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You can write high performance, CPU intensive code in Java. If you don't believe me just download jrMan and try it. If you want to compare with a C++ implementation you can download Aqsis which implements the same algorithm to render images.

Often some combination of Maya on the front-end with lots of custom scripts is used to generate RIB data which is rendered by a RenderMan interface compliant renderer. You won't get PRMan (Pixar's implementation) very cheaply, but there some other good implentations. You may still be able to dig up a copy of the Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) somewhere. RenderDotC has a resolution limited evaluation version. There's also Aqsis and which is GPL, but I haven't used it so I can't really speak on its quality or how complete it is. Pixie is another GPL renderer which seems pretty cool. All of them can run on Linux.

Part of the reason that RenderMan renderers are so popular is that they let you write custom shader scripts which they interpret to shade and deform the geometry. It's kind of the equivalent of GPU pixel and vertex shaders (which are partly inspired by RenderMan, by the way.)

If you want books, Advanced RenderMan is excellent. (My copy is well worn.) The RenderMan Repository has some examples and some good basic information on RenderMan. They also have a nice collection of PDF's of the course notes from the RenderMan SIGGRAPH courses over the years. Those typically have chapters by folks from the studios describing how they accomplished certain effects. I highly recommend it for getting the flavor of the the thing. Lastly, there's the RenderMan spec itself from Pixar, though I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to all this.

My suggestion to start trying this stuff out would be too Google for RIB export scripts/plugins for Blender (I know they exists, but I don't use Blender), grab one of the GPL renderers out there and pick up a copy of Advanced RenderMan to start learning the shading language. Good luck!

On the other hand, the question is about windows. Here's the best freeware list I've found, taken off of the neowin.net forums. These are not guaranteed Clean, but most of them are. Also, you might want to check tinyapps.org, which specializes in SMALL apps (usually not enough space for ad/spyware).
Category 3D Graphics: ----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/CharacterCountF ilterForAValidList----
3Delight Free - http://www.3delight.com/index.htm
Anim8or - http://www.anim8or.com/
Aqsis - http://www.aqsis.com/
Blender - http://www.blender3d.org/
gmax - http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/
Houdini (Free Edition) - http://www.sidefx.com/apprentice/index.html
Maya Personal Learning Ed. - http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services...ple/i ndex.shtml
Now3D - http://digilander.libero.it/giulios/Eng/homepage.h tm
OpenFX - http://www.openfx.org
SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP - http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/v3/
Toxic - http://www.toxicengine.org/
Wings 3D - http://www.wings3d.com/
Category Anti-Virus:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Char acterCountFilterForAValidList----
AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/
Avast - http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1018.html
AVG - http://www.grisoft.com/
ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com/
Category Anti Spyware:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Bazooka - http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/index.html
Diet K - http://www.dietk.com/
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.htm l
SpywareGuard - http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html
Category IRC Clients:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
BersIRC - http://www.bersirc.com/
BitchX - http://bitchx.org/download.php
HydraIRC - http://www.hydrairc.com/
TinyIRC - http://www.tinyirc.net/
XChat - http://www.silverex.org/news/
Category Audio Players:----JunkCharactersToDefeatLameness/Charact erCountFilterForAValidList----
1by1 - http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch
Billy - http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy
CoolPlayer - http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/
DeliPlayer. http://www.deliplayer.com/
Foobar 2

The best bet is to get a group of people together and create their own open source version of it.

Pixie,
Aqsis,
jrman,
et al.

What did you think of the freeware options, e.g. Aqsis?

See here and here. More and more pieces of the moviemaking toolchain are available Openly, only a matter of time before someone adds a GUI wrapper to integrate it all. Will they dare call it Raxip? (-:

The founders of Exluna were accused by Pixar, their former employer, of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement and patent infringement. Exluna was able to settle the lawsuit by ending BMRT.

The Demise of BMRT & entropy

Here's a list of RenderMan-compliant renderers. Some of them, like AQSIS, are open source.

Actually there is one hosted at Sourceforge that is very active, called Aqsis. There were a couple of other projects like gman that never took off, or were just University projects. Aqsis is making good progress:

Aqsis

There are a few other implementations that also run on Linux like AIR, The aforementioned RenderDotC (which I believe Cinesite used), and 3Delight. Hopefully a product like Liquid (from a guy that worked at Weta), which is a Maya to RIB translator (kinda like MTOR) will also take off which could help in making a more powerful combo.

Odd coincidence:

I loaded up slashdot while waiting for aqsis to compile. Aqsis is a renderman-compliant open source renderer. Kinda like bmrt. I'm testing it out, and hope to use it for a shaders-related assignment for the comp. graph. course I'm taking.

My point is that you don't have to shell out $25,000 if you just want to mess around with renderman.

Aqsis is a GPL implementation of the Renderman spec. It probably isn't as full featured as BMRT was, but it does have the benefits of being really free and under active development.

First thing, you should be careful with your terminology.

A modeller lets you create models and scenes. A renderer turns these scenes into 2D images. A compositor lets you turn these 2D images into other 2D images, and usually also lets you assemble them into single-file animation formats. Don't expect to do any "real" 3D work without at least one of each.

It's confusing because many modellers have renderers built in. They are usually inadequate for complex jobs. (Though, in fairness, one blockbuster 100% computer animated feature film has been made using Maya's built-in renderer, so it's not exactly useless.) However, thanks to the wonders of Open Source, the modeller is now the only part you have to buy.

Here's what I suggest:

• Get Maya Complete. This will cost money.
• Get Liquid, which will cost you nothing. This will export Maya to RenderMan(TM).
• Get Aqsis, which will cost you nothing. This is your renderer. It is RenderMan(tm) compliant, which is the de facto standard for communication between renderers and modellers.
• Get Cinelerra, which will cost you nothing. This is your compositor. (Available only for Linux, unfortunately, but it's free.)

If you find yourself making money with these, you can replace and augment bits if you find them not doing what you want. (For example, replace Aqsis with RDC or PRMan and replace Cinelerra with Shake or After Effects. You can even augment Maya with Houdini or SoftImage if you feel like spending money.)

The key here is to stick with standards so you can drop in replacements into your production line.

Good luck.

Not true.

RenderMan is not like POVRay. It's an algorithm neutral interface between modellers and renderers. The idea is that whether your renderer is a REYES-esque scanline renderer, a raytracer, a Monte Carlo radiosity raytracer or whatever, your file should still work.

That means that sometimes the modeller has to do a lot of work which in some renderer algorithms would be done for you. For example, in a REYES renderer, reflections are done with multiple render passes, just like in OpenGL. The modeller has to emit RenderMan code to do these multiple passes. In a raytracer, this would be done for you, but you would have to retain all of the scene geometry in memory, plus you lose coherency. (Most animation/visual effects scenes do not use raytracing for this reason. It's just too damn slow for "real" scenes.)

That's one reason why good Maya -> RenderMan interfaces are worth quite a lot of money (MTOR is US$3k).

Aqsis is a GPL'd RenderMan-compliant REYES renderer. Liquid is now open source. All it takes is a good open source modeller (disclaimer: I don't know if Blender is "good" enough for this kind of use) and we're in business.

The claim from Pixar included copyright, trade secret and patent violations.

The patent which Pixar claims that ExLuna violated is basically a couple of traditional Monte Carlo integration variance reduction strategies applied to pixel filtering, which many in the industry believe to be a completely bogus patent. (Much like the rest of Pixar's patent portfolio, in fact, possibly excluding patents relating the CHAP processor. I digress.) Larry deliberately removed this from BMRT (which did once support stochastic sampling) and Entropy was deliberately built on a different scheme. ExLuna did apply for patents on their technology precisely because they thought something like this might happen. High-end modelling and rendering is an area where the "big boys" have a lot of patents, something which the "little boys" (like Hammerhead and also my former employers, Dot C) are constantly angry about.

As an aside, Aqsis, the pre-eminent open source RenderMan-based renderer (and probably the only free one left now that BMRT is dead in the water), uses N-rooks Monte Carlo sampling which, while not officially mentioned in the Pixar patent, and not used by Pixar as far as I know, could be considered "derivative work" if it ever came to court (depending on how nasty the patent holder's lawyers were). We don't need to be worried yet because Aqsis doesn't really compete in the same arena.

The trade secret and copyright violation charges are harder to deal with. The three main founders of ExLuna are ex-Pixar employees and all worked on PRMan in various capacities. Without seeing the source, and knowing exactly what the "trade secret" stuff is, there's no real way for an external observer to tell whether the claims have any merit or not.

Add to all of this that all of the features which were Entropy's strong points (combined ray tracing and scanline rendering, global illumination) are going into the next version of Pixar's renderer, due out later this year. I should add that competing with Entropy probably isn't the reason why the features are going in. More likely is that Pixar is trying to compete with Blue Sky Studios, whose in-house renderer (used on Ice Age) already has them. In the end, PRMan is designed for Pixar's needs first and the wider market second.

What I conclude from all this is that the answer one of the original questions, "How do I get into CGI?" must include the following maxim:

Never work for Pixar unless you plan to change fields as soon as you leave there.

If you like BMRT, you may also like Aqsis. It is a GPL, Renderman compatible renderer.

Pros use POV-Ray? *cough*

Here's a nickel, kid. Go get yourself a real open source renderer.

This is a common confusion. RenderMan is a rendering interface a spec. Usually it's compared as the Postscript of 3D. You can implement a renderer that follows the RenderMan spec. Pixar's implementation is called Photorealistic RenderMan or PRMan for short. It uses the REYES (which stands for Renders Everything You Ever Saw)architecture for rendering (in gross termsZ buffer scanline renderer). Many people when they say RenderMan they actually mean PRMan. PRMan is sold by Pixar along with the RenderMan Artist Tools or RAT. But there exists many other implementations of the RenderMan spec, including BMRT, Entropy, RenderDotC, AQSIS, and AIR among others.

But when Pixar got started there was barely any adequate off the shelf software, so like many others back then (like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Abel and Associates, triple I, etc), they had to create their own tools. Actually you can see mention of it at the end of the movie: Marionette is their animation environment, previously referred to as menv.

They don't make that much money from RenderMan, their main source now is the animated movies. They don't even do commercials now.

Still if you wanted an open source RenderMan compliant renderer there is AQSIS hosted at Sourceforge.

And there are many others (mostly closed).

While I would love to see something like that happen I think we would have to wait for a long time. Some apps are really complex and specialized. I don't think we'll see anytime soon something like Maya, Softimage XSI, a Mediacomposer or Inferno like GPL app.

FX companies don't share most of their propietary code because 1) it's written by them, not taken from other GPL code and 2) they need that competitive advantage. Linux usage in FX is a relatively fairly recent occurence. And besides there is tons of propietary stuf that no one knows about outside those places. Sometimes you get brief insights at SIGGRAPH or in specialized publications. It's a very particular market that doesn't lend itself to just open stuff overnight. Then again from time to tiem you see stuff that could be the beginings of the ideas you propose. There is AQSIS (a RenderMan compliant renderer), Mesa and Falmaidan (a fluid simulator) at sourceforge.

There has been talk of FX companies of releasing a lot of code (Michael Goldfarb of Rhythm and Hues for example). It may eventually happen. Some companies have already released stuff or are working on it. Just check some of the RenderMan SIGGRAPH course notes.

Probably best way is to keep an eye on SIGGRAPH and the VESTECH meeting to see how much progress is done, it amazes me every year.