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It looks like this is what NVIDIA have done with BMRT when they bought it: look at what has become of exluna.com

If anyone's wondering, a couple of the latest releases of BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Tools) before NVIDIA pulled the plug on them are available here

They didn't only use Pixar's renderer, and here is a dark tale of what Pixar did to another small startup Exluna

Notice how that link goes to Nvidia? There's a reason why. Quite a few years ago, a rather genius programmer left Pixar and started up his own company to write a competing renderer called Entropy. Pixar's renderer, while very fast and the basis for many effects and animation piplines throughout the industry, was getting a bit long in the tooth. It didn't have any raytracing abilities (outside of some clever hacks), and completely lacked the global illumination abilities that were neccassary for some believable lighting models.

Why do I bring this up? Because Gollum was almost exclusively rendered on this renderer. Pixar's Renderman was not capable of doing some of the stuff they needed for that beautiful skin shader at the time they developed Gollum.

Pixar didn't take lightly to this. They launched a lawsuit against Exluna saying they were violating certain patents they held regarding some antialiasing algorithms. Never mind that the renderer was far more advanced and was a complete drop in replacement for Pixar's competing product. This was a straight up ploy to get rid of the competition.

To this day, the Exluna developers still say they did not violate those patents and that they would have won in court. However, winning in court would have destroyed the company. Instead, they sold the company to Nvidia, where they are working on some even more advanced stuff, but under the protection of a larger and well financed (and lawyer'd) company.

There are may other Renderman based renderers out there, all of varying capabilities. Pixie, while technically advanced and written by a brilliant graduate student at berkely, has a few rough edges and is missing some important features. Aqusis is progressing nicely, but doesn't have many features that I rely on. Mental Ray, while not renderman compatable, has all the features and more, but you pay for it in speed. Right now, I'm using Pixie for my tests. It's free for me, but I wouldn't trust it in production just yet. For production I would still choose Pixar's Renderman, which has since incorporated much of the lighting features available in other renderers (somewhat pushed by the demands of their clients, but mostly because they used a lot of those special lighting tools in Finding Nemo).

For more information on all available Renderman capable renderers and how to use them, I suggest visiting the Renderman Repository

Alright, back to work for me. I'm supposed to present this skin shader after new years.

Rich

A few years ago, several developers in Pixar's Renderman group (which builds the photorealistic renderer used in many commercial films, including Pixar's) left to form a company called Exluna. They built a competing renderer and Pixar ended up filing a patent infringment suit.

Exluna was eventually bought out by nVidia and now neither BMRT (the free renderer) nor Entropy ( the commercial renderer), are available. But now nVidia has lots of state-of-the-art expertise in photorealistic rendering implementation.

BMRT is a free (as in beer) renderer that complies with Pixar's Renderman format. Thus, if you use a modeler that can export in Renderman format, you can use BMRT for rendering. I haven't used it much, but it has been used in several major film productions.

Binaries are available for several platforms, including windows, linux and solaris.

Originally created by former Pixar employee Larry Gritz, BMRT was then integrated into a startup called Exluna that was recently bought by Nvidia. They stopped distributing BMRT, but some online resources are still available.

Now, if you're still interested in trying out the software, it is still available on the web (try searching for "BMRT2.6" using your favorite search engine)

Larry Gritz also wrote a nice book, called "Advanced Renderman", which explains quite a lot about shaders, Renderman and uses BMRT for examples.

If you're interested in finding out more about Renderman, check it out !

Pixar was suing not just Entropy, but also several of the founders of the company personally. If they fought the case, not only would they lose years and thousands in legal fees, there was the danger of jail time. (I'm not entirely clear how someone can get jail time from a lawsuit). They decided it wasn't worth the risk. As a result, Larry Gritz's life work (BMRT and Entropy) is gone forever.

Man... please, someone mod parent up...

Found the coffee cup.

BMRT coffee (by Horvatth Szabolcs) vs. "nVidia coffee

Given the news that nVidia bought Exluna, I suppose it IS possible that they rendered from original data. Hmph.

I'd appreciate it if they fessed up and reported that they make a RenderMan renderer. I actually think that's bigger news than their exact hardware specs. It means "One interface to rule them all..."

Sorry, here's ALL the evidence that I found :

BMRT chess (by John Monos) vs. "nVidia chess"

BMRT Bike (by Don Kim) vs. "nVidia Bike"

BMRT Table (by Goran Kocov) vs. "nVidia Table"

BMRT Markers (by Rudy Poat) vs. "nVidia Markers"

I believe I've pretty definitively shown that either they have an actual RenderMan renderer running on their hardware (and access to the original data by four different authors), or this is a fake.

Sorry, I can't find the coffee cup or the Final Fantasy image. Maybe someone else can.

Sorry, here's ALL the evidence that I found :

BMRT chess (by John Monos) vs. "nVidia chess"

BMRT Bike (by Don Kim) vs. "nVidia Bike"

BMRT Table (by Goran Kocov) vs. "nVidia Table"

BMRT Markers (by Rudy Poat) vs. "nVidia Markers"

I believe I've pretty definitively shown that either they have an actual RenderMan renderer running on their hardware (and access to the original data by four different authors), or this is a fake.

Sorry, I can't find the coffee cup or the Final Fantasy image. Maybe someone else can.

Sorry, here's ALL the evidence that I found :

BMRT chess (by John Monos) vs. "nVidia chess"

BMRT Bike (by Don Kim) vs. "nVidia Bike"

BMRT Table (by Goran Kocov) vs. "nVidia Table"

BMRT Markers (by Rudy Poat) vs. "nVidia Markers"

I believe I've pretty definitively shown that either they have an actual RenderMan renderer running on their hardware (and access to the original data by four different authors), or this is a fake.

Sorry, I can't find the coffee cup or the Final Fantasy image. Maybe someone else can.

Sorry, here's ALL the evidence that I found :

BMRT chess (by John Monos) vs. "nVidia chess"

BMRT Bike (by Don Kim) vs. "nVidia Bike"

BMRT Table (by Goran Kocov) vs. "nVidia Table"

BMRT Markers (by Rudy Poat) vs. "nVidia Markers"

I believe I've pretty definitively shown that either they have an actual RenderMan renderer running on their hardware (and access to the original data by four different authors), or this is a fake.

Sorry, I can't find the coffee cup or the Final Fantasy image. Maybe someone else can.

In fact, the screenshots look indistibuishable from those listed on the BRMT page.

Given this "nVidia rendered image" and this BMRT rendered image, I see three possibilities.

One - the guys at nVidia painstakingly translated each aspect of the original image to Cg.

Two - the guys at nVidia have some technology that translates RenderMan to something they know how to render. It could be RenderMonkey-like technology. It could literally be RenderMonkey, with some nVidia back-end. It could be they contacted the original artist, John Monos, and took his original data and reformatted it (skipping RenderMan, entirely).

Three - the images are a forgery.

I'm betting on Three.

That's not quite correct. BMRT was used in the creation of A Bug's Life (and other movies), but it was not the sole program for for creating and rendering. Here's my little odyssey searching for info on this :)

An abstract from a paper suggesting a connection between BMRT and Pixar's RenderMan standard:
BMRT: A Global Illumination Implementation of the RenderMan Standard

But then here is a disclaimer that BMRT is not associated with Pixar and is not a replacement for Renderman:

"BMRT uses some APIs that are very similar to those described in the published RenderMan Interface Specification. However, BMRT is not associated with Pixar, and no claims are made that BMRT is in any way a compatible replacement for RenderMan. Those who want a licensed implementaion of RenderMan should contact Pixar directly. Exluna.com Docs

But then got to the BMRT site, we find something which seems contradictory:

"BMRT is a ray tracer that we distribute free of charge. BMRT has been used in the production of several feature films, including A Bug's Life, Stuart Little, The Cell, Hollow Man, and Woman on Top."
BMRT FAQ

Finally, from the links section of the BMRT site:

"Pixar's RenderMan Toolkit (a.k.a. PhotoRealistic RenderMan, a.k.a. PRMan), now in release 3.9, is the oldest RenderMan implementation. PRMan has been used to render effects for ... Toy Story (Classic and II), A Bug's Life.

The Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) package ... has been used on several productions, including A Bug's Life"
Links on Compatible Renderers

That's not quite correct. BMRT was used in the creation of A Bug's Life (and other movies), but it was not the sole program for for creating and rendering. Here's my little odyssey searching for info on this :)

An abstract from a paper suggesting a connection between BMRT and Pixar's RenderMan standard:
BMRT: A Global Illumination Implementation of the RenderMan Standard

But then here is a disclaimer that BMRT is not associated with Pixar and is not a replacement for Renderman:

"BMRT uses some APIs that are very similar to those described in the published RenderMan Interface Specification. However, BMRT is not associated with Pixar, and no claims are made that BMRT is in any way a compatible replacement for RenderMan. Those who want a licensed implementaion of RenderMan should contact Pixar directly. Exluna.com Docs

But then got to the BMRT site, we find something which seems contradictory:

"BMRT is a ray tracer that we distribute free of charge. BMRT has been used in the production of several feature films, including A Bug's Life, Stuart Little, The Cell, Hollow Man, and Woman on Top."
BMRT FAQ

Finally, from the links section of the BMRT site:

"Pixar's RenderMan Toolkit (a.k.a. PhotoRealistic RenderMan, a.k.a. PRMan), now in release 3.9, is the oldest RenderMan implementation. PRMan has been used to render effects for ... Toy Story (Classic and II), A Bug's Life.

The Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) package ... has been used on several productions, including A Bug's Life"
Links on Compatible Renderers

That's not quite correct. BMRT was used in the creation of A Bug's Life (and other movies), but it was not the sole program for for creating and rendering. Here's my little odyssey searching for info on this :)

An abstract from a paper suggesting a connection between BMRT and Pixar's RenderMan standard:
BMRT: A Global Illumination Implementation of the RenderMan Standard

But then here is a disclaimer that BMRT is not associated with Pixar and is not a replacement for Renderman:

"BMRT uses some APIs that are very similar to those described in the published RenderMan Interface Specification. However, BMRT is not associated with Pixar, and no claims are made that BMRT is in any way a compatible replacement for RenderMan. Those who want a licensed implementaion of RenderMan should contact Pixar directly. Exluna.com Docs

But then got to the BMRT site, we find something which seems contradictory:

"BMRT is a ray tracer that we distribute free of charge. BMRT has been used in the production of several feature films, including A Bug's Life, Stuart Little, The Cell, Hollow Man, and Woman on Top."
BMRT FAQ

Finally, from the links section of the BMRT site:

"Pixar's RenderMan Toolkit (a.k.a. PhotoRealistic RenderMan, a.k.a. PRMan), now in release 3.9, is the oldest RenderMan implementation. PRMan has been used to render effects for ... Toy Story (Classic and II), A Bug's Life.

The Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) package ... has been used on several productions, including A Bug's Life"
Links on Compatible Renderers

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.

Renderman is an open API. Photorealistic Renderman is Pixar's implementation. Anyone can make a Renderman compliant render engine. E.g. BMRT is an alternative implementation, free as in beer. It would make little sense for Pixar to GPL it since is what they make money from, it's their main product.

Radiance comes immediately to mind for open source. Not-so-open source programs like Blender and BMRT are also good.

There's probably other modelers and user interfaces from BMRT and POVRay. They may not be what George Lucas uses but they aren't shabby. I've seen some amazing stuff done in Blender and it is FREE.

There's probably other modelers and user interfaces from BMRT and POVRay. They may not be what George Lucas uses but they aren't shabby. I've seen some amazing stuff done in Blender and it is FREE.

Although you can also control shader behaviour (even if it's a procedural shader) via texture maps, so it's a combination of both. You could have a procedural shader, say some fractal like or natural pattern but use a texture to control opacity or certain look to your shader, say hoy bumpy it is or the direction it would reflect light. There are shaders that can control tons of interesting procedural stuff via texture maps. Like at ILM, in Episode 1 (and also places like Imageworks with Stuart Little and many other examples), for the fur of creatures they painted texture maps that could define parameters like length of hair, it's density,, how much it curled, springiness and many others.

So in a sense you need a traditional paint tool for this texture maps. Photoshop is a mainstay in the FX industry so it's not inconceivable that it was used. of course in the end as you mentioned it's the shader that brings it all together.

You mention BMRT but you might be interested that it's creator, Larry Gritz, left Pixar, started his own company with other graphics gurus and are about to release a RenderMan complaint renderer called Entropy during SIGGRAPH 2001. BMRT is still supported there.

Exluna

BMRT - Pixar's rendering software = $0.00

BMRT - Pixar's rendering software = $0.00

BMRT Raytracing Howto

You can hook up PRMan and BMRT together, using BMRT to do the trace() calls. This is in fact a semi-supported function that Pixar gives to people. When you get PRMan, they'll happily give you BMRT, as well. Many things Pixar does use BMRT. BMRT is good. Don't diss BMRT. When people use PRMan, BMRT is a natural thing to include in many cases!

BMRT Raytracing Howto

You people are amazing. You don't even bother to look at my link, and you tell me I'm wrong.

Actually, BMRT's author (Larry Gritz) has long since left Pixar to start his own company with several other folks. They're going to be releasing yet another implementation of Renderman Real Soon Now. Larry has stated several times in comp.graphics.rendering.renderman that BMRT will continue to be free (in the sense of free beer) for the forseeable future, but efforts will concentrate mostly on development of the new renderer.

You are wrong. The shader language can raytrace.

Using BMRT together with PRMan, it can ray trace, and many people use it. Like in Hollow Man, for instance.

Here is a gallery, which includes Hollow Man. The call looks like this :

color trace (point from, vector dir)

Traces a ray from position from in the direction of vector dir. The return value is the incoming light from that direction.

Source

You are wrong. The shader language can raytrace.

Using BMRT together with PRMan, it can ray trace, and many people use it. Like in Hollow Man, for instance.

Here is a gallery, which includes Hollow Man. The call looks like this :

color trace (point from, vector dir)

Traces a ray from position from in the direction of vector dir. The return value is the incoming light from that direction.

Source

BMRT - Blue Moon Rendering Tools, is a free, downloadable RenderMan-compliant radiosity renderer, which was written by Larry Gritz, a former employee of Pixar's. It's not exactly Pixar's Renderman (PhotoRealistic Renderman), but it's not bad - and it actually gets used by many of the same people who use Pixar's RenderMan.