Renderman required if wanting to be a Lighting TD?

[SebKaine]

"I'm thinking of getting the educational version of RAT and Renderman Pro Server"
Jhonny , can you tell me more about this ? I'm student like you , and me and my school could be really interested by this .

For your answer i think that
- First Priority => Make Kick Ass rendering with Your render engine ( Mental Ray )
- Second Priority => Deep Knowledge of Cinemathography and Photography ( Color, Mood , Composition )
- Then The Knowledge of Renderman can be a big plus if you want to work in a big company in US or UK

[QuantumBoy]

Jhonny , can you tell me more about this ? I'm student like you , and me and my school could be really interested by this .

For your answer i think that
- First Priority => Make Kick Ass rendering with Your render engine ( Mental Ray )
- Second Priority => Deep Knowledge of Cinemathography and Photography ( Color, Mood , Composition )
- Then The Knowledge of Renderman can be a big plus if you want to work in a big company in US or UK

Yeah, that does sound like really good advice. Thanks. :) Divide and conquer one rendering engine and make some great renderings before going onto another and get a solid foundation first.

As for the educational versions of Renderman, etc. You can go to Pixar's site here:

https://renderman.pixar.com/products/pricelists/educational.html

and contact them directly. I think what they need if you are getting a license for yourself is a faxed copy of your student ID and some other info on the cover sheet along with the credit card info to order the software.

If the school is getting some seats for a 3D teaching program there it might be even more economical. They would also have to contact pixar's sales dept.

Good luck! :)

[SebKaine]

Thanks For the links johnny!

Moreover Mental Ray is by itself a very rich and complex engine ! And in my opinion someone who really know it in depth , won't have any problem to switch ! The big difference with Renderman is that all is manual , you've got a complete control on what you do with MTOR, you had to say , ok i link this with this, this will be on raytrace this won't ...

But the big plus is that the Pixar Doc is Excellent , and you won't have so much pb to understand the equivalent words for Ka , Ks , shading Rate ...

The big trouble is that you'r on your own when you got a bug , cause there's nobody for helping you ...

i give you those links if you want to discover renderman concept for free
- http://liquidmaya.sourceforge.net/liquidwiki/index.php/Reference/renderGlobals (= MTOR like)
- http://www.dream.com.ua/thetool.html ( = Slim like )
- http://www.3delight.com/en/ ( = PRman like)

if your' not a coder, avoid 100% open render like Pixie ! Man i burn Hour and Hour of my time trying to fix problems with release that doesn't work ! This is gonna kill you , believe me ...

[QuantumBoy]

Awesome! Thanks for the links! :)

[playmesumch00ns]

I don't know how deep you want to get, but if you really want to understand renderman, the best thing you could do is read Advanced RenderMan. (http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-RenderMan-Creating-Pictures-Kaufmann/dp/1558606181/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-8938998-1139911?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175590715&sr=8-1) Read it again and again until it makes sense. You don't need to know how to code a complex shader from scratch, but having some idea about the workings of the Reyes algorithm, what shading rate and dicing actually mean, what a deep shadow is and how they work, what a RIB looks like etc would be hugely beneficial.

Also make sure to read all the application notes in the documentation as there's a wealth of information there.

renderman is a complex beast that's nothing whatsoever like mental ray beyond the fact it makes pictures. It takes a lot of time to learn properly. You don't have to be immensely technical to use it to light shots. Some of the best TD's i've worked with didn't have a clue how things worked under the hood and had built up good working practice by years of trial and error. But having a good understanding about how the renderer works internally will enable you to work quicker and more efficiently, and will ultimately make your work better,

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