2 too. Both have major improvements and new features. The overall speed is simply a lot faster than before and it support lot of great stuff for small to big production.

dna as always release a version of 3delight the same day as pixar, but it's mainly the current updated build, this is not the new 3delight version.. maybe they will release this one when pixar will release RPS 16, next year.

[jack_sparow]

Thanks JS, a last question : your custom tool work with RMS or with RFM ?
Is it compatible with RFM "not PRO" 4 ?
Is it a company owner tool or can you share it ?

to answer your question, sorry I didn't see it before in the thread.

Our custom tool work only with renderman studio because you need the rib function, not available in rfm. I'm not using rfm because it's a too limited tool for me, rms allow you to use the full power of Renderman pro server, rib, plugins, dso, filter, slim workflow, alfred or tractor, relighting. My tools are not for sell as a package but you can Hire me to devellop some custom solution based on your pipeline. That's a much better way to work because The tool is developped for the specific pipeline and work better than a standard tool.

[tonytrout]

Hi JS am I doing the right thing purchasing RS, its a sizable investment for me? Im influenced by the knowledge that Renderman used by some of the big studios and therefore it must be good, but do I need to be a technical person to use it effectively? i just want to learn one renderer properly and dont want to waste time on others. I was looking at the embedded renderer version which must be easier to drive ?

[Kel Solaar]

Hi JS am I doing the right thing purchasing RS, its a sizable investment for me? Im influenced by the knowledge that Renderman used by some of the big studios and therefore it must be good, but do I need to be a technical person to use it effectively? i just want to learn one renderer properly and dont want to waste time on others. I was looking at the embedded renderer version which must be easier to drive ?

Problem here is that most of big studios are using their own translator / bridge or whatever to feed PRMan, and not Renderman Studio. If you are aiming to code / develop shaders it's maybe a good choice because you will have a good environment to practice around Renderman but if you just wanna learn how to shade / light / render with it, it's definitely not a good idea since most of the time you will be using custom proprietary tools with a custom pipeline in big studios.

KS

[jack_sparow]

the new rms 3 offer you a good base for rendering, you have a powerfull tool with a powerfull plugin to render maya scene basically. It allow you to use Prman quickly, because it bring you all the power off "slim", shader engine from pixar to create your complex network and connect them to your object via surface shader or coshader. You can also render particle and volumetric efficiently as fluid with deep shadow. Global illumination is fast to setup and occlusion can be done without raytracing or flicking. You have now a physical type of shader into slim and many others tools to play with. You can also use the power of Ptex for baking, or using as texture coming from mudbox for example.
Rms is a powerfull renderer and can be understood quickly with some tutorials and some documentation read. Of course a bit of pratice is good to know renderman better but you don't need a big knowledge of renderman to do pretty picture with rms 3. So the choice is yours, the investment is big but you can learn a very powerfull renderer and one of the fastest rendering engine available for production stuff.

hope that help a bit, if you have specific question you can ask.

[tonytrout]

@ Kel Solaar. Hi Thomas thanks for the info. Im not aiming to work in a big studio lol just little ol me at home. I just want to render with something that works and has as few bugs as possible and I can expand later (and is industry supported). I assume I can add on to RS if I add a server and some slave machines. I think I would get in some expert advice if it ever gets to that though.

@ Jack Sparrow. Hi Julien. Thanks for info, all those features you mention like ptex and the slim shader editor are attractive. I think RS will suit me very well :thumbsup: I have been watching people playing with "the wall that is Vray" and dont want a repeat of struggling with MR

[jack_sparow]

Yes, just remember renderman is not Vray type of renderer. But you have all the tool by default to do great rendering in low rendering time. For animation, renderman is very fast, because pointbased GI and occlusion are fast, displacement, motion blur or dof are blasting. the only negative point is the raytrace speed sometimes, because raytrace in renderman still have plenty of room to be optimized, pixar is working on it. but Rms 3 is a lot faster with raytrace than the 2 version was.
If you want to render pretty detailed character with vector displacement, normal map, occlusion, GI, HDRI and SSS you can do that in no time compared to vray or others. I made lot of test between Vray, Prman and arnold and Prman remain faster in every case for me for the same quality.
Ptex support is a good add in the 3 version because you could use it when you would be able to create all ptex map with mudbox, mari or 3dcoat program, and you can still bake everything into ptex file, like occlusion , color bleeding or any kind of channel you want. This is great to manage memory instead of using pointcloud or brickmap.
If you buy a license I advice you to buy the maintenance for the license because this will allow you to get free update and even next version for free next year, Pixar release a new version of Rms and Rps each year approx. so think about the futur too.

hope this help a bit more.

[BrettSinclair]

I'm no uber super duper renderer guy. I have played with renderman for maya and renderman studio.
Though they are freakin fast with disp etc. I find the sss lacks. It doesn't have that realistic touch that other renderers give. Granted pirates of the caribbean 2 are amazing and real. But those shaders are custom dso's. If I'm wrong then please show how to achieve a realistic sss using the built in shaders.

[jack_sparow]

Well brett the renderman sss shader by default is the same ILM used on pirate 2. the thing is it's a bssrdf shader so the shader is hard to understand how it works, but with correct value you can get really nice result.
This is a just a way to use the shader correctly, and just a bit of tweaking and experience, but you can be sure pixar and ILM use the same method to compute the sss, in fact for info christophe hery who create the dso at ilm now works at pixar.:beerchug:

to get nice result you need to enter physical value for each rgb component of the mean free path, coupled with correct unitlength value for your scene scale. this is not really artist friendly but pixar documentation provide some value to get preset render like jensen paper.

[BrettSinclair]

Hey Julien, Thanks for clearing that up. Very interesting. Yea its a pity its a nightmare too set up. Everything else about renderman I love. Hair/fur renders like a dream too.

[oglu]

http://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/2010-price.html
maybe interesting...

[BrettSinclair]

Very interesting. No trial though :/

[jack_sparow]

I'm not sure pixar will make an eval this time, they don't want to get the eval cracked like the past one, so I think you need to ask them an eval license and copy to be able to test it. In that way they can control the cracking process more easily. They don't like to see their renderman cracked and make everything possible to protect it, I can understand why.

[BrettSinclair]

Ah ok. Makes sense. I see you still need studio to render shave hair. Really hoped they would integrate it more.

[oglu]

looks like they are working on it...
https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/eval/

[Kel Solaar]

They dropped PRMan price today : http://www.fxguide.com/article659.html

KS

[jack_sparow]

yes they told me about that thomas, that the best news since renderman exist.
now Prman is cheaper than any other great renderman and still much more powerfull.

Pixar is going to be competitive so it's a cool news for small studio.

[Kel Solaar]

yes they told me about that thomas, that the best news since renderman exist.
now Prman is cheaper than any other great renderman and still much more powerfull.

Pixar is going to be competitive so it's a cool news for small studio.

Definitely a great news :)

KS

[Garrick]

I didn't see any news for pricing on renderman for Maya 4.
Will that also be discounted by 40%?

[jack_sparow]

I'm not sre the price will drop also for RMS or RFM, this is only for pro server now. but maybe they will drop a bit all the price later. the news on pixar website only concern pro server droping to 2000$, maintenance to 600$/year, and discount on many license deal 5% to 50%.

Now you could be sure the bakery, 3delight and guerilla render are going to think about their price too.

[oglu]

Studios who wish to request a full functioning evaluation may write RenderMan Sales.
Note: the watermarked evaluation version of RenderMan for Maya has been discontinued.

https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/eval/

[jack_sparow]

Yes, as I said I was sure pixar will discountinued the watermark eval, just because of the cracking potential of this kind of release. A licensed version of renderman for maya is uncrackable, like rms. So I understand why they did that.

[Kel Solaar]

Yes, as I said I was sure pixar will discountinued the watermark eval, just because of the cracking potential of this kind of release. A licensed version of renderman for maya is uncrackable, like rms. So I understand why they did that.

Does that mean they offer now a time limited evaluation version ?

KS

[jack_sparow]

I think it's like rms now you can ask for a temporal license but of course it means that you need to contact them and ask them a license with your personnal info.