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PIXAR's RENDERMAN Free Non-Commercial Use


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Big news:

 

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/DP25846

 

http://renderman.pixar.com

 

RenderMan will now be a quarter of the price and free to non-commercial users – free and completely un-watermarked.

Free non-commercial RenderMan will be availabe with the upcoming release of RenderMan scheduled in the timeframe of SIGGRAPH 2014.

It is bold strategy – Pixar wants to focus on the high-end animation and effects companies, but build both a user base and open source contributions.

 

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http://www.fxguide.com/featured/rendermanris-and-the-start-of-next-25-years/

 

Today Pixar launches the newest in that long line of innovations, a new rendering architecture known as RIS, that supports plug-in integrators and comes complete with a new industry standard path-tracer as well as a cutting-edge bidirectional path tracer.

 

The new release is built on a v19.0 baseline, and is a consolidation of the components of the previous RenderMan Pro Server (the batch renderer) and RenderMan Studio (the artist’s interface including RenderMan for Maya) into a single RenderMan product that will be continuously updated in both rapid dot and major releases, making traditional versioning more fluid than previously.

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I don't really understand what this means for a hobbyist like myself. Can I somehow use this with 3DC? Or do I need software like 3DSMAX or Maya?

Edited by Denis
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They are exporter for apps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenderMan_Interface_Specification

 

RM pixar plugin is native for Maya. It converts maya shaders on the fly and is fully integrated so you can use it without having to write your own shaders and such.

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I don't really understand what this means for a hobbyist like myself. Can I somehow use this with 3DC? Or do I need software like 3DSMAX or Maya?

Not much, unless you are a Maya user. It might compel some of the other major players to drop their price as well, to compete. But we'll have to wait and see. I think some of it, too, is the saturation, now of GPU or GPU/CPU hybrid renderers hitting the market. Even VRay and Arnold are not going to stay on their perch if they don't soon offer some kind of GPU tech in their production rendering. CPU only is just too slow. I don't care how slick VRay and Arnold may be...they can't touch GPU renderers in terms of speed.

 

RAM on video cards still remain a bit of a barrier, but the 6GB on a Titan can handle quite a heavy scene, and there is a lot of optimization being done. In fact, Nvidia is offering Unified Memory now, where the card can utilize the memory of the system, rather than have to rely strictly on the RAM on the card, itself.

 

Mental Ray introduced GPU calculation of GI and AO, in it's latest iteration, so it's not done as a production render, either.

 

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Things are fixing to really heat up on the GPU computing front. The whole memory limitation is soon going to be a non-factor. Nvidia is working on Volta, which will allow them to stack memory onto the board and will increase the Memory Bus to 1TB!

 

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oh la la, Volta is teh boom :blink:

 

the big contenders are fighting for supremacy

 

blockbusters films are land of heavy post production, and render times are still a slow and very expensive factor...

 

renderman seat $500 vs arnold seat $1300... both offer amazing render qualities and are fast.

 

film productions done with vray: i only find The Flight.

With another renders duno, so i cant speak wel

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finalRender for 3ds Max was used heavily in the movie 2012, which up to that point in time, was by far the most VFX intensive movie made. Lot's of finalRender, Thinking Particles and FumeFX. Cebas, who makes those first 3 just came out with MosktoRender, which is the first all GPU render for 3ds Max which is designed to work with practically all native Max/Mental Ray assets (shaders, lights, cameras and effects), and it's dirt cheap, too. Half of what Octane costs.

 

Good times for those of us who want a little extra juice in the rendering department.

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Blur Studios does some of the best game cinematic work you'll ever see, and they are a VRay shop. It's helped them land a number of shots in blockbuster films lately. So, I wouldn't put too much stock in a renderer developed by Pixar. They've fallen behind VRay and Arnold on the technical front, and that is largely why Pixar had to make some kind of move like this, to keep it relevant in the industry. More market saturation by GPU renderers, Arnold and VRay. But unless both of those utilize the GPU for their production renderer, they stand to fall behind the wave of GPU solutions.

 

Moskito (basically the all GPU variant of the upcoming finalRender R4 GPU/CPU hybrid) and Thea has me really stoked (about rendering), now days.

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this article is a good reading

 

the new RM RIS features are amazing, not only about render times... but how light is rendered in the new version

 

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/rendermanris-and-the-start-of-next-25-years/

 

 

Along with a host of changes, Pixar announced their newest version of RenderMan today, including a new internal option for rendering or rather solving the rendering equation called ‘RIS’. This system of offering a range of ‘integrators’ inside RIS represents a major addition to the options for high quality imagery inside RenderMan.

 

So what is a Bi-directional Path Tracer with VCM (vs a unidirectional path tracer) ?

The problem with ray tracing is that there is always some limit on how many times rays can bounce, and making sure they accurately or sufficiently find lights.  Imagine a room with a light bulb hanging in the middle – this is the easy case. The light is likely to be ‘captured’ in the render equation as rays are likely to find it. But what if that light was behind a wall mounted recessed bracket – classic stylish hidden light bulbs you might find in a cool modern apartment. If you walked into such a room you would not see the up lighting unless the lights were switched on. In this case unidirectional path tracing will also find it hard to ‘capture’ the light into the rendering equation.

 

this is great

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and

 

RenderMan has always worked well with in a complex pipeline and at SIGGRAPH last year Pixar showed an incredibly fast mock-up of a GPU based KATANA (from The Foundry) solution.

That GPU prototype was shown as a technology demo and not a product at SIGGRAPH.

 

Today there continues to be ongoing work within PIxar on applying GPUs to specific problem areas such as volume rendering “and we have been pretty open about that,” says Chris Ford.

“Any given integrator can be accelerated by the benefits of computational GPU’s and it is no surprise that this is something we are actively evaluating.

There is no GPU enhancement in the latest RenderMan however, as establishing the RIS framework is the major focus of this particular release.”

 

We asked Chris Ford to comment on the performance of RIS inside RenderMan. “For RIS compared to REYES,” he says, “we are seeing performance improvements of between 2x to 10x faster than REYES  in various situations.”

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So does Renderman have GPU acceleration for the production render or not? $500 for a Maya license is a tempting offer (unless there isn't any acceleration).

Seems like the upcoming Vray 3 for Maya will be GPU accelerated in the production render...

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Hmmm. That "re-rendering" session looks like a fast interactive way to set up lighting and shading (similar to Vray RT), but I'm still not sure if that kind of session produces the final rendered image, or if you still need to send it into the production-quality render engine afterwards (and wait a long time for it to finish).

I guess the only way to really know is to download a trial and test out a scene with SSS skin, volumetrics, liquids, hair, GI, etc. to see how fast/well it can really render interactively (not just a car).

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VRay's RT module (Interactive Render) is GPU accelerated, but it has a host of limitations. No SSS, No Volumetric Effects of any kind, No Procedural Textures, etc. It's why I never upgraded to V3, for Max. MoskitoRender gives you all of that, using standard Max/Mental Ray assets. No more having to convert scenes over to yet another proprietary renderer. And it's so easy to use. A grade school kid could learn how to use it in a few minutes. Cannot say that about VRay or most other production renderers.

 

What I do like about the new Renderman is the Volumetric effects support. Since I don't use Maya, this news doesn't affect me any But if I did use Maya, I would probably buy a seat. Furryball is another good GPU only renderer, and has a plugin for Maya, as well, but it is still a bit pricey compared to some of the other options. Good thing about it is that it has support for Maya Fluids and has it's own, built in Hair/Fur utility.

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VRay's RT module (Interactive Render) is GPU accelerated, but it has a host of limitations. No SSS, No Volumetric Effects of any kind, No Procedural Textures, etc. It's why I never upgraded to V3, for Max. MoskitoRender gives you all of that, using standard Max/Mental Ray assets. No more having to convert scenes over to yet another proprietary renderer. And it's so easy to use. A grade school kid could learn how to use it in a few minutes. Cannot say that about VRay or most other production renderers.

 

What I do like about the new Renderman is the Volumetric effects support. Since I don't use Maya, this news doesn't affect me any But if I did use Maya, I would probably buy a seat. Furryball is another good GPU only renderer, and has a plugin for Maya, as well, but it is still a bit pricey compared to some of the other options. Good thing about it is that it has support for Maya Fluids and has it's own, built in Hair/Fur utility.

speaking of procedurals..Pixar Renderman has teh best in the business outside of maybe eon Vue or Houdini.

 

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/displacements

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VRay's RT module (Interactive Render) is GPU accelerated, but it has a host of limitations. No SSS, No Volumetric Effects of any kind, No Procedural Textures, etc. It's why I never upgraded to V3, for Max. MoskitoRender gives you all of that, using standard Max/Mental Ray assets. No more having to convert scenes over to yet another proprietary renderer. And it's so easy to use. A grade school kid could learn how to use it in a few minutes. Cannot say that about VRay or most other production renderers.

What I do like about the new Renderman is the Volumetric effects support. Since I don't use Maya, this news doesn't affect me any But if I did use Maya, I would probably buy a seat. Furryball is another good GPU only renderer, and has a plugin for Maya, as well, but it is still a bit pricey compared to some of the other options. Good thing about it is that it has support for Maya Fluids and has it's own, built in Hair/Fur utility.

I've got Vray 2 for Maya. I have not been testing the beta builds for Vray 3 for Maya, but they are claiming that the new viewport RT will support production-quality renders (with SSS, volumetrics, etc.) I don't know when Vray 3 will be released, but it has been in beta for a while now...

Even after doing a bit of internet research, I'm still not sure if you get a production-quality render in a Renderman interactive "rerender session". In that demo video that L'Ancien Regime posted, they aren't showing volumetrics or SSS being rendered quickly in the viewport, so it seems like that speedy viewport render in Renderman is pretty limited. I'd have to test it out to be sure.

I don't use Max, so I wish they would make a version of Moskito for Maya someday. It looks pretty cool!

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I've got Vray 2 for Maya. I have not been testing the beta builds for Vray 3 for Maya, but they are claiming that the new viewport RT will support production-quality renders (with SSS, volumetrics, etc.) I don't know when Vray 3 will be released, but it has been in beta for a while now...

Even after doing a bit of internet research, I'm still not sure if you get a production-quality render in a Renderman interactive "rerender session". In that demo video that L'Ancien Regime posted, they aren't showing volumetrics or SSS being rendered quickly in the viewport, so it seems like that speedy viewport render in Renderman is pretty limited. I'd have to test it out to be sure.

I don't use Max, so I wish they would make a version of Moskito for Maya someday. It looks pretty cool!

VRay RT doesn't support those elements in Max, so I don't know how they would do so in Maya. Max is usually the firstborn son for VRay, in a sense. So, until they deliver, I'm tired of waiting. So tired, that I went ahead and bought a seat of Thea around Christmas time, instead of upgrading to VRay 3. About the same time, I asked Cebas about getting in on the beta for finalRender R4 GPU (been a long time finalRender user). They were working on Moskito, which is basically the all GPU core for FR R4. They had been selling a Maya plugin for FR 3, but kind of went dark for a few years working on this GPU core.

 

So, once finalRender R4 is released for Max, I would expect to see it for Maya soon thereafter.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 months later...

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/latest-tech

The latest release of RenderMan, version 19, raises the bar once again with a number of game-changing innovations, including a radical new rendering paradigm: RIS, a highly-optimized mode for rendering global illumination, specifically for ray tracing scenes with heavy geometry, hair, volumes, and irradiance with world-class efficiency in a single pass.

-------------------------------------

The release of the free Non-Commercial version has been moved back to "early 2015".
http://renderman.pixar.com/view/DP25849

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RenderMan 21

For the first time, RenderMan now ships with the same shaders & lights used at Pixar, the very same that created Finding Dory … providing all RenderMan artists access to Pixar’s toolbox for lighting and look development, real tools that have already created amazingly sophisticated and complex imagery for feature film.

In addition, this major release represents the maturation of the RIS rendering framework, which has been tested and proven on feature films such as Jungle Book and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, establishing RenderMan as the most advanced rendering platform currently available.

19629_22493_me.jpg

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On 7/19/2016 at 5:29 AM, Carlosan said:

RenderMan 21

For the first time, RenderMan now ships with the same shaders & lights used at Pixar, the very same that created Finding Dory … providing all RenderMan artists access to Pixar’s toolbox for lighting and look development, real tools that have already created amazingly sophisticated and complex imagery for feature film.

In addition, this major release represents the maturation of the RIS rendering framework, which has been tested and proven on feature films such as Jungle Book and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, establishing RenderMan as the most advanced rendering platform currently available.

19629_22493_me.jpg

Sounds like they are trying to leverage their pedigree to maintain interest despite Autodesk having recently purchased Arnold. That will hurt them and VRay

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1 hour ago, Carlosan said:

Renderman 21 Non-Commercial is finally available for download.

https://renderman.pixar.com/view/renderman4blender

 

RenderMan for Blender

This community developed plug-in integrates
RenderMan tightly with Blender, offering a
free VFX pipeline for non-commercial use. 

 

 

:)

 

 

RenderMan for Blender

RenderMan for Blender (RfB) provides a fully integrated bridge between RenderMan and Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite. Developed by Pixar in collaboration with the Blender community, RenderMan for Blender supports advanced features of RenderMan, such as the RIS framework, denoising technology, geometric area lights, fast interactive rendering, and a sophisticated shader suite. 

Edited by L'Ancien Regime
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