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."
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sure the functionality isn't there to have ONE scene file and create multiple frames (not that I know of anyway) but is having multiple scene files REALLY that bad?
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...
I've been using POV-Ray for longer than the animation capibilities have been included in the scene file, and I got around it by using a script (Perl, shell, etc.) to create and render each scene files, or to have a main scene file which includes a file with the changed values, and have the script create that file and render the scene each time.
You are still working with a single scene file, but everything is changed and automated by way of the script.
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Have you seen Ayam? It's a neat little Renderman modeller that ties into Aqsis or (the now defunct) BMRT.
Actually, if you're really wanting a good fast 3d animation workflow, I'd recommend Blender. The learning curve is steep, but once you're into it, you can work fast and smooth. There's lot of support around, and the documentation can get you up and animating within half an hour.
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Here be Dragons
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 the money, I would look at getting Maya.
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
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
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. 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.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
if you haven't checked out hash animation master, you should take a look. It has all the equivalent features of Maya and SoftImage. The renderer is pretty good and the animation features are nice. http://www.hash.com/
You might be farf better off spending your money on a license for Lightwave or Maya.
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 have to say, using a professional toolset is the very best choice, in the end it will save both time and money.
Lightwave info
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
... and use Blender. I've tried switching to 3DSMax, Lightwave, Maya, and I just keep coming back to Blender. I can do all you want and more. A lot of people whine about the learning curve, but there are many tutorials on the web to get you started.
Most people will use a separate 3D package to output RIB, and therefore never deal with Renderman directly. However, the Renderman specification allows for language bindings, such as the official bindings for C, that you would use to have greater control over the scene. I personally am a Python user, and prefer to use the CGKit language bindings.