Rendering Software Used In LoTR Goes Open Source

donglekey writes "The software used by Weta to output scenes to be rendered on the LOTR trilogy has been made open source under the Mozilla license. Called Liquid, it outputs from Maya to any Renderman compliant renderer. This is extremely good news as it may quickly become a standard in high end 3D, as well as greasing the wheels for Aqsis, a GPLed Renderman renderer."

Comments

Pleasant Endorsement

[WeaponOfChoice]

From the site: I've been trying to think about what I can do to distribute Liquid, because a lot of my time is spent working at my day job I feel like I'd be spreading myself way to thin to market, distribute and support a full production tool like Liquid. I've been looking at other means of distribution, either through another company, an open-development group or even open sourcing it. I've finally settled on OpenSourcing it, my hope is that those using it will contribute back any additions to the community.

Nice to see. The more people who associate O/S with first class production companies (like WETA) and their work (LOTR) the better cred it'll have to the populace in general.

Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free

[UnknownSoldier]

> Outputs Maya to RenderMan

Cool. We got Blender. Next step, do we have free RenderMan compatible programs? Pov-Ray has been around for ages, but is it RenderMan compatible?

Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free

[HiThere]

Nope. This is a parallel operation. As soon as one part becomes open, those most interested in that start working on improving it. (I'm not claiming this is easy or quick. Merely that it starts happening.)
Simultaneously, the next tool that is needed to extend the chain of tools (possibly more than one) starts being worked on by those who are most interested in THAT.

At some point the chain of tools becomes complete, even though much of them need more polish. Then some people start using the entire chain of tools, so any glitches in the interfaces are worked on.

Then you just keep on improving everything. Well, differnt groups are improving each of the parts ... it's too much for anyone to hold the entire thing in their mind.

This keeps on forever, or until only maintenance is needed.

This whole process can happen faster if commercial entities subsidize it. But the licenses MUST ensure that the entire chain remains forkable at will.

BMRT no more, Aqsis suggested by Exluna...

[jabbo]

Apparently Larry Gritz's BMRT is no longer distributed (or at least I couldn't find v2.6) and the links page suggests Aqsis.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/aqsis/

Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible programs

[jabbo]

but I looked into what happened with ExLuna/nVidia and Pixar, and here's the scoop...

http://www.renderman.org/RMR/OtherLinks/blackSIGGR APH.html

As you will see on the page, Pixar made BMRT and entropy 'go away' in July of this year. So, it looks like that is why Aqsis is being suggested as the only remaining contender.

Tear Rolling...

[Bios_Hakr]

Down my cheek as I type this. I remember, back in tha' day:

Before I joined the military, I loved building RC airplanes. But moving every 2 years makes having a big project impractical. I took up 3d modeling as a substitute.

I started with the Rhino3d beta test. The problem was, Rhino lacked (and probably still lacks) a good render engine. So, I'd have Rhino open to my project, and BMRT ready to run in a command box. I remember the frustration of trying to figure out lighting and cameras as arguments to a command-line call of BMRT. Those were the days.

It almost feels like being told a friend I haven't seen in years has died. I gots to remember to pour a swig from tha' 40oz on tha' ground for my fallen homie...or something like that.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser of the year: Phoenix

3D-modeler: Open Blender

Kde has also a modeller Gui tool for pov

Oh, it would be nice if Open source and Linux gets the graphic geeks of the apple community on the open source train...

Re:Hmmm

[GigsVT]

Open source and Linux gets the graphic geeks of the apple community on the open source train...

I don't know why you were modded down...

Anyway, what gets me is that Linux and open source are getting all these 3D tools, but we don't even have the 2D tools necessary to operate a prepress environment based on Linux yet.

So we have Gimp and Killustrator (or whatever they changed the name to after the lawsuit)... Gimp can't work in CYMK colorspace... I havn't tried Killustrator, but I doubt it comes close to the similar Adobe product.

We have nothing that does what Quark does... we have a barely maintained OPI daemon, no open source trapping software that I am aware of... etc.

The 2D prepress industry is probably many times larger than 3D... Why don't we have better software?

Not such a big deal

[sakusha]

I fail to see why this is such a big thing. Most production houses use MTOR, which is bundled with RenderMan Artist Tools. You still have to use Maya and Renderman. This is kind of like having a Ferrari that uses 130 Octane fuel, and you proclaim you've invented a new type of hose to get the fuel from the pump to the fuel tank. But it's still just a hose, and the Ferrari and the Fuel still do all the work.

Re:Not such a big deal

[plone]

Exactly. All I see this program as being capable of doing is translating the Maya geometry and shaders into the Renderman REYES based geometry and shaders. MTOR already does this, and anyone that usually buys PRman (Pixar's implementation of the Renderman standard), will also get MTOR. Besides, the really cool effects on LOTR where done using Radiosity and global illumination, which at the moment is not supported by the Renderman standard.

Re:Not such a big deal

[MegaFur]

If it were really "just a hose" the software, Liquid, would look like this: | (pipe symbol)

Even if it's only a converter, studying its source would make it easier to learn the formats of the file types it converts from and to. Even if you could get specifications for those formats from somewhere else (I don't know if you could or not), it would still be easier with source. If someone were going to start their own project and they wanted to do stuff with Maya or Renderman files, Liquid would probably be the place to start.

At the same time, you're probably right that it's not such a big deal. But hey, that's slashdot for you. ;-) We could be at WW III and all they'd care about is whether or not the soldiers' head-mounted cameras were running Linux.

Re:Not such a big deal

[malducin]

Ehhhh, First LOTR was rendered with the standard Photorealistic RenderMan, they didn't use radiosity or global illumination.

Second you don't get MTOR automatically, it's part of the RenderMan Artist Tools (RAT). You can also buy PRMan separate with no RAT, after all why would you need RAT in render nodes.

Third over 90% of movies VFX are rendered with PRman and most of the time with no GI of any kind, for over 15 years that PRMan and Pixar came to being. That's what good lighting TDs do. GI is not the be all end all for movie VFX production work.

Fourth, Pixar announce this past SIGGRAPH that PRMan 11 will support GI via photon mapping, which included many interesting new shading language calls. This seems to have been in response to Exluna's Entropy before it's demise:

Pixar Announces Ray Tracing and Global Illumination in RenderMan® Release 11
New RenderMan Shading Language Functions
On RenderMan 11 - Interview with Dana Batali from Pixar

Re:Not such a big deal

[malducin]

Not quite. Everyone, except Pixar, uses the same version. Pixar has more advanced development versions in use. Case in point, deep shadow maps, presented at SIGGRAPH 2000, were used in Monster's Inc. for Sully's hair. But the commercial version has no deep shadow maps implementation until version 11 (to be released Q4?). SO they did have a more advenaced version than everyone else and in over 2 years made no mention of implementing it on PRMan. Who knows what else they had in house with no immediate plans to incorporate into the commercial release.

The other thing, well did you really miss the or notice any GI absence problems in Monster's Inc. Animated films are very art directed. One example, say you wanted to modify where a shadow falls without altering the compositon of the rest of the elements. With raytrcing and other such GI solutions it would be difficult or at leats much more than say in a renderer like PRMan wher you can generate the shadow map independently or even use a paint program. A specific example is Geri's glasses in Geri's game. The refraction you see there is not realistic, it was cheated to make his eyes look bigger and angelic. A raytacer would have put something else, not what the director intended.

As I mentioned Entropy was quicly catching up to PRman to the point where major Pixar clients were starting to use it. ILM needs a raytracer for specific techniques, like generating reflection maps, handling HDRI, and the all important occlusion maps used since Pearl HArbor and JP3. From what an important ILM VFX supervisor mentioned they were excited about a RenderMan renderer where they could combine the best of both worlds, the speed, flexibility and robustness of REYES plus the specific features of GI.

I doubt Ice Age had anything to do with it. After all PDI uses some sort of A-buffer scanline renderer as far as I know with no GI, or at least none for quite some time. Shrek looked fantastic basicly with no GI either. The lighting philosophy of both these places doesn't hinge on having GI on the renderer.

But you are also right, they might have the best of both worlds to compete, not only on their coomercial products, but on their animated movies. Last SIGGRAPH at the photon maps course, one of the presenters was a guy from Rhythm and Hues, so I guess their propietary renderer might get GI. I also saw people frmo ILM, PDI and a whole other studios. So maybe in the end or in the future you are absolutely right. Just to many facts and changes to deal with ;-).

Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ?

[SilverSun]

Can somebody try to explain the connection between the various applications?
What are the specific tasks of Maya/Blender/Liquid/Renderman?
What does Liquid do, what is not already included in tools which come with Renderman?
What role plays Blender?

Cheers, Peter

Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ?

[mav[LAG]]

Very simply: Maya and Blender are modelling packages where the geometry of models and scenes is created. Liquid is a tool to export the work you do in Maya to a RenderMan-compliant format.
Renderman itself is just a standard which defines a couple of things including which functions a compatible renderer must provide and what a bytestream sent to a renderer looks like. Pixar's renderer is called PhotoRealistic Renderman (or PRMan for short). The main reason the final output of a RenderMan-compatible renderer surpasses Maya's and Blender's built-in output routines is that textures and surfaces and lighting can be defined by shaders. These are little C-like programs which calculate what a given pixel will look like based on its position, lighting and so on.
This is roughly the order of creation:

1. Model your geometry in a tool like Maya or Blender
   
2. Export it to a RenderMan Interface ByteStream format (.RIB) using MTOR or Liquid for Maya or a python script for Blender
   
3. Write or buy the shaders you need to define your textures, surfaces and some forms of lighting
   
4. Run a RenderMan-compatible renderer on the RIB file to produce a picture which has potentially the same quality as that of Toy Story or A Bug's Life
   
5. Wait several days if your scene is very complex :)
   

Disclaimer: I am not a professional rendering artist/shader writer/modeller, but I have played around with all three to produce some amazing results. It's great fun to get into - but to make any progress you need serious CPU cycles.
Excuse me, Aqsis compilation just bailed with some error...

Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ?

[glwtta]

Pixar's renderer is called PhotoRealistic Renderman (or PRMan for short).

So glad someone finally explained this; I always thought that "PRMan" was some suit from Pixar whose job it is to put good spin on things.

Re:povray's still the best

[plone]

Povray is the equivalent of Bryce and Poser in the real world of 3d modelling. Povray doesnt even come close to the new closed-source renderers available today such as Brazil, VRay and Final Render. Hell, it wont even compare to the industry workhorses such as Mental Ray and PRman.

Beats me

[jabbo]

I haven't touched a photorealistic rendering shader in 4 years. I just went on a tear and looked all that stuff up on Google. When I was working for the Viz group at Theory, my prof tried BMRT and liked it a lot (more than Renderman even) for producing full ray-traced renderings of eg. large molecules for the cover of Science, Nature, et. al.

I played with BMRT and Povray a bit, povray kind of sucked (IMHO) but I didn't really have an application that demanded raytracing or NURBs and shaders.

I don't recall BMRT being Open Source, just free, so I have strong doubts as to whether Aqsis could get a hold of the source for BMRT/entropy. Gritz et al. have families to support, houses to pay mortgages on, etc.; you can't expect people to just give away prime intellectual property in a vertical market. That's insane. What was nice with BMRT et al. is that they let you use the tools they built, for free, often advancing the state of the art in the process.

I'm sure they have nice jobs with nVidia but it's a damn shame that Pixar sought to end their competition via Microsoftian fund-sapping lawsuits. Not very impressive.

FWIW one of my friends works for WETA (used to work for ILM) and I will probably ask him whether Maya-to-Renderman is the de rigeur toolchain or if other toys are now used too. I wouldn't know.

--t

radiosity used to be a feature of BMRT/entropy

[jabbo]

I posted this in response to another thread, but there used to be a (slower) implementation of the RIB-standard scene rendering process called Blue Moon Render Tools. See here:

http://www.dctsystems.freeserve.co.uk/rmanBasics.h tml

It was later commercially expanded into a faster program called 'entropy'. Exluna was a company that Larry Gritz and some coworkers from Pixar (Gritz joined and then left Pixar) founded. Apparently entropy was fast enough for commercial use (eg. LOTR-scale projects that required photorealistic scenes). Pixar did not like this. At all. The sequelae were as documented here:

http://www.renderman.org/RMR/OtherLinks/blackSIGGR APH.html

Now this is probably not relevant to you if you're working at wetafx or ILM or other big shops, but it's still kind of a shame that, when a product came along that WAS able to compete with PRMan, Pixar chose to squash it with lawyers rather than innovation. I'm not claiming that the case was clear-cut, but the original lawsuit apparently lacked legal merit, and Pixar then went after the individual founders of the company in an effort to drain their resources, which is rather unimpressive.

So the point is that, for a time, there WAS an alternative to PRman for big (cinematic) projects, and Pixar used lawsuits to bury it.

D'oh.

Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr

[Anonymous Coward]

The rumor that I heard at SIGGRAPH was quite different: that Pixar's case was really spurious, based entirely on a common-substring search between the sources for Renderman and BMRT. So the basis for the lawsuit was a few flag tests that BMRT and Renderman had in common; nothing that any programmer would consider significant.

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.

The main theory I heard about why Pixar did this is investor relations. Renderman has a near-monopoly in its small market, and Entropy had a change to challenge that monopoly (it had several advantages over Renderman). Renderman doesn't make a huge amount of money, but investors like to see a diversified company.

Public companies in the US have a financial obligation to their investors; it seems like once they go public, they are required by law to become mercenary, snarling beasts.

Next step, release the models...

[JFMulder]

they unsed in the movie so we can render final scenes from the movie ourselves so we don't have to wait another 2 months to see the movie.... unless it makes more than two months to render the scenes themselves on my own computer...

Ask Slashdot...

[schlach]

Ok this is only tangenitally on-topic, but...

I have been (no more than) a 3d-tinkerer ever since Quake was released, periodically fooling around with whatever 3d packages I can find to learn and experiment with, for my enjoyment only, and maybe producing something I can shoot. When blender was GPL'd, I took a look at it, and with today's story, I have downloaded the non-commercial version of Maya. I have about a bagillion questions.

- Are the tools discussed today (Aqsis, Liquid) compatible with the NC version of Maya, or do they require the Pro version? Will I even need them for less than professional rendering?

- Are there things that blender cannot yet do that Maya can that I might conceivably use as a hobbyist?

- Is the level of user support, tutorials, manuals, etc. for blender comparable to that of Maya? From a cursory examination, it appears that Maya has several tutorials and discussion forums on the Alias Community website, and tons of active community websites.

- blender may eventually rival the community size, but I don't think it has yet. The blender "documentation"
appears to be incomplete or incorrect, and comes with this disclaimer: This document is at the current state meant as a example how a possible way of organising and writing documentation could look like. It contains many old and obsolete information especially in terms of license and publishing rights. I have found a few tutorial sites. I have heard that the learning curve is steep, and without a lot of documentation, that kind of worries me.

So, to all who have some experience with one or both of the packages, which do you think will provide the most satisfying hobbyist experience? Power to do the things I will probably want to do, useful learning of 3d modelling, and usefulness of produced files (I noticed the Maya non-commercial version of the "Kompleet" package watermarks its files and is not compatible with the commercial version file-formats), and especially overall enjoyment of the activity.

If you know of any good learning resources for any of the tools, please post them. Thanks from all us 3d newbies...

Re:Ask Slashdot...

[tinrobot]

I review 3d software and hardware for a number of magazines, including CGW. I also own a small animation studio. Suffice to say, I've seen most of the packages out there.

I'd say the question is a no-brainer -- learn Maya. There are so many resources available for someone willing to learn - college courses, books, online tutorials, etc. Maya is also very robust, with nifty particle systems, super easy character setup, and much, much more. Blender is cool and holds promise (even more now that it's been GPL'd) but the level of support and size of the community is much smaller at this point.

If you're just learning Maya for the fun of it, don't worry too much about whether the free version supports PRMan (which costs $thousands, btw) Maya's renderer is pretty good if you take the time to learn it -- most artists render in Maya, not PRMan -- only the uber-high-end stuff does that.

Pixar's house style

[Animats]

What you're really complaining about, I expect, is Pixar's house style. All RenderMan, All the Time can get a bit wearing. Every pixel onscreen is generated by little texture programs written by somebody in Marin. Only Pixar does it that way. Everybody else uses more texture-mapped photos of real surfaces, reserving procedural textures for water, smoke, and such. Pixar also has a house style on lighting. There are no dark corners, unless a dark corner is key to the scene.

It's a stylistic choice. Pixar work is the tromp l'oeil of animation, where extreme detail is the norm. There are other styles. Shrek, a Dreamworks product, was also all-CG, but definitely didn't have the Pixar look. The Shrek team struggled with how photorealistic they should be; they ended up backing off a bit from photorealism. Final Fantasy, all CG from yet another team, had a totally different look from either Dreamworks or Pixar. Sadly, that team broke up after the picture flopped, due mostly to the bad plot.

Pixar/Disney has good stories. If they didn't, the rendering couldn't carry the film. Compare Lucasfilm, where the story and acting are weak, but the production design makes up for it.

Re:Could someone explain this to me?

[malducin]

Yes, Liquid only allows you to connect (seamlessly) Maya to a RenderMan renderer. PRMan is U$5000 per license. RAT is even more expensive. Maya Complete now is U$2000, but Unlimited is U$7,000:

Pixar software price list
Maya store

As you can see from the list prices with Liquid you are partially subsituting RAT, which is $8,500. Specifically you are substituting MTOR which is the bridge between Maya and PRMan, You would still miss on things like Alfred, Slim and It.

Why it does matter is that now small studios or even artists can afford a Maya to RenderMan bridge. Potentially they could combine it with cheaper alternatives like RenderDotC, AIR or 3Delight on the renderer part, and something like Smedge for distributing the rendering jobs. So potentially it could be easier to save the cost of RAT for artists workstations. Also if a studio has in house tools, they could potentially integrate them easier since the code for Liquid will be available.

Why I think this is a big deal (submitter)

[donglekey]

I would have replied earlier, but I just got up and didn't realize that my story had been accepted. Many people are wondering why having a connection from Maya to the Renderman rendering standard is a big deal and it's a very valid concern.

First of all I will say that I have known about Blender for quite a while, and while it does share many of the basic features of other high-end software (basic being the key word), it really is not acceptable to use for anything except as an intoduction to 3D. The magic 4 programs that are used for professional 3D are Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Softimage | 3D and XSI, and Maya. They are very well architectured, very fast, and very elegant to use. There are many others but these are the programs that are used to make 90 % of the 3D CGI out there.

Maya does have Renderman output, but it is abysmal and not suitable for anything but experimentation. I have used it to test Renderman shaders and I still needed to edit the actual .rib file ( the file containing the frame description, which is plain text) by hand. This wouldn't be practical on a scene containing anything more than a sphere and two lights.

This is important because it encourages standards and it encourages open source. By far the area that Linux is penetrating the fastest is the high end computer graphics market. Large studios have made sweeping conversions, not just on render farms, but on workstsations. Softimage 3D and XSI now run on Linux as does Maya. Almost every software based compositor out there runs on Linux (the exceptions being After Effects and Combustion). Many studios that have proprietary software are porting it to Linux. ILM , Digital Domain, PDI, and Weta have very big investments in it. Being open source helps, but open source is not the reason it is there. This tool being open source is one more piece of the puzzle as far open source penetrating large graphics studios. High end studios will be going to sourceforge to get a tool that they may end up depending on to get the job done. Some will start becoming active in its development, and this is very good. Its sets a precedent for releasing proprietary tools into the OS world. There are many extremely skilled programmers working in 3D.

More importantly than open source being furthered however is that it encourages standards. There are many Renderman compliant renderers out there, (Renderman is a frame description standard) Pixar's own implementation, Photorealistic Renderman is the most popular one. Most people just use the internal renderer of the software package they are using because the only standard for going between a 3D package and a renderer is Renderman, and a plugin is needed to facilitate that. Until now all of the choices were very expensive (somtimes more expensive than Maya itself believe it or not). Now that this part is free, people may start to see the benefits that come along with having a standard in place.

Aren't those graphics applications still ungodly expensive? Yes and no. Maya is now at $2000 USD for the base version (everything you need is there) which is one hell of a deal. Don't I still need Pixar's PRman? Yes and No. It is not the only Renderman renderer, but it is the best. It is sold alone or with many tools to go between Maya and itself (more expensive). If someone uses Liquid, eighther way they are saving alot of money and getting a production proven tool.

So is the entire pipeling Free? No, of course not, but that isn't the point. Open Source getting into 3D graphics studios is a very good thing, and this is a pretty cool step in the right direction. You want open minded people who just want to get the job done, and use the very best tools for their situation? That's 3D, perhaps overall one of the most intelligent and dynamic industries out there. They do their own thing and that's why Linux is taking over and OS can too, it just has to meet extremely high quality standards.

P.S. No Hollywood is a hyprocrite crap today please. Visual effects and computer graphics as a whole is so far removed from the issue that making a connection between the MPAA and a visual effects house just shows how little you know about it, and it isn't fair to the people working in the 3D industry.

Good for some

[tolldog]

Thats great, but I don't know how many studios will really take advantage of it.

Any studio that is working on a feature film will use solutions with tech support. When you are spending millions of dollars to make a film, it is worth spending a couple million to make sure that it really does get done.

For people with Maya that want an indexpensive solution, use the native renderer or possibly look at MentalRay. I used the native renderer in a feature film and it held its own (Jonah: A Veggietales Movie). Sure there were a few issues, but that is where tech support and documentation comes in. We would not have been able to finish without the help of Alias|Wavefront.

If you want to see how well it can do, go into the theater and watch it. Which, btw, was fully rendered on Linux boxes (if that is more of an incentive for us geek types to go).

-Tim

Why Do You Think Jack Valenti is so Rabid?

[FreeUser]

I doubt that "the desktop user" is really the audience that the author has in mind.

That is, of course, unless rendering massive feature-film CG effects has become a cool thing to do at home.

That is the crux of the matter. It will only be a year or two before home computers are powerful enough for people to render home-made movies with CG effects to rival that of the latest Hollywood blockbusters.

With GNU/Linux, Blender, Liquid, Aqsis, Wings 3D, Film Gimp, Cinelerra, and other free software packages it will soon be possible for individuals to create feature length movies of blockbuster quality (though likely with much better story lines than much of the tripe eminating from Hollywood), and to distribute those movies on-line either as DVD iso images or xvid (mpeg4) avi files for world consumption.

A popular audio-video culture, where hobbiests create and share movies with one another the way free software enthusiasts do software today.

Suddenly Jack Velenti's rabid approach in trying to make it impossible to distribute content, any content (even your own) via the internet starts to make a lot more sense, doesn't it. They've grown used to the money and power that comes from controlling the media we see and hear, and nothing galls or freightens them more than the thought that we might have the freedom to ignore them and go somewhere else for our entertainment. This is why the RIAA seeks to destroy P2P, and it is why Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti want to turn every home PC into a governance police device (Microsoft's willingness to accomodate this has to do with their desire to displace the RIAA and MPAA as the gatekeepers of modern culture, such as it is, but that is a tangent for another day).