Pixar Renderman

[DesignDawg]

Hehe... Either this is a joke (and it's funny if it is).... or you need to know this as well:

What's so great about it? If you think the lack of GI is bad, consider the fact that it also didn't have ANY raytracing in it. That's right. No reflections, no refractions, no caustics, etc...

Yep. No raytracing in any of Pixar's movies.

Ricky

[wedge]

yeah.... release 11 adds raytracing and gi and deep shadows (which i think refers to hair, if i am reading this correctly)... but if it didn't have any of those features, how the hell did it look so good pre-Monsters Inc.?

oh yeah, and i'm not joking. i don't know anything about renderman, and i'm curious, so you don't have to be a dick about it, designdawg.

[null]

pretty much every big f/x movie is rendered with PRMan. including fellowship of the ring.

[beaker]

People learn to fake everything. It is alot faster to fake GI/raytracing. In film people tend to prefer speed. Prman is about 5x faster than most renderers and there is virtually no speed hit when you add something like displacement, dof, or 3d motion blur. In any other renderer it will slow down by a factor of 5-10x. Also Prman has its own shader language so programmers can easily write their own shaders without having to resort to the api. Just think about all the movies out there where they use PRman and their render times are still anywhere from 6-20 hours a frame. Then imagine using another renderer that is 5x as slow.

As null said, 90% of the movies out there are rendered with Prman without any raytracing or GI. ILM, DD, Sony, Cinesite, R&H, etc...

[wedge]

thanks beaker, for the clear and straightforward answer.... :D


to designdawg: :p

[UncleBen's]

well, the reason why Monsters inc. looks so great is, because they have a lot of talented artists, and they take time for the lighting. When you just throw 3 lights on a scene with your fur character in a child room it doesn't make it cool. I saw a report of a guy of pixar from the lighting/rendering department. He showed how they lightend the room of the baby. The thought about where there are light sources, where they bounce and what color it would have. And they used a lot of light, and faked the bouncing by hand. This is not done in a minute, but they get exactly the mood they want. They want their own specific look. Monster's inc. was surely not physical correct, but it had that kind of realism they needed.

I think GI is great for architecture and outdoor lighting, but for many cases lighting by hand is the better choice. You can set the mood and you can learn a lot. :) But it's surely fun to play with GI.

[DesignDawg]

Hey, man...

Back off, please. I was absolutely NOT being a dick to anyone. WTF? I thought you would find it interesting that renderman "lacked" all the features that even Poser users take for granted. Jesus.

Ricky

[wedge]

well you replied to my message saying that my message was a joke, how am i supposed to interpret that?

sorry if you meant it some other way, but i'm sure you can see how that could be interpreted as mean.

[DesignDawg]

Here's the deal:

With all the threads out there every day about "I need to do good GI" and the others about "GI is an excuse for bad lighting and people who can't light a scene", I thought it would be pretty funny - in a subtle way - for someone to imply, about the world's most revered and respected, time-tested, production-proven, prestigious renderer, that it couldn't be that great if it didn't have GI. As a matter of fact, I made the SAME EXACT joke in one of the aforementioned "GI is for people who can't light a scene" threads, just a week or two ago.
And, on top of thinking that joke could be funny, I thought that if you really DID think it had GI, you probably didn't realize just how much it was lacking. There are many misconceptions about Renderman, and I have seen crowds react like someone had just proven that 2+2=5 when they were told there was no raytracing in any of Pixar's movies.
Anyway, that's the end of my defense here. I try to contribute where I can, and answer and help out when I have time. As a matter of fact, I gave you a "clear and straightforward answer" just a couple of threads down. Maybe try not to jump to the conclusion that people are mistreating you when they're trying to help? :shrug:

Ricky


:shrug:

[playmesumch00ns]

Have you read the credits on Monsters Inc? There's like 3 lighting TDs one overall lighting director and like 20 guys under them all doing the lighting. That's why Monsters Inc looks so good, a plethora of talented people at Pixar. Of which I will be one, one day *dreams*

[graphiouz]

not just monsters inc! or any of Pixars flicks
every film done with renderman have über light technichians,

.

[J:F:K]

Originally posted by null
pretty much every big f/x movie is rendered with PRMan. including fellowship of the ring.


I must say you are wrong the movie isent rendered with Renderman its the VFX there is rendered with renderman :p :p :p :p hehehehehehehehehe Just a joke!!! just had to say that!!!

[wedge]

DesignDawg: sorry i misunderstood you, no hard feelings, okay? but you have to understand that when only text is involved, and there are no aural intonations to work from, phrases can be interpreted the wrong way. so no hard feelings, okay?

[DesignDawg]

No prob. Didn't want any in the first place.

Ricky:thumbsup:

[G Nilsson]

actually there is raytracing in a bugs life.. it is the bottle of nuts and it was rendered with bmrt.
nice of pixar to first use bmrt, then sue exluna :)
/G

[Array]

you guys are confusing a rendering standard, called renderman, with Pixar's implementation of that standard called PhotoRealistic Renderman (PRMan for short). Just thought i would point that out.

[wedge]

no, i said Pixar Renderman in the topic, so obviously we're talking about pixar's renderer.

[Array]

Pixar Renderman isnt a product.....it's Pixar PhotoRealistic Renderman (again, PRMan for short). When you say Pixar Renderman (Pixar developed the standard), or just Renderman, most people in the Renderman community assume that you are referring to the standard.

Edit:

Blech...i dont even know anymore. even pixar calls their product Renderman on the sales page. I wouldnt be surprised if Steve Jobbs eventually decided to close the standard.

[victor]

Originally posted by Array
Blech...i dont even know anymore. even pixar calls their product Renderman on the sales page. I wouldnt be surprised if Steve Jobbs eventually decided to close the standard.

I think what you're thinking of is the "RenderMan Interface" (which might tecnically be the "Renderman Interface Specification"). "RenderMan" refers to a bunch of software available from Pixar, and includes their renderer, "Photorealistic RenderMan" (there was also a wireframe renderer call "Vector RenderMan" but I don't know if that's still around). Renderers from other developers are NOT "RenderMan" renderers, though they may be "RenderMan Compliant" if they support all of the basic features of the Renderman Interface.

[DSedov]

Though PRMAN lacks raytracing and GI, those techniques are still use in production environment.

There are three things (maybe more) that are used with PRMAN to achieve fairly realistic results.

First is the rayserver, that for some reason runs only on *nix, which renders with PRMAN and whenever it needs to use a global illumination model ( I dont mean GI but the information of the surroundings - i.e. raytracing) it calls for another render that can access scene globaly.

Second there is image based lighting which is kind of HDRI type of thing but a bit different,

Third there is GI baking that was used, for example, in Pearl Harbor. ILM used their proriatary tool with MR to bake GI and then apply those lightmaps onto the models and render with PRMAN

I thing I should add the last one - compositing. Alot of lighting massaging goes in this las post production stage, where differnet channels, layers, shadow passases are "massaged" for better compositing in the scene.

PRMAN is truelly an amazing renderer, because of its speed. When I spoke to Eric Hanson (Fifth Element) he said that picture looks good, be it just a sphere with one light source, because it is rendered with PRMAN. Pixar studied the way human eye and film "see" the picture and by adding imperfections, edge rendering and stohastic AA you can achieve stunning results with PRMAN.

But keep in mind that PRMAN is just a tool, and how you use is what counts. You can achieve great results with almost any renderer if you know what you are doing, but Shading Language, features, and speed made PRMAN less expencive solution to the film production environment.

[beaker]

Dennis: You also forgot Ambient Occlusion for faking GI.
It A guy from ILM showed off this technique at the renderman for production course at siggraph. It was also used on Perl Harbor, and JP3.
"Chapter 5: Hayden Landis - Production-Ready Global Illumination"
http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Books/sig02.course16.pdf.gz

[fabman]

I don't really know what's the problem with a lot of people out there about GI, I think that any improvement in the algorithms for rendering it's good for everyone, and I'm sick of hearing people saying that the GI it's just for untalented artists that lacks of lightning skills.... sometimes it's more difficult to setup the parameters of a scene in GI than to fake it, and no matter how good you could be faking it, you won't ever be able to get as close as GI to reality.
I'm not saying that you should use GI for any scene, use the right render algorithm for the right scene, but stop picking on people just for saying the word GI in a forum... I mean, I think we should stop using even the software modelers and go back to model writing the 3d with code, don't you think?, that way it'll be even more cool.

just my two cents ( of € ).

[beaker]

>>I don't really know what's the problem with a lot of people out there about GI,

Because its slow. Many people will accept render times that are 10x slower than faking just because its easy. If you actually took the time to learn proper lighting then you could use it when needed and not just use GI as an easy out for any situation.

>>I think that any improvement in the algorithms for rendering it's good for everyone, and I'm sick of hearing people saying that the GI it's just for untalented artists that lacks of lightning skills.... sometimes it's more difficult to setup the parameters of a scene in GI than to fake it

No it is not more difficult to setup the parameters, just takes more time because GI is so damn slow. So you have to wait 20 minutes between changing settings.

>>and no matter how good you could be faking it, you won't ever be able to get as close as GI to reality.

Hello! All cgi is fake in the first place, how can you say that you can't get as close to GI with faking? GI is fake! Have you seen any movies? 75% of them are rendered in Prman with faking GI, so obviosly you can get just as good results without GI.

Right tool for the right job. Problem is that alot of people take the road of 1 tool that does everything for all jobs.

[fabman]

Well, first I want to say that my intention it wasn't start a renderers 'war', I just think that if you have 100 options in the market why should you say people shouldn't use a few of them 'cos you don't like it. I mean, in my company sometimes we use ( sorry in the office we use Max ) FinalRender and sometimes the basic scanline renderer from Max, it depends of the render times and the quality we get for that extra-time, it's not a matter of.... 'ah!, we don't know how to light this scene... we'll go for GI'.

>Because its slow. Many people will accept render times that are >10x slower than faking just because its easy. If you actually >took the time to learn proper lighting then you could use it >when needed and not just use GI as an easy out for any >situation.

That's true, sometimes shitty models looks less shitty if you light them with GI, but that doesn't mean that GI should be banned or something like that, and about learning proper lightning it's true that everyone should have good skill in lightning and photography, but again... that doesn't mean you could use GI to get even better results, I mean, I think that if Pixar finally added that on the RenderMan Tools 5.5.... sure must be a good reason.

>No it is not more difficult to setup the parameters, just takes >more time because GI is so damn slow. So you have to wait 20 >minutes between changing settings.

Aha!, and a good technic positioning lights it's not a good technic but just 'that it takes too much time re-rendering the scene everytime you change any value of the lights of the scene', a good skill adjusting lights with GI it's as good as a good skill lightning without GI, a mirror ball on a checkered plane rendered with GI it's still a mirror ball, why should I be agains another good tool for good artists ( I'm not saying that I'm in that group ) :)

>>and no matter how good you could be faking it, you won't ever be able to get as close as GI to reality.

>Hello! All cgi is fake in the first place, how can you say that you >can't get as close to GI with faking? GI is fake! Have you seen >any movies? 75% of them are rendered in Prman with faking >GI, so obviosly you can get just as good results without GI.

if you read the last sentence in my last post I'm not saying that GI is reality... I'm saying 'AS CLOSE as GI to reality', I'm admiting there that GI it's not perfect, but it's more accurate in the light treatment than the basic renderer, it depends on the field you're working at, if you want to show accurately and phisicaly correct images, maybe in photometrics field ( not sure about the term in english ), you don'y have any other option that go for GI or Radiosity, that is 'less' fake than a scanline render, I should say... more phisically correct, and what you're saying about all cgi it's fake, we're just getting in the metaphysics field... it's the reality the way we see it?, or it's just an interpretation of our brain?, cgi as any physic interpretation of the reality it's based in more and more accurate theories through the history about how light behave, probably in a few years new renderers will even calculate the curvature of the raylights because the mass of the objects, and people will start complaining about that new renderers are doing the things too easy.
Well, I just wanna show my opinion here about the new renderers and the GI, if you want to use GI, use it, and if you don't... don't but it's always good to try new thing's... isn't it?.

Anyway... if it sound rude I didn't mean to..... that would be quite far from my idea of what it should be CGTalk.

[thesaint]

Fascinating stuff guys. Several of these posts have cropped up, and I have been quick to join in every one of them!!!

Well, ray tracing is of course the ideal way, even with good lighting TD's like we have here. But it kills two things that can hurt a production.

The first is that Hidden Surface Removal is lost, you cannot turn off surfaces that might alter the path of a ray, or show up in a reflection. This is called Global Surface Rendering and is, as you would expect, expensive.

Secondly it is hard to manipulate individual rays for certain effects or exclusion. Thinking back to Buzz's helmet, imagine if the whole room was reflected in it?? You would have to animate everything, even if it was out-of-shot, and you would hardly be able to see his face and importantly his eyes. Also, you have a hard time staging shots like the one where Woody and Buzz fight at the gas station, If Woody's face was reflected accurately we would have had to twist him and place him almost in front of the camera.

So, ironically, accuracy can be a bad thing.

More recently in Nemo, we have had to use several cheats to get things to work. Mostly we rely on the fact that nobody (and I mean nobody) has the ability to calculate the path of a ray by looking at a scene. Even when we showed Gerri's Game to several physics experts, they could not tell that Gerri's glasses were a complete farce as far as accuracy is concerned. We do this to support story and give a shot context which is more important than making every ray bounce right.

You will see our biggest list of ray tracing shots in Nemo, but even then, it isn't all that many. Good lighting will always be more powerful than good ray tracing in telling a story.

Lastly (because this post is way too long!) ray tracing is less accurate than shadow mapping. Shadow mapping simply recreates a set of rules for approximating the light. And it does it very accurately (in its own way) while Ray Tracing is infinitely inaccurate because the only way to make it 100% is to trace an infinite amount of rays that enter the scene, which would take how long??? So proportionately it is less accurate! ;-) but only proportionately......

[thesaint]

RenderMan (named after the Sony WalkMan):
Refers to the specification that any render engine can conform too.

PRMan (PhotoRealistic RenderMan) was the first implimentation of the standard and refers soley to our particular engine.

These terms are used interchangably and it is easy to see why people get confused. But they are different.

3Delight (free and great!) is as much RenderMan as ours.

[MacRonin]

Here is a question for thesaint...

Any clues as to when we can see PRMan running under MacOS X...?!?

Seems silly for Steve Jobs to ignore a formerly supported platform (yeah, I know, it was MacRenderMan, not actually PRMan), unless he is waiting to show it running on IBM PPC970 machines...?!?

And what do you folks think my chances are in upgrading my copy of MacRenderMan to PRMan v11.5 for MacOS X...?!?

Uh, that was a joke folks!

;^p

[thesaint]

i don't have much to do with the guys writing the release code, or for that matter, any of the code!

MacRenderMan had, like, one user and i think that i am speaking to him :-)

Seriously, i really don't know, on the one hand it is now a Unix based OS which should make porting it pretty doable, on the down side is Mac's are pretty expensive if you are building a render farm. The thing about renderering is that any proc is relevant, any proc so you can buy cheap PC's or MIPS by the bucket load but Mac's are kind of the other way around -- only the best will do. Faster, smarter and not cheaper!
And if he is waiting to show it on those new sexy machines i doubt he would tell me! Can you say 'peon'?? ;-)

Call Lola she is a babe and always ready to help.

Ironically there are people on this list that would probably know more than me. It takes all my brains to keep up with what we have here, let alone following the press releases for the commercial version.

A very long winded post to say i don't know. Sorry about that.

[beaker]

A couple people from pixar have posted on this issue over the years since osx has come out:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3A9C2D41.9509471E%40pixar.com

I'm quotting Tom Duff here:
"This gets asked often enough that it should be in the FAQ.
I do not speak for Pixar, but it is a good bet that that if
we get an order for enough licenses we will port Prman to
any platform at all. (Obviously `enough licenses' depends
on the platform -- there are not enough Cray IIs in the world
to support the licenses that would pay for that port.)

OS X should be a relatively easy case, since it's freeBSD
underneath. The technical work involved in the, presumably
similar, Linux port took a couple of engineer-days. OS X
might be a little harder because of the possible need to
produce a non-X display driver, and whatever work needs to
be done to deal with Apple's two-fork files.

[The apparently related signature below was generated
automatically. I don't remember what it means.]
--
Tom Duff. You get nuclear explosions, or Linux."


Also there was a long discussion on the issue last summer:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=acf6sp%24f4g%241%40bob.news.rcn.net&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dlg%2540exluna.com%2Bosx%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dacf6sp%2524f4g%25241%2540bob.news.rcn.net%26rnum%3D1

Pretty much the conclusion was if there is enough of a demand from real paying customers that would pay for the price of porting and support then it would probably happen. So if someone said, I want to buy 100 copies of prman for osx, then it would probably happen.

[beaker]

Also, I dont know if it would make it any easier on pixar since it has been many years since the days of NeXT and quite a bit has been changed since then, but every copy of the OpenStep operating system shipped with a free copy of Prman (OSX is based on OpenStep).

[thesaint]

That sounds about right. The user base for PRMan is actually a kind of a family. There aren't many licenses out there and i know that these guys would bend over backwards to meet the needs of end users.

I have no doubt that they would port it if they could have it make any kind of sense at all.

As far as right now is concerned i can tell you that no such plans exsist, i just went and asked.

Just for you MacRonin, some special lovin' from us I also asked if they would honor the old MacRenderMan licenses for upgrade and they sure, it isn't their money! ;-)

I guess that Steve will get the last word on that..

[Peechylyfe]

Hello i am using RM and am having some problems that i am not to sure how to fix... i was just checking to see if anyone her may have a clue.

the error i am getting is "no maitre_d"

and another is the huntgroup err

any ideas?

thanx

[Peechylyfe]

As far as the error message that i am getting its not constant, it will render sometimes but usually i get this error

"no huntgroup match (pixarlrma)"

i am not to sure what else i can say to help but i hope this is enough. Like i said it does work some times but i keep getting that error.

thanks.

[thesaint]

grab this information for me and we'll see if that can't be resolved.

What version of RAT and PRMan?
Just one machine or a network?
What are the specs on the machine?
What 3D app are you calling Alfred from typically?

open up alfred from cmd line or icon.
Go to master shedule and look and tell us what the services line reads.

Also, are you able to sucessfully launch Alfred each and every times using icon or cmd line? Try launching it about 4 times in a row.

Let me tell you now that if it fails to launch each time it is probably an issue with your pixard file and will probably require a reinstall from disk.

[Peechylyfe]

thanks!

i checked out a few things and looked over the IT help and go things straight. oh and its RM 5.5, and trying to port in to maya, it was that the localhosts were disabled by default so i fixed it and it works perfectly!

thanks again for you help.

[thesaint]

great! Glad to hear you got it working...

[immerzeelpictures]

I still have a copy of MaCRenderMan, can I buy PRMan 12 at upgrade price?
Just kidding...

I am eagerly looking foward to be using RenderMan for Maya. It is finally within my budget range.

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