Renderman & 3DS Max: would that make sense?

[ZeBoxx]

There's several reasons I can think of :

1.
If you're talking about RenderMan in the sense of Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman, then you're talking about a pricetag of roughly $5,000 with a $750/year maintenance fee*.

2.
Even if you go with an alternative renderman-compliant renderer, of which many are free (BMRT is a popular one, but is no longer available), you still have to get your scene data out of 3ds max.
Although there are a few rib utilities for 3ds max, they mostly manage to just barely get geometry, camera, and light out. All the materials, procedural maps, volumetrics, etc. are unaccounted for.

3.
Though there is a 3ds max plugin which does do great exports from 3ds max, called MaxMan ( from AnimalLogic ), which sells for $990*.
It can cope with pretty much all of max's procedural maps and the basic volumetrics. However, if a 3rd party develops a map, volumetric, camera, light, etc. Then the MaxMan developers would first have to get in touch with that 3rd party developer to see how/if they can get the new data across to a renderman spec.
More often than not there's simply not enough demand for this, or it's technically impossible.

finalRender, V-Ray, Brazil r/s, and other max-native renderers don't have this problem, as they simply hook into 3ds max api calls. All base 3rd party classes should work straight out of the box.
Of course lighting types specific to the scanline's lighttracer may not work in either of those renderers either. It's not entirely without problems, but there's a lot less than with the moving out to rib route.

-----

Of course there's nice reasons why you -would- want to go the renderman route as well. However the mode 3ds max user typically has no justification for it.

Hope that helps

* January 19th, 2003. Prices may not be current.

[TobiX]

So in the end it´s more a lack of tools, isn´t it?

I think MAX is a very intuitive tool.
I tryed MAYA PLE but it doen´t fit to me, and I don´t think that the tool makes the artist doing art, but the artist is creating art with the tool.
That´s my opinion. And the question whether Maya or MAX and so on is like the question whether NURBS or Polys. ....it simply doesn´t matter.....the result counts.

So I intend to write a plugin for max which could export RIB´s and could handle in some way the shader problem.

Maybe nobody would use it, or maybe it will never work, but it´s urgent to me to learn from it how everything works.


Tobi

[ZeBoxx]

I think it's a bit more than just a lack of tools. At the very end, yes, that is the problem.

But writing something that would, for example, output an AfterBurn volumetric to your renderman-compliant renderer would be more akin to re-writing AfterBurn as a renderman shader than it would be to just get data across.

That's not a trivial undertaking :)

I'd sooner put in a part of code that queries a 3ds max native renderer for the proper results from data (e.g. the AfterBurn volumetric) whenever the data isn't directly recognized by the renderman-compliant renderer.

Note that it's relatively easier to code a rendering plugin for 3ds max which is renderman-compliant, than it is to write a renderman-compliant renderer which would also understand 3ds max data.

Good luck either way :)

[Flinch]

I wouldn't say it's a lack of tools. MaxMan works really fine. ok, you can only use the procedurals that are included in max, and no 3rd party procedurals nor you can use special plug-ins like afterburn, dreamscape, ...
But you've to ask yourself if you really need this stuff. I guess most people who really want to use Renderman with max use their own custom-written shader and don't rely on what is available for max.
You should really have a reason to use Renderman, cause it makes totally no sense to use it just because you think it's a good renderer and many big companies are using it.

Another point where you're slightly wrong is that "mostly every 3Dsoftware is used with renderman even Wings3D".
In fact, you can render with renderman straight out of wings, but you should consider that wings is only a modeller!! you have only to export poly-geometry and lights. You can't really texture nor animate in wings. So it's not quite fair to ask "Why can't a many thousand-dollar app render with Renderman if even a freeware app can?"
From the main 3d programs only Houdini and Maya (only with either MtoR or MayaMan) have a really good conection to Renderman. For Lightwave there's a rib-export-tool, but from what i've heard it's pretty limited. And for XSI there's still no Renderman-exporter in sight.

"So I intend to write a plugin for max which could export RIB´s and could handle in some way the shader problem."
I would suggest to better try the free version of MaxMan first. It's not really a shader-problem, but you can't convert a max-procedural on the fly to a renderman-shader. So you have to rewrite every max-procedural as renderman-shader, and when converting the scene to .rib grab the values from the max-procedural and use them in your appropriate shader for that procedural. So you see it's not an easy job because you've to rewrite every procedural as renderman-shader and have to ensure that they look equal.

Flinch

[TobiX]

at first I should mention that wont make a better tool than MaxMan. I want do write this plugin in to learn how Renderman works and to improve my coding skills.

the second is the shader stuff. I dont want to write s.th. that converts Max materials to shader. Thats too hard for me and beside that, when you work with Maya for example, you have to use renderman shaders not the mayashaders. Why would Pixar write a program like Slim when It would be easy to use the mayashaders?!

My thought was to render textures from the renderman shader and use them in max for previz and for texturing, of course not manually, that would make no sense.

so far...

tobi

[Fex]

hi all,

agree with Flinch concerning Houdini and Maya (Mtor)
cause MaxMan has many features but also a big lack
in the very basic usage: you can't split shadow map
generation from the original light;
theres also no accurate way to handle objs in shadow maps...

Also RIB generation isn't very clean through MaxMan
compared to Houdini or Mtor, this generates many
problems with custom shaders:shrug:

Maybe AIR in conection with MaxMan is a cheaper solution...

[artistx]

I pretty much agree with what Finch and Fex have said. (They appear to be experienced in the renderman/max plugin area and have helped me out numerous times)

I've decided to write a little .rib exporter too. :) TobiX, you said you were going to write your own plug-in. It can definitely be done. However, if you are bent on doing this then you will have to do a great deal of reading and investigation. I think you can do it. As you said yourself, you will learn a great deal about how things are built in RIB and 3ds Max. I'm personally going the maxscripting route, but I suppose you can get a little more for your work by using 3ds Max's API. The problem is that (far as I know) Maxman is not open source. You'd be starting from ground zero. In comparison, there is one script called Doberman that you can look at and pick apart. It exports Max files out as .ribs for BMRT. I've already started looking at the script and it's really not that complicated. There are also two other .rib exporters. One is by Nikolay Ragozin. His is called "RIB Manager". If anyone knows where to find it let me know. :) There's a third one but the script is encrypted, so you can't really learn much from it. I think the big bear is when you want to get your UV unwrap coordinates translated over to the .rib file. Like your stated before, you can still do a little bit of previz in Max.

I heard through the grapevine that Animallogic isn't going to be doing anymore development on Maxman. It's a shame. It's good software. Since you can't depend on them forever (unless you buy the product), might as well start coding. If you need help let me know. I might be of some assitance. Good luck with your project.

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