Writing Renderman Shaders

[malducin]

Best resource is the books: Essential RenderMan by Ian Stephenson is the most gentle intro, and then there is the RenderMan Companion and Advanced RenderMan.

For online resources the best is the RenderMan Repository. In particular check the SIGGRAPH 92 and 85 coure notes. There were also the RMan Notes:

RenderMan SIGGRAPH Course notes (http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Books/index.html#Sig)
RMan notes (http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~smay/RManNotes/rmannotes.html)

[RiBRaT]

Hi malducin,

Thanks for that. I already had most of those, but I can't seem to find the 1991 or and 1992 files. There is no link for them.

Any idea where to find them, in particular, the 1991 course which seems to be the one I really need to get started.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
RibRaT

[fxjeane]

Here is a direct link to the Sig 92 course.. its really good

http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Books/sig92.course21.pdf

I also liked Steve May's RmanNotes. Very simple and straight to the point, it helped me a lot when I was getting started.
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~smay/RManNotes/RManNotes.html


The Advanced Renderman book is REALLY good for shader writting, it gives you a lot of professional tips and exampes of how "production ready shaders" are written. But it assumes that you know enought about programing, particularly C.

The Renderman Companion is a great book but its fairly outdated and it doesnt cover shading language to great depths, it focuses more on the Scene description. ITs a good resource to have if you are seriously getting into RMan, but I would by ARMan first.

Read All the Sigg courses you can + Advanced renderman and then PRACTICE, PRACTICE and PRACTICE some more.

good luck

[malducin]

The 1992 course notes were included in the 95 course notes CD, but fxjeane has provided the link. The 91 course were done before they went to PDF, they only exist in printed form. I saw them once in a university library. As far as I remember at least the SL content was very similar tpo what you get in the RMan Companion. The first part was kind a simplified version also of the RMan companion, you know how the primitives are declared, etc. You'll probably get the same mileage out of the Essential Renderman book.

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