cameloid asks:
"I'm currently putting together a series of corporate movies, 6-12 minutes each, that each require quite a bit of computer generated animation. Like many others, I quickly found that 3D is the way to go and began using POV-Ray, mainly because it's free and uses a Scene Description Language (SDL) to describe scenes and animations. However, I also quickly found that raytracing can be a bit...slow for doing movie production. After a bit more research, I quickly discovered Renderman. At first glance Renderman can also be programmed from scratch, but doesn't have in-built support for animation. Each scene is complete description which cannot be parameterized using Renderman, alone. Does anyone know of a cross-platform, Renderman-compliant SDL implementation that can connect to any Renderman renderer and supply functionality similar to POV-Ray's SDL?"
"I've found that a couple of things are required: a rendering engine (I think that Aqsis covers everything I need in this regard); and a modeller (I'm currently evaluating K3D as a low cost option, although it has some important limitations at present). However, I've also been looking for something that does for Renderman what POV-Ray's SDL does for POV-Ray. I've found something called, surprisingly enough, 'Animation Language' which seems to do this, however it doesn't seem to be under continuing development. What's important is that the SDL supports general programming language features such as data structures, flow control, re-usable libraries (logos, 3D objects) etc, as well as something like POV-Ray's 'clock' variable for animation."
Why not renderman? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used renderman and I've used pov-ray and renderman is where i spend all of my time now. Its just so much better, unless you really need ray tracing, and prman 11 includes raytracing and global illumination, so even then the only reason to use pov-ray is a financial one.
ask yourself if a single scene file is really more important than the speed an quality of your rendered images...
Re:Why not renderman? (Score:2)
A single scene file just means that a few things change position, shape, or angle depending on an external time variable. This does not affect the speed of rendering in the least. Maybe
Re:Why not renderman? (Score:2)
prman is faster because it is NOT a ray tracer, and that was my point, not that multiple scene files would speed things up. Ray tracing is very very slow in relation to scanline rendering, and scanline rendering is what prman does.
[ i should note here for the record that RenderMan is a 3D language standard, and PRMan is Pixar's implementation of a renderer based on this standard. When I say RenderMan however, I'm speaking of the software, not the language standard. ]
Re:Why not renderman? (Score:1)
Re:Why not renderman? (Score:3, Insightful)
RiFrameBegin(0)
RiFrameEnd()
RiFrameBegin(1)
RiFrameEnd()
If the meshes you're using are not morphing at all, just moving you don't need to write out the new mesh data every frame, just use a RiFrameArchive to define the frame once and then reference it from then on.
I'm not sure what kind of thing you're creating here, but the fact that you're not using something like Maya, MAX or XSI t
One Solution... (Score:2, Interesting)
You are still working with a single scene file, but everything is changed and automated by way of the script.
Re:One Solution... (Score:2)
Renderman modelling (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you're really wanting a good fast 3d animation workflow, I'd recommend Blender [blender.org]. The learning curve is steep, but once you're into it, you can work fast and smooth. There's lot of support [elysiun.com] around, and the documentation [blender.org] can get you up and animating within half an hour.
Re:Renderman modelling (Score:1)
Re:Renderman modelling (Score:2)
Mm. As noted below, not a lot does wrt renderman, at least, not without paying lotsa dosh. I presume you've had a look thru' the RMR links page [renderman.org] - there's a couple of possibilities there, but mostly alpha. The other thing to do would be to get in touch with the people who created this [sourceforge.net] and this [sourceforge.net] rather impressive animation and ask how they did it. You'll probably have to email the aqsis site maintainers to get their contact details.
Also, I forgot to link the brand new R [rendermanacademy.com]
It's just that, a Renderer (Score:2, Informative)
You need a modeling/animation package. Something that will let you build and animate your models and then output data from which Renderman or some other renderer can generate visible images.
If you have 2k (Score:2)
There are plugins to output to renderman (mtor) and it also has its own renderer. If you want to do procedural animation, you can do it all in mel.
-Tim
Re:If you have 2k (Score:3, Informative)
Don't waste money on MTOR. If you want Maya, get Liquid [sourceforge.net]. Production-proven and open source. What more could you ask for?
*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
RenderMan is a language to get modellers talking to renderers, just like PostScript is a language to get typesetters talking to printers. You're not supposed to work in raw RenderMan any more than you're supposed to work in raw PostScript.
Having said that, probably the closest system to what you're looking for is Steve May's AL [ohio-state.edu]. If you can get it to work, it will probably do exactly what you want.
Remember, though, that RenderMan is primarily an API. The bytestream version came later. It was originally a C API, but there are now bindings for many languages including Java, Perl, Python and ML. Why don't you pick one and use that?
None of this should dissuade you from using a real animation system, though. If you have some money to spend, it's well worth it, particularly if you're planning to do this a lot.
Good luck.
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
I did mention AL (Animation Language) in the original posting, but I'm not keen on using something that may quickly go out of date. At least with POV-Ray, it's being actively developed. However, something like AL is exactly what I'm after. Basically, a POV-like SDL that compiles down to a RIB file that can then be sent to a RenderMan compliant renderer. As you say, much like PostScript. I'll check
Hash animation master (Score:1)
Why spend the money on Renderman ?? (Score:2)
I use and prefer Lightwave, it also has a far better renderer than Maya included. In fact the renderer is the feature film league, and is routinely used on highly visible productions.
Both of these products are available for Windows and OS X.
Also, you can find a very large selcetion of models, textures tutorials and experienced help for these packages if you need them.
If you are going to be doing this regularly then I ha
RIB vs Language binding (Score:1)