Davro

Has anyone used or tried the 'Renderman for Maya' plug-in?

https://renderman.pixar.com/products...binfopage.html

I am currently evaluating rendering software for the purpose of architectural visualisation and animation. I am looking for ease of use, quality and speed.

I have been playing around with the evaluation version of 'Renderman for Maya' for a few hours now, comparing it to 'Mental Ray' and the demo version of 'Vray for Maya'.

So far i am impressed. It is easy to use, fast and in my tests so far has given the best results. The only thing is it doesn't come with a range of shaders for metals and glass etc like mental ray does.

I havn't been able to find any information on others using it for architectural visualisation.

Does anyone have any comments or experiences?

shaneis

Aye, Renderman is fast, especially with NURBS. Something you may want to consider though is that you'll have to write most of your own shaders. Renderman is not (and never has been) geared towards the visualisation fields. It is however perfect for creating shaders that perform specific tasks which is why it is so good for film/ TVC pipelines. That being said, if you are capable of writing your own shaders, Renderman could be the one for you. Keep in mind though that it's not a physics-based renderer like mentalRay, V-Ray et al, so you will be hand crafting all of the lighting/ surface phenomena.

Here's a link to some shaders that are available for Renderman, http://www.highend3d.com/renderman/downloads/shaders/

I also strongly recommend you look into Animal Logic's Mayaman - it will allow you to use most of your Maya (not mentalRay) nodes and shaders, http://www.animallogic.com/#Products,MayaMan,OVERVIEW

If Renderman truly has a place in Arch-viz, I'd say it would be for architectural animations (for speed purposes only) however the license fees could send you in a bit of a spin

All
the best,

S.

Oh, where did you get a trial of V-Ray for Maya?

AJLynn

Renderman is really good at a bunch of things, aimed at animation firms with a lot of in-house coding and lighting talent. You're probably going to find that mental ray, Vray and Turtle are all better suited for a smaller operation doing arch vis (which is a really different workflow).

Davro

Thanks for your comments. Ill have a look at MayaMan.

Pixar have produced a cut down version of renderman for use in smaller studios. it is a plugin for Maya called Renderman for Maya. Follow this link for more details: https://renderman.pixar.com/store/

With regards to the price, the licence fee for 'Renderman for Maya' is $995 so its as affordable as any other 3rd party renderer.

It has ambient occlusion, GI and HDRI lighting so achieving good lighting results is simple and fast.

So far the images its producing for me are 'richer' than those produced by vray and mental ray (Though i am no expert in either package), which is why i am wondering why i havnt heard more of it.

It can also render Mayas own shaders.

It gets good reviews:

http://www.highend3d.com/articles/reviews/9-1.html
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/review...erman_for_maya

P.S. The link to the demo for Vray is here:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/downloads.html?s=v-ray

manta

"So far the images its producing for me are 'richer' than those produced by vray and mental ray (Though i am no expert in either package), which is why i am wondering why i havnt heard more of it."

Could you point us to some of those images...

Vray is still in demo as far as I know, for a long time now...

not too sure of turtle...

But I think FinalRender is your best most mature render engine for maya "at this time" if you want to get away from MR...that's just from my reading, no personal experience,
renderman for Maya is great but really not geared toward Arch/viz

__________________
DESIGN FORWARD
http://www.mantastudios.com

AJLynn

How's the support for Renderman For Maya? Are there forums and such?

Davro

Yes, there are renderman for maya forums on the Pixar website. See here:

https://renderman.pixar.com/forum/index.php

I have just posted a similar question there about Renderman for Maya for use in architectural visualisation to see if anyone there has any experience in using it for this purpose.

Davro

I have posted some really quick renders done with Renderman for maya, mental ray and vray demo for maya (currently in beta) using the default settings.

VRAY

Settings

• GI on
• Turned on create vray sky
• Turned on create vray sun

Renderman for Maya

Settings

• Turned on raytracing
• Turned on envirnoment light
• Added simple directional light to simulate suns rays

Mental Ray

Settings

• Turned on physical sky and sun
• Turned on ray tracing

Representation of texture colour. Texture used:

AJLynn

Well now that's not much of a test. The renders are not good and they clearly have not been optimized, and you're not testing it doing anything difficult. Also, Vray is the only one you've got doing GI. The Renderman image is the worst by far and the texture in mental ray has some weird reflection thing going on.

Adrian Bold

Our studio hasn't had any luck with this. We opted into the beta program years ago and not much has happened. the latest beta released last year doesn't want to actually render for us.

As it is, mental ray/maya support and usage in the arch viz field is limited compared to 3ds/vray, i doubt this alone will cause most here to avoid going along with mayaman, renderman etc.

The renderman pics above aren't too promising either.