CGTalk - Pixar drops prices on PRMan, PRMan 11.5 imminent

matty429

06-08-2003, 12:20 AM

Both...You can plug into maya houdini and i think max ..XSI...no
lightwave...not sure....

You can write shaders standalone...and can convert models to a renderman format.....

Renderman...Now priced ar 3500...in my opinion is the unchallenged king of rendering packages....

Jusy my opinion though....

snipa101

06-08-2003, 12:32 AM

yea and to add to matty, if you can export to a rib file format, you can load the job up in PRman and render it, ...at least i think so...i can never trust the talking trees.

Ckerr812

06-08-2003, 12:46 AM

hah! Is this a gift for the awsome success of Finding Nemo! This is awsome! I always wanted to get a copy of PRman for home to play around with, now I can!!! :)

onlooker

06-08-2003, 02:09 AM

:cry: Steve Jobs, Pleeeeeease get this ported over to be compatible with machines from your other company.

I Need A Mac Version Man! MacRenderMan , MacRenderMan, MacRenderMan, MacRenderMan, MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,MacRenderMan,:beer:

Array

06-08-2003, 02:32 AM

i think that a version of macrenderman coming out again is likely if the rumors pertaining to the ppc 970 are true.

onlooker

06-08-2003, 05:45 AM

Originally posted by Array
i think that a version of macrenderman coming out again is likely if the rumors pertaining to the ppc 970 are true.

Yeh! Which rumor is that? There are thousands.:) Or seem to be...

JA-forreal

06-08-2003, 05:55 AM

Great News! Just in time for the full standard renderman support that our Blender man "Mr. Green" is helping to setup for an upcomming Blender version.

malducin

06-08-2003, 07:30 AM

PRMan can act as a standalone but as other renders it's nice when you can interface withing your animation package. As long as you feed RIB or can call the API, you're in like Flynt.

Yes, Maya and Houdini have the most complete PRMan support. There is also support for Max via MaxMan from Animal Logic. They also make SoftMan but don't know if it works under XSI, only know about 3D for sure. There was Max support on Entropy but that is gone. For Lightwave there were 2 plugins LTOR and Lightman.

As far as a Mac version, as has been discussed in the newsgroup, if there were enough demand they would probably do it. But who's gonna order 500 licenses. Not likely. But there are other options, both 3Delight and Aqsis have Mac OSX support. Both are quite capable.

Ivo

06-08-2003, 10:06 AM

what about RAT? any news on a new version?

dmaas

06-08-2003, 10:56 AM

With the new prices you get the stand-alone renderer and network client for $3500 (it used to be $5000). For $2000 more you get the Artist Tools (i.e. Maya plugins), which used bto be $3000. The support prices have dropped too.

I am definitely going to be buying some more licenses :)

One question: the press release mentions that the new prman is multi-threaded. So does this mean you can use 2 CPUs with one license, or do you still need two licenses for 2 CPUs?

matty429

06-08-2003, 11:01 AM

Im Guessing it's one license per machine...

Array

06-08-2003, 01:33 PM

I would think it's still 1 liscence per cpu like it was before. would be too good to be true if it was 1 liscence for machine, since production companies would be able to save money by getting render nodes with more cpus. doesnt make sense that a liscence to run prman on an SGI supercomputer with 100 cpu's would cost as much as a liscence to run prman on a 4 processor xeon setup.

alphatron

06-08-2003, 03:37 PM

Did MTOR drop to? I remember demoing PRMan with MTOR and the inegration with Maya was actually quite good. Only drawback was no texture preview in the viewports.. but it did bring Pixar's Subd features right into Maya.

Array

06-08-2003, 10:59 PM

yeah, mtor also went down in price.

MacRonin

06-09-2003, 12:40 AM

Interesting thing about that press release...

No mention of supported platforms whatsoever...

Usually, most software press releases cover the supported platforms/OS'/etc. in one of the last two paragraphs...

But this time around, nothing at all...

I am thinking that RenderMan is going to be coming back to the Mac platform in the next few months or so...

But what would I know, I am just some Mac zealot...

;^p

malducin

06-09-2003, 01:52 AM

Well that's quite easy to find:

https://renderman.pixar.com/products/techspecs/index.htm

If they were to announce a new platform I guess they'll wait until SIGGRAPH when they officially release 11.5.

I doubt it'll coom out to OSX soon though but you never know.

beaker

06-09-2003, 02:00 AM

[i]
As far as a Mac version, as has been discussed in the newsgroup, if there were enough demand they would probably do it. But who's gonna order 500 licenses. Not likely. But there are other options, both 3Delight and Aqsis have Mac OSX support. Both are quite capable. [/B]
They mentioned that it would only take enough licenses ordered to pay for the port. According to Tom Duff, he said that the linux port only took one day and the osx version would take maybe 2-3. So it would be maybe 5-10 licenses to justify a port, not 500. Especially since apple has x11 for osx now, it is even easier for them to port over.

a23

06-09-2003, 12:25 PM

hi,

i assume just porting PRMan to work under OS X is trivial, but what about RAT? I think there would be quite some work to do, with all the aquaness. or maybe not.

i always wondered if RAT is a maya only development or is it the pixar inhouse way of doing things, too? you know, using slim to do the shading networks.

because if, when are they going to update to the point where you can really edit the shader network in a tree like fashion (rearrange nodes freely in the graph). i mean not having to go into a specific node and (re)attach something different inside that node. but more like the freedom you have in the maya hypershade. have a look at mayaman it's very good.

just a thought.

anyway, i'm really looking forward to the new version.

AndY

iC4

06-09-2003, 01:48 PM

just a basic question....the photorealistic renderman will do the rendering, so whats RAT and SLIM for?

show

06-09-2003, 03:41 PM

RAT is basically all the different renderman complimenting tools that they release.
slim is for creating renderman shaders
mtor is the bridge between maya to renderman/alfred
it has all the pixar sub'ds built into it too.
"it" is where your rendered image ends up when you've setup the whole lot for general workstation use that is. but of course its good for a lot of other things :P

r2m

06-09-2003, 09:32 PM

about the educationnal version :
does it have some kind of trademark all over the screen like in mayaPLE rendered stills ?

Array

06-09-2003, 11:08 PM

no it doesnt. educational software in general has no watermarks. just the "free" versions you get online like softimage XSI EXP or maya PLE.

beaker

06-10-2003, 02:11 AM

i assume just porting PRMan to work under OS X is trivial, but what about RAT? I think there would be quite some work to do, with all the aquaness. or maybe not.
[/B]
SLIM and many other parts of RAT are just written in TCL which works pretty much the same across different platforms.

i always wondered if RAT is a maya only development or is it the pixar inhouse way of doing things, too? you know, using slim to do the shading networks.

RAT works perfectly fine outside Maya. MTOR is the only part of it that requires maya. SLIM, Alfred, It, etc.. will all run as their own separate apps if you double click on their icons.

Many of the guys at Pixar doing shaders tend to be programmers and CS guys, so I don't know how much they use SLIM to build shaders. From people talking on the renderman news groups it sounds like their best friends are VIM and Emacs.
because if, when are they going to update to the point where you can really edit the shader network in a tree like fashion (rearrange nodes freely in the graph). i mean not having to go into a specific node and (re)attach something different inside that node. but more like the freedom you have in the maya hypershade. have a look at mayaman it's very good.

They added that functionality to SLIM about 2 years ago with Rat 4.5.

a23

06-10-2003, 01:45 PM

They added that functionality to SLIM about 2 years ago with Rat 4.5.

oops. RTFM on myself ;-)

AndY

MacRonin

06-10-2003, 10:09 PM

Originally posted by malducin
Well that's quite easy to find:

https://renderman.pixar.com/products/techspecs/index.htm

If they were to announce a new platform I guess they'll wait until SIGGRAPH when they officially release 11.5.

I doubt it'll coom out to OSX soon though but you never know.

Sure, but the link you give is for v11.0...

Not v11.5...

Nowhere on the renderman site is there mention of supported platforms for v11.5; which leads me to speculate that Pixar plans on releasing v11.5 on OS X also... But Steve Jobs is keeping a lid on it until the PPC 970 Macs are released...

Read between the lines, and squint a little...

Maya Unlimited for Mac OS X cannot be far behind...!

;^p

moovieboy

06-11-2003, 12:41 AM

Good Lord... If it was true about faster chips, better architecture, Renderman and Maya Unlimited all happening to the Mac in the next 12 months... I, I think I would have to sit down:thumbsup:

Course, I'm already just giddy as kool-aid that FCP4 is coming out Saturday! :bounce:

-Tom

malducin

06-11-2003, 09:05 AM

Well the porting cost is trivial, but what about the support calls? I mean at least people under *nix have probably enough tech experts. Can you imagine regular Mac users (no disrespect) trying to figuer out PRMan. SUre there is lot of stuff out of the box user friendly but the nitty gritty can get hairy.

Not even Pixar is switching to Mac servers for the renderfarm. They recently started switching the SUN farm to a Linux one from RackServer

Anyway it would be interesting to watch what develops this year.

moovieboy

06-11-2003, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by malducin
Well the porting cost is trivial, but what about the support calls? I mean at least people under *nix have probably enough tech experts. Can you imagine regular Mac users (no disrespect) trying to figuer out PRMan.

Hee hee... Well, even with the price drop, it'll still be the UN-regular mac user who'd want to get a crack at Renderman anyway :D

-Tom

Array

06-11-2003, 07:04 PM

plus you pay a LOT of money for support...but form what I hear you definately get what you pay for.

pomme

06-11-2003, 09:41 PM

I'm a mac guy, and I know alot of other mac guys and gals, and PRman just isn't in demand. We want ease of use period, that's why we use mac. People who want the technical stuff found in PRman would have gone with pc already anyways.

moovieboy

06-11-2003, 11:21 PM

Originally posted by pomme
I'm a mac guy, and I know alot of other mac guys and gals, and PRman just isn't in demand. We want ease of use period, that's why we use mac. People who want the technical stuff found in PRman would have gone with pc already anyways.

Well, I'm also a mac guy and know a lot of other mac guys (not too many mac girls, though) and we'd like to have a choice :D

-Tom

playmesumch00ns

06-11-2003, 11:46 PM

Originally posted by Array
plus you pay a LOT of money for support...but form what I hear you definately get what you pay for.

Oooh yeah. Personal visits from Pixar support guys to make sure everything's running peachy and everything. Beats a couple of PDF's and a busy support phone line any day:)

beaker

06-12-2003, 01:11 AM

Originally posted by malducin
Well the porting cost is trivial, but what about the support calls? I mean at least people under *nix have probably enough tech experts. Can you imagine regular Mac users (no disrespect) trying to figuer out PRMan. SUre there is lot of stuff out of the box user friendly but the nitty gritty can get hairy.
Prman is still out of most peoples price range. Most people that are paying that much per processor would know what they are doing and buying(I hope).

beaker

06-12-2003, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by pomme
I'm a mac guy, and I know alot of other mac guys and gals, and PRman just isn't in demand. We want ease of use period, that's why we use mac. People who want the technical stuff found in PRman would have gone with pc already anyways. Speak for yourself. I use mac's and prefer them(always have) and I used to be a SGI administrator(had many sgi's too) and can script my way out of most things in unix. There are many unix people I know of that would prefer macs as long as the pending processor speeds are fixed in the near future(hoping :) ). I've been to a few linux conferences and you would be surprised at all the mac laptops in the crowd

malducin

06-12-2003, 06:54 AM

Well now that PRMan is dropping in price it's not that inconceivable. If they are dropping 2k for Maya, getting the Pro Server for 3.5k becomes a bit more tempting.

Still the question of support lingers. Yes you do get top notch support for the price, but I think you could count that whole part of Pixar with the fingers of your hands, not a big operation at the memonet as far as I know. There have been statement from Pixar in the past that they didn't consider software a core part of their business anymore.

Although not saying that all Mac users would be clueless, just the average user. heck you see that in Windows: the kid that hears Maya was used in Star Wars, Spider-man or LOTR and wants it, never mnd he has no diea how to use it (and probably never will). Ther are many Mac power users out thre. Take for example the guys from Tweak films that worked on The Hero, they work on OS X and even developed a lot of their own propietary tools. PRMan for them and the like would be no problem.

Interesting times ahead.

tjnyc

06-12-2003, 08:49 PM

One thought that hasn't been discussed is the possibility that PRMan and RAT could be an official Apple product. Apple has the resources to port it over to OSX as well as distribute, license and support it. This will free Pixar from being a software company while still benefiting them from the sale PRMan.

If this did happen Apple would most likely enhance the UI and userability of PRMan for OSX and drop support for Windows ala Shake.

Just my 2 cents, but it seems like a logically step for both Pixar and Apple.

Array

06-12-2003, 09:02 PM

I dont see how that would at all be logical. Why would the TD's at Pixar have to call up Apple every time they need a new feature in RPMan when they can just call someone up in the same building?

tjnyc

06-12-2003, 09:44 PM

I think it takes more than a phone call to get the engineers to add in features. I'm sure they have a list of improves and requests from internal and existing customers that are evaluated every development cycle, not to mention the rigourous testing that Pixar is know for.

Logical, because Pixar could focus their business on making motion pictures. PRMan would still be developed by Pixar engineers, while Apple will work on the port for OSX. This will free Pixar from being a software company while still sharing in the profits from the sales, while Apple handles selling it, supporting it and adding resources to furthering PRMan.

Apple could then promote their hardware with the availability of PRMan like they have been doing with Shake and AW Maya to the CG Industry.

beaker

06-12-2003, 11:03 PM

Sounds like a waste of time to me. Why have Apple port something that is probable pretty simple for pixar to port in the first place(since osx is a form of unix and prman used to run on OpenStep which is OSX's predecessor).

malducin

06-13-2003, 12:08 AM

Yeah the port is trivial but there are othe thorny issues. If Apple did it and offered the OS X version cheaper to try to sell more machines, I'm sure many PRMan customers and Alias/Wavefront would be very pissed. Apple doesn't have as much leverage in 3D as he has in other fields in 2D (design, video editing, etc.).

playmesumch00ns

06-13-2003, 01:04 PM

Originally posted by tjnyc
I think it takes more than a phone call to get the engineers to add in features. I'm sure they have a list of improves and requests from internal and existing customers that are evaluated every development cycle, not to mention the rigourous testing that Pixar is know for.

Actually I've heard from those in the know that one can indeed call Pixar halfway through production, request a feature that you need, and by the time you need to hit the render farm, that feature will be in the next beta point release. Having said that, I think it only works for big film companies with 100's of licenses. Bloody should too considering how much money that costs!