6 ms·

It gives me no reasons to use it over the standard Cycles renderer.

eggy 11y ago
Not even for all of the available shaders, books, tutorials and other resources made available for it over the years? The analogy I make is a programming language that is so-so, but has a hundred relevant, useful libraries vs. the technically better language with hardly any libraries. Cycles has the basic building blocks to create a library of pre-defined shaders, but Renderman has over 25 years of history, and tons of RSL examples.
- imaginenore 11y ago
  Show me just one really cool thing that can be done with Renderman and can't be done with Cycles. Show off that 25 years of history.
  - ykl 11y ago
    Any movie by Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Double Negative, Framestore, Weta, etc. Alternatively, a brief and by no means comprehensive list of things I've found to be better in Renderman versus Cycles: * Bidirectional pathtracing and VCM for fast, accurate caustics and SDS (specular-diffuse-specular) illumination without fireflies. [0][1] * Extremely efficient subdivision surfaces and displacement. In Cycles, there is a performance penalty for subdivs and displacement. In Renderman, there is almost zero overhead. [2][3] * Significantly faster subsurface scattering [4][5] * Support for OpenVDB volumes, and much faster volume rendering/scattering/etc. [6][7] * Importance sampling for emissive effects, such as explosions and flames. Think candles with actual fire that don't firefly! [8] * Importance sampling of HDR maps (basically, prevents fireflies when using HDR maps) [9] * Much better memory efficiency. Renderman is designed to handle literally hundreds of gigs of stuff in memory going in and out of core all the time. Don't have a link for this one, since this comes mostly from experience with both renderers and having used Renderman in a large production studio. * Disney "principled" BSDF [10] * Arbitrary geometry lights, with importance sampling [11] * Better/faster hair rendering and hair shaders [12][13][14] * The Denoiser is PRMan 20 is legitimately magic. [15][16] Generally, there isn't necessarily any particular feature that Renderman has that Cycles is outright missing, but almost everything in Renderman is a lot faster and more optimized (as seen in the link list below, a lot of the research on making stuff like subsurface scattering and hair and whatnot extremely fast comes from Pixar and the Renderman devs/researchers in the first place). On the flip side, Cycles has a usable GPU mode, whereas I doubt Renderman will ever get a GPU mode anytime soon. Cycles is really pretty great, but having a volunteer team versus a dedicated, paid team that has to support not just Pixar's production studio but also a ton of large VFX houses produces a much faster development pace and a much higher incentive to optimize the crap out of every inch of Renderman. Disclaimer: I now work for a different production renderer team at a different studio (some consider us to be a rival to Renderman, we don't see it quite that way), but I've worked at Pixar before. [0] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrVCM.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrVC... [1] http://cgg.mff.cuni.cz/~jaroslav/papers/2012-vcm/2012-vcm-paper.pdf http://cgg.mff.cuni.cz/~jaroslav/papers/2012-vcm/2012-vcm-pa... [2] http://renderman.pixar.com/view/displacements http://renderman.pixar.com/view/displacements [3] http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html [4] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ApproxBSSRDF/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ApproxBSSRDF/paper.pdf [5] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PhotonBeamDiffusion/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PhotonBeamDiffusion/paper.... [6] http://www.openvdb.org/ http://www.openvdb.org/ [7] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/rfmOpenVDB.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/rfmOp... [8] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/MISEmissive/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/MISEmissive/paper.pdf [9] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrStdEnvMapLight.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrSt... [10] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrDisney.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrDi... [11] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risLighting.html#shapes http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risLi... [12] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrMarschnerHair.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrMa... [13] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/DataDrivenHairScattering/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/DataDrivenHairScattering/p... [14] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ImportanceSamplingHair/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ImportanceSamplingHair/pap... [15] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risDenoise.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risDe... [16] https://renderman.pixar.com/view/denoiser https://renderman.pixar.com/view/denoiser
    - imaginenore 11y ago
      I'm pretty sure every movie company you named could have rendered the same thing in Cycles just fine. You still can't name a single important thing that can't be done with Cycles. Speed is good, but you cherry picked some niche thing that's probably faster than Cycles (which you haven't provided evidence for). That's a silly argument. EDIT: Thanks for the updated post, much more substance.
      - justizin 11y ago
        > I'm pretty sure every movie company you named could have rendered the same thing in Cycles just fine. Movies aren't made by software, they're made by massive teams of people who share overlapping expertise. Do you want to write Lua for Kerbal Space Program, or Perl for NASA?
      - ykl 11y ago
        Post updated with detailed list and links for each list item. At studios I've been at, we did tests with various renderers. Sure, we could have rendered a film in Cycles, but it would have taken much longer.
      - jlarocco 11y ago
        The burden of proof here is on Cycles. There's 30 years of history showing off Renderman, and everybody in the CG industry knows that it's awesome. Not many people have even heard of Cycles. What movies have used it? Why is it better than the existing rendering software? Is it compatible with the Renderman spec? How easy is it to set up a render farm with it?
        ykl 11y ago
        This. In theory Cycles can be used to make the same kind of movies Renderman can. Please name a few examples of cases where this was done. On the flipside, when people say Renderman can be used to make production level stuff, they can point to literally any film with CG made in the past 25 years as evidence.
      - 11y ago
  - eggy 11y ago
    I didn't say anything could or could not be done with Cycles. I said there were 'tons of RSL examples'. Do you understand the significance of a history, and body of work available to start with, and not having to start from scratch? I was using BMRT in the 90s, and reading books about procedurally-generated textures. People wrote so many shaders in RSL, most available for you to copy, modify and re-use. I am assuming there are not nearly as many OSL examples as RSL examples or samples of code. I may be wrong. For the record, I'll use both, and I am happy to see Renderman as an option. I am particularly interested in OSL as a corollary to RSL. Sony used it successfully to counter Pixar's mention here. I am also eager to test my RSL chops again too!
    - solidangle 11y ago
      Most of those shaders written back then are pretty much worthless now that Renderman has introduced RIS mode (instead of REYES mode), which was introduced last year. Pixar recommends writing shaders in C++ now instead of in RSL, as C++ shaders are just way more performant right now. OSL is pretty mature, I know that both Sony Pictures Imageworks and Double Negative use it in production. Now that Renderman also support OSL I'm pretty sure we're going to see OSL examples posted online. OSL shaders are awesome compared to RSL shaders, as OSL gives all control to the renderer, which allows it to do a lot of optimization (such as using the renderers own importance sampling strategies).
      - eggy 11y ago
        Thanks, I'll have to look even more into OSL (vs. GSL or RSL). I would hardly use the word 'worthless' just because RIS mode was introduced last year. The basics of what the prodecurally generated textures book taught me back then, still apply. Geometry, math, building up patterns in software, etc... Not to mention, the basis of such shaders just need to be translated just as GSL can be relatively simple to translate into OSL as the videos by Thomas Dinges show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQXjIDWtz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQXjIDWtz0
  - berkut 11y ago
    http://renderman.pixar.com/view/movies-and-awards http://renderman.pixar.com/view/movies-and-awards Although it should be pointed out PRMan wasn't the only renderer used for quite a few of these movies (definitely the later ones) - multiple studios work on movies these days, and other renderers like Arnold and VRay until a year ago were very close to knocking Pixar completely out of the market (even ILM switched to using Arnold for a couple of years).

eggy 11y ago

Not even for all of the available shaders, books, tutorials and other resources made available for it over the years? The analogy I make is a programming language that is so-so, but has a hundred relevant, useful libraries vs. the technically better language with hardly any libraries. Cycles has the basic building blocks to create a library of pre-defined shaders, but Renderman has over 25 years of history, and tons of RSL examples.

imaginenore 11y ago
Show me just one really cool thing that can be done with Renderman and can't be done with Cycles. Show off that 25 years of history.
- ykl 11y ago
  Any movie by Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Double Negative, Framestore, Weta, etc. Alternatively, a brief and by no means comprehensive list of things I've found to be better in Renderman versus Cycles: * Bidirectional pathtracing and VCM for fast, accurate caustics and SDS (specular-diffuse-specular) illumination without fireflies. [0][1] * Extremely efficient subdivision surfaces and displacement. In Cycles, there is a performance penalty for subdivs and displacement. In Renderman, there is almost zero overhead. [2][3] * Significantly faster subsurface scattering [4][5] * Support for OpenVDB volumes, and much faster volume rendering/scattering/etc. [6][7] * Importance sampling for emissive effects, such as explosions and flames. Think candles with actual fire that don't firefly! [8] * Importance sampling of HDR maps (basically, prevents fireflies when using HDR maps) [9] * Much better memory efficiency. Renderman is designed to handle literally hundreds of gigs of stuff in memory going in and out of core all the time. Don't have a link for this one, since this comes mostly from experience with both renderers and having used Renderman in a large production studio. * Disney "principled" BSDF [10] * Arbitrary geometry lights, with importance sampling [11] * Better/faster hair rendering and hair shaders [12][13][14] * The Denoiser is PRMan 20 is legitimately magic. [15][16] Generally, there isn't necessarily any particular feature that Renderman has that Cycles is outright missing, but almost everything in Renderman is a lot faster and more optimized (as seen in the link list below, a lot of the research on making stuff like subsurface scattering and hair and whatnot extremely fast comes from Pixar and the Renderman devs/researchers in the first place). On the flip side, Cycles has a usable GPU mode, whereas I doubt Renderman will ever get a GPU mode anytime soon. Cycles is really pretty great, but having a volunteer team versus a dedicated, paid team that has to support not just Pixar's production studio but also a ton of large VFX houses produces a much faster development pace and a much higher incentive to optimize the crap out of every inch of Renderman. Disclaimer: I now work for a different production renderer team at a different studio (some consider us to be a rival to Renderman, we don't see it quite that way), but I've worked at Pixar before. [0] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrVCM.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrVC... [1] http://cgg.mff.cuni.cz/~jaroslav/papers/2012-vcm/2012-vcm-paper.pdf http://cgg.mff.cuni.cz/~jaroslav/papers/2012-vcm/2012-vcm-pa... [2] http://renderman.pixar.com/view/displacements http://renderman.pixar.com/view/displacements [3] http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html [4] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ApproxBSSRDF/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ApproxBSSRDF/paper.pdf [5] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PhotonBeamDiffusion/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PhotonBeamDiffusion/paper.... [6] http://www.openvdb.org/ http://www.openvdb.org/ [7] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/rfmOpenVDB.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/rfmOp... [8] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/MISEmissive/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/MISEmissive/paper.pdf [9] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrStdEnvMapLight.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrSt... [10] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrDisney.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrDi... [11] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risLighting.html#shapes http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risLi... [12] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrMarschnerHair.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/PxrMa... [13] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/DataDrivenHairScattering/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/DataDrivenHairScattering/p... [14] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ImportanceSamplingHair/paper.pdf http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ImportanceSamplingHair/pap... [15] http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risDenoise.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/RenderMan/risDe... [16] https://renderman.pixar.com/view/denoiser https://renderman.pixar.com/view/denoiser
  - imaginenore 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure every movie company you named could have rendered the same thing in Cycles just fine. You still can't name a single important thing that can't be done with Cycles. Speed is good, but you cherry picked some niche thing that's probably faster than Cycles (which you haven't provided evidence for). That's a silly argument. EDIT: Thanks for the updated post, much more substance.
    - justizin 11y ago
      > I'm pretty sure every movie company you named could have rendered the same thing in Cycles just fine. Movies aren't made by software, they're made by massive teams of people who share overlapping expertise. Do you want to write Lua for Kerbal Space Program, or Perl for NASA?
    - ykl 11y ago
      Post updated with detailed list and links for each list item. At studios I've been at, we did tests with various renderers. Sure, we could have rendered a film in Cycles, but it would have taken much longer.
    - jlarocco 11y ago
      The burden of proof here is on Cycles. There's 30 years of history showing off Renderman, and everybody in the CG industry knows that it's awesome. Not many people have even heard of Cycles. What movies have used it? Why is it better than the existing rendering software? Is it compatible with the Renderman spec? How easy is it to set up a render farm with it?
      - ykl 11y ago
        This. In theory Cycles can be used to make the same kind of movies Renderman can. Please name a few examples of cases where this was done. On the flipside, when people say Renderman can be used to make production level stuff, they can point to literally any film with CG made in the past 25 years as evidence.
    - 11y ago
- eggy 11y ago
  I didn't say anything could or could not be done with Cycles. I said there were 'tons of RSL examples'. Do you understand the significance of a history, and body of work available to start with, and not having to start from scratch? I was using BMRT in the 90s, and reading books about procedurally-generated textures. People wrote so many shaders in RSL, most available for you to copy, modify and re-use. I am assuming there are not nearly as many OSL examples as RSL examples or samples of code. I may be wrong. For the record, I'll use both, and I am happy to see Renderman as an option. I am particularly interested in OSL as a corollary to RSL. Sony used it successfully to counter Pixar's mention here. I am also eager to test my RSL chops again too!
  - solidangle 11y ago
    Most of those shaders written back then are pretty much worthless now that Renderman has introduced RIS mode (instead of REYES mode), which was introduced last year. Pixar recommends writing shaders in C++ now instead of in RSL, as C++ shaders are just way more performant right now. OSL is pretty mature, I know that both Sony Pictures Imageworks and Double Negative use it in production. Now that Renderman also support OSL I'm pretty sure we're going to see OSL examples posted online. OSL shaders are awesome compared to RSL shaders, as OSL gives all control to the renderer, which allows it to do a lot of optimization (such as using the renderers own importance sampling strategies).
    - eggy 11y ago
      Thanks, I'll have to look even more into OSL (vs. GSL or RSL). I would hardly use the word 'worthless' just because RIS mode was introduced last year. The basics of what the prodecurally generated textures book taught me back then, still apply. Geometry, math, building up patterns in software, etc... Not to mention, the basis of such shaders just need to be translated just as GSL can be relatively simple to translate into OSL as the videos by Thomas Dinges show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQXjIDWtz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQXjIDWtz0
- berkut 11y ago
  http://renderman.pixar.com/view/movies-and-awards http://renderman.pixar.com/view/movies-and-awards Although it should be pointed out PRMan wasn't the only renderer used for quite a few of these movies (definitely the later ones) - multiple studios work on movies these days, and other renderers like Arnold and VRay until a year ago were very close to knocking Pixar completely out of the market (even ILM switched to using Arnold for a couple of years).