Pixar To Give Away 3D RenderMan Software

nairnr sends this news from the BBC: 'The 3D rendering software behind films such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Harry Potter is to be given away free for non-commercial use. RenderMan, which is developed by Pixar, has faced increased competition from rival animation rendering programmes such as VRay and Arnold. Although Pixar, which is owned by Disney, produces its own films, it licenses RenderMan to rival studios. In a statement, the firm said it would release a free version of RenderMan "without any functional limitations, watermarking, or time restrictions." "Non-commercial RenderMan will be freely available for students, institutions, researchers, developers, and for personal use," it added.'

Comments

there is some evil in this

[alen]

it's disney
the same company that makes me pay for ESPN even though i never watch it

Re:there is some evil in this

[phrostie]

look up the history of BMRT

I'd be happy if they gave that back.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Not "evil" but definitely "enlightened self interest"

They're trying to get poor/cheap students used to using their product so that when they graduate and become professionals they'll pressure their employer to buy them the software they're familiar with (which they can then charge huge commercial license fees for).

Re:there is some evil in this

[Charliemopps]

It's just good talent retention. If your software is free to learn on... people will learn on it. Which increases your talent pool. Most of the Apple fanboys out there now are such because, when they were in highschool, apple was the only computer in the school... and therefor the only computer they had access to. You use what you know. It worked for Apple, it will work for Pixar... but kind of in reverse.

Re:there is some evil in this

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Oh, come on. They just want to kill off 3Delight or something like that.

Re:there is some evil in this

[alen]

disney says you have to put ESPN into the basic cable tier along with the three dozen other channels on it. i watch sports, but ESPN is crap. it's either talk shows or niche sports like drag racing

Re:there is some evil in this

[just_another_sean]

Not to mention that they were one of the first to pull the "you can't access our online content because your ISP doesn't pay us to let you access it" *. F Disney and ESPN.

* See the section on Criticism

Re:there is some evil in this

[compro01]

According to the site, the commercial licence is $495. Not all that huge.

Re:there is some evil in this

[ArcadeMan]

Considering the cost of Adobe Photoshop, RenderMan for 495$ seems low-cost.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

but ESPN is crap. it's either talk shows or niche sports like drag racing

The supplemental ESPN channels are much better. In college I remember getting ESPN 2 and there were some good things on there. I remember coming back from a class and watching some sort of dogs-catching-Frisbees-as-they-highdive-into-a-pool competition for a while before I had to head off to my next class. Still no idea how to find that again.

Also, don't forget ESPN 8 (the ocho).

Re:there is some evil in this

[alen]

they do have a lot of college sports, but i don't follow it that much. Mets, Yankees, Nets and Rangers is all i have time for

Re:there is some evil in this

[Penguinisto]

Oh, come on. They just want to kill off 3Delight or something like that.

You're close - they likely want to kill off licensing money for 3Delight (you can get the engine yourself and use it for free). For instance, these guys license 3Delight as the render engine inside the DAZ Studio product, as do many other hobbyist and lower-end toolsets. They pay quite a bit for the privilege.

There's a decent amount of money to be made not by selling the engine as a product, but by licensing it out to other software houses, much like they licensed out the Unreal or Quake game engines. Making and maintaining a complex CG engine (rendering, game physics, subdivision, etc) is programmatically a PITA, and it's easier to use an existing wheel than to just re-invent it.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Rags suck!
  -- an Islanders fan

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

ESPN is not in basic cable most places. It is in extended basic. You don't need to pay for it if you just want basic. There have been many studies that show that even though we all think we want a la cart channel selection that it would end up being more expensive for most people...

Re:there is some evil in this

[viperidaenz]

It's a sales tool.
The more people who use it and know how to use it properly, the more paying customers they'll get.
If everyone coming out of university and design schools already know how to use RenderMan, what do you think companies will buy?

Re:there is some evil in this

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It used to be multiple thousand dollars per socket (or node?). Of course, now that all those people who were willing to pay for it had already bought it, they're aiming for people on tighter budgets.

Re:there is some evil in this

[viperidaenz]

Some of the channels in basic packages are there to lower the cost.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

they own the copyright on anything you create for your life span plus seventy years.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Penguinisto]

yes Disney MAKES you pay for cable.

I think his point is this: Try getting cable or sat television without a Disney-owned channel on it.

Sure, you can cut the cable and all, but it's kind of funny that Disney has insinuated themselves that damned deeply into the entertainment industry, no?

Think of it as not being able to get municipal water without being forced to have Brawndo pumped into the pipes at regular intervals throughout the day. I mean, sure you can drill a well and get your own water and all, but...

Re:there is some evil in this

[viperidaenz]

Islanders suck!

-- A whateverthefuckgametheIslandersplay non-supporter.

Re:there is some evil in this

[westlake]

i watch sports, but ESPN is crap. it's either talk shows or niche sports like drag racing

must be a lot of drag racing fans out there.

3,259,000 Prime-time Average Viewers Week Ending June 1, 2014

[about 1/2 adults 18-49]

ESPN Wins Week With Cable Primetime Adults 18-49 & Total Primetime Viewers

Re:there is some evil in this

[wagnerrp]

Does that include licensing for all your render nodes?

Re:there is some evil in this

[westlake]

Sure, you can cut the cable and all, but it's kind of funny that Disney has insinuated themselves that damned deeply into the entertainment industry, no?

You have got to be kidding.

Disney has a ninety year backlist of family-oriented feature films, shorts and television productions.

Its archives essentially intact and in a state suitable for commercial distribution.

Disney jump-started the ABC television network beginning in 1954 with Disneyland. Disney and Warner Brothers were the first of the "majors" to move into network television production in a really big way. with a handsome pay-off for everyone involved.

Disney's move to all-color production in 1961 did the same for NBC and color TV sales.

The pattern repeats with the introduction of cable, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray...and now streaming media.

The original Menzel version of "Let It Go" distributed free and without copy protection as licensed HD Disney Studio animation is approaching 250 million page views on YouTube. I'll let you work out how that word-of-mouth translates into rental and sales of the movie and soundtrack alone.

Re:there is some evil in this

[ldephil]

No. It's per node pricing.

Re:there is some evil in this

[wagnerrp]

That's pretty damn huge.

Re:there is some evil in this

[ldephil]

Not really. Arnold works out at 1k per node; Maxwell is too damn slow for most things. Maintenance is 200 USD per node annually which is not unreasonable, either.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Will.Woodhull]

This is a measure of Blender's success as FOSS. I hadn't expected this kind of reaction for a couple more years, but Blender has been developing a lot faster than I had thought it would.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Required Snark]

So I guess I can assume that you live in a shack like Ted Kaczynski because you do not want to be polluted by the "evil" of contemporary life? You have somehow acquired a computer free of the low paid sweat shop labor in China/Korea/Viet Nam/etc, it's powered by a home built water powered generator running off a natural spring on your property, you have found the one ISP that does no allow any spam on their network, and you use a Linux/BSD distros that have completely open source software with no vendor supplied binaries.

Your are clearly a superior being compared to the rest of the "evil" people on Slashdot. We are clearly all polluted because we have at some point in our lives seen a frame generated by RenderMan, even if it was before Disney bought them. You only post here to set an example and shame you inferiors in the hope that we will see the error of our ways.

I also assume that you are a complete Vegan, don't wear or use any animal derived product, don't ride in cars (gas, diesel, natural gas, hydrogen, electric) and grow or gather all the food you eat without any non-natural substances.

I wonder if you have made it all the way to breatharianism and now live off pure light.

Re:there is some evil in this

[kwbauer]

oh the horror! An entertainment company has insinuated themselves into the entertainment industry.

Re: there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop bitching about ESPN and bitch that you pay for cable and still have to watch it with commercials (can't see the forest for the trees can you)

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the cost of Blender, RenderMan for 495$ seems high-cost.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Just trying to be helpful. In MediaWiki, all headings have an anchor named like the title. The easiest way to access it is through the table of contents. Now you can link directly to the section you are referring to, like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN3#Criticism

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Is maintenance optional?

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender

It's only a modeller.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, they had the NBA eastern conference finals. They also have one weekly NFL game. They air 3 MLB games weekly, and they'll have playoffs again in the fall. These are not exactly a 'talk show or niche sport'.

Re:there is some evil in this

[LoRdTAW]

Most of the Apple fanboys out there now are such because, when they were in highschool, apple was the only computer in the school... and therefor the only computer they had access to.

I kind of doubt that. When I was in grade school the standard was the Apple IIx. In high school we had PC's running Windows 3.x or 95. At home we first had a Franklyn Ace 1200 and later various PC's. Yea this isn't the 80's/90's anymore but there is a bit more to this than Macs at schools.

Apple only rose to its current height after the assault of trendy advertisement and product placements of the early-mid 2000's. The iPod was the first piece of hardware that really brought them attention and it was everywhere including being worn by prominent musicians in music videos of the day. Everyone had to have an iPod. It was not only a piece of technology but a fashion statement and a status symbol. Oh you still listen to burned CD's, that like so 90's! The iPod's success along with OSX and sleek product design began the Apple ecosystem of iPod+Mac. The iPhone further cemented that and people to this day prefer to buy iPhones because its about status, not technology. Its only natural for them to buy a Mac instead of a PC.

I will also say that their saving grace was OSX which finally got them out of the OS dark ages and gave people a real alternative to Windows. They marketed it to geeks as a Unix OS (which it really isn't) and even managed to lure in a significant portion of developers. Hell at my brothers place of work everyone has a Mac mini or Macbook Pro for web development. They are embedded in a multi million dollar marketing firm which is all Mac. If they need to test on Windows they fire up VMware. A friend who works for Disney mobile switched to a Macbook years ago. Another friend also does all his game coding in C/C++ on a Mac. Go to any Maker fair and look at how many people are sporting Macbooks. And yes, going back to your original statement, Macs are in a lot of schools but many have Windows servers on the backend running Active Directory and everything else. I bought my old Lenovo Thinkpad running Debian to my brothers work place of work and was laughed at for having a PC until they saw Xmonad on the fucking screen. Then they were like "oh shit you're hardcore", which I really am not but its easy to impress half assed geeks I suppose.

I have been doing some contract work for my brothers place of work. I asked to use of of the Mac books so I don't have to lug my "ugly" thinkpad in. I will say this, OSX is a pretty neat OS. Xcode is free and lets you write just about anything you want compared to Microsoft's Visual Studio which requires a costly license to do any real work (to be fair Apple charges 99/yr for app store publishing but otherwise its free). I can open terminals and do all the unixy stuff I need (scp, rsync, ssh, git, etc) while having a shiny GUI on top that runs most of the software I already use. And the best part is the sane method for software installation. A DMG image containing a single file you drag into the programs directory. Done. At first I thought I was doing it wrong but no it was the way it worked. No files thrown all over creation (Linux) and no stupid idiotic registry (Windows). At one point I almost considered buying a Macbook myself. Apple really did their homework and made a nice, simple OS.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure! It has nothing to do with Arnold at all... it's all because of Blender!

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Because suddenly, the animator suffered a fatal heart attack.

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Jump up and the tits will bounce back on your back..

Re:there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

At Castle Aaargh.

Re: there is some evil in this

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Blender is admirable for what it's trying to achieve, but it would have zero influence on this decision. The price drop is a response to a huge market share and mind share away from prman over the past 5 years towards Arnold in film vfx and cg features, and potentially a move to get some of the TV market from vray where prman has no market to speak of.

The free for non commercial use is a very late response to where the rest of the post production scene has headed over the past 10 years. 3delight, vray, mantra (via Houdini apprentice), Arnold, are all available to play with for free, albeit with resolution and/or watermark restrictions. The fact that prman will be restriction free is an interesting and necessary point of difference.

Not that it should affect the prman team much anyway. Their market is all about large volume pricing to big studios (50 or more licenses, more likely 200 to 500), yearly support contracts etc. Single users would be barely a blip on their bottom line.

Further, which I find even more interesting, all their key competitors have their renderer as their main or only source of income. Solid angle only make Arnold, chaos primarily sell vray, dna only sell 3delight. The prman team primarily make software for pixar, and now Disney and ilm. Ultimately they are an internship software division. The president of the entire group, Ed Catmull, has strong emotional ties to the software. They are under way less obligation to make a profit than any of their competitors. They're almost like Google in that respect; Google give away drive, gmail, maps etc because they have endless advertising revenue. Pixar can almost give away prman because they have endless cg feature revenue, and a friend at the top.

Blender is a cute curiosity more than anything.

Re:there is some evil in this

[vandamme]

Funny you should use those metaphors, because we haven't ever had cable TV (since 1974) and we have our own well, with organic free-range water.

Re:there is some evil in this

[im_thatoneguy]

Considering most people need about 5-10 licenses per employee it's less of a discount compared to Photoshop.

But is it

[Anonymous Coward]

A Mickey Mouse product?

Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Em Adespoton]

"Non-commercial RenderMan will be freely available for ... developers...," it added.'

Forget the others; they're basically saying anyone not making commercial feature films can use it for free -- which means small software developers can now create excellent animation sequences for free, as long as they can actually do decent animation. This could usher in Pixar-level animation in App-style games, which would be significantly better than the current options.

Here we come, Bendy Luxo apps!

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

you have no idea what you are talking about. Pixar renderman in an app?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Hadlock]

What happens to Blender? Will RenderMan have the ability to replace Blender as an all-in-one 3D modeling/sculpting/rigging/animation/rendering engine, or is RenderMan only an animation/rendering engine?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[vux984]

Pretty sure you reading it wrong. You can get a copy of it for free as a developer; presumably to play with it, maybe develop free plugins for it etc.

I certainly don't read it as being free for you to make animation for commerial apps. (regular paid apps, freemium, or ad supported)

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[cheater512]

Erm aren't "small software developers" usually excluded by the non-commercial bit?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[angularbanjo]

... no it reads like 'any' commercial use. So we're safe from versions of Candy Crush Saga with sub-surface scattering for a while yet

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as those games are free (and not free-to-play, but actually free). If it's being sold, it's commerical.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Narcocide]

Blender will stay exactly where it is because some people will still want to have a tool that's actually free not just "free for educational uses only."

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

What about developers that are not small? I mean just because I am a big man does not mean I do not like to render.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Registered Coward v2]

"Non-commercial RenderMan will be freely available for ... developers...," it added.'

Forget the others; they're basically saying anyone not making commercial feature films can use it for free -- which means small software developers can now create excellent animation sequences for free, as long as they can actually do decent animation. This could usher in Pixar-level animation in App-style games, which would be significantly better than the current options.

Here we come, Bendy Luxo apps!

If I read their pricing schedule correctly a commercial license is only $495; so someone could create some animation and later buy a license at a reasonable price if they decide to do a commercial release.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

which means small software developers can now create excellent animation sequences for free, as long as they can actually do decent animation

Oh, come on. Compared with 3DS Max or Lightwave, working with RenderMan is like flying a Jumbo Jet instead of driving a car. "Why would small software developers" try to do that when many really small media studios don't bother? And I'm talking about people dedicated to doing video/film work, you're talking about a part-time activity.

This could usher in Pixar-level animation in App-style games, which would be significantly better than the current options.

Uh? What does that even mean?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

PRMan, I believe, has always been linkable as a shared library. But that still provides rather limited benefits.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Em Adespoton]

Shoot... I think you're right. Oh well :(

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[timeOday]

No, but if there is really no watermarking, they are effectively giving up on controlling small-scale commercial use.

They must only be getting licensing fees from other big companies (too big to use it on the sly), and decided to sacrifice any potential of selling it for a couple hundred bucks per pop, in order to cement their market at the high end.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Hadlock]

Does blender have a greater, lesser or parity feature set compared to RenderMan? That's an important question for the casual user. I use blender quite a bit for 3D modeling for Kerbal Space Program, but if Render Man is better, and has the features I need, then I might look at their free edition. I use blender because it's free and do about 20 hours a year of 3D modeling a year for hobbyist purposes.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The usual response (applicable to many similar questions): If you have to ask what this means for you, then PRMan is not for you.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[gmueckl]

In very simple terms: RenderMan is a software that is used to convert 3d scenes into 2d images. It would never replace Blender or other 3d modeling tools - they complement each other.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

The site says Renderman has no GUI. It's a plug-in. They don't list Blender, but it's worth a shot to try to see if Renderman will work as a render engine for it. Maybe with BRAT or Mosaic.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[gmueckl]

The high end is where RenderMan shines. This is a tool for experts. The studios that use RenderMan pay people to become experts in very specific domains (modeling, shading and lighting are separate domains for these people) and this software has been the ultimate tool for the shading and lighting stages for the last 2 decades.

However, as the summary notes, Arnold is the new shooting star among production renderers. It's a completely different beast - different basic algorithms which imply different ways of dealing with it, but at the benefit that the results usually obey the laws of physics without further ado. RenderMan was never designed to work that way, yet this is what the VFX industry moves towards.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[luckymutt]

Renderman is a rendering engine with its own material and lighting system.
It is essentially a suite of plug-ins. You would still do all of your modeling and animation rigging, camera work etc. in Blender as you already know it, then use the Renderman materials and lighting and then Renderman would do all of the rendering passes and output.
Just like using v-ray in 3dsMax or Maya.
However, you would need to hope they have built a version for Blender, or have made a scene exporter and a stand-alone version of Renderman.
I haven't messed with Renderman in years, but the last I saw was it was only available for Maya. I hoped that's changed because I'd love to try it again, but I only use Max these days.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's a feature disparity. Blender is mostly polygon oriented, but PRMan rather likes to chew on smooth patches. Blender's NURBS features are of lackluster quality, though, so you're basically left only with Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces as the lowest common denominator. It's not that polygons wouldn't work, but you'd be missing on some of the coolest features of PRMan - or you'd have to make some geometry transformers of your own for the exporter. It's like running a car's engine on idle all the time. (Also, PRMan loves humongously complex scenes, which Blender is probably unable to provide. Again, you're running your engine on idle.)

Re: Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

RenderMan is primarily a rendering interface specification and a shading language definition. For convenience, implementations are also called RenderMan.
Pixar's own implementation and toolset (previously called Photorealistic RenderMan/PRMan and RenderMan Studio Tools) is by far the most successful. There are multiple other software implementations of RenderMan: commercial (3Delight) and open-source (Pixie, Aqsis). Also some dead ones (RenderDotC, BMRT).
Finally, there are renderers that have borrowed the concept and a lot of ideas from it (Houdini's integrated Mantra renderer).

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think there are small-scale commercial developers that are dumb enough to take the risk of using RenderMan without a license when fully free alternatives like Blender 3D exist? It's a tiny, tiny risk but tiny are the benefits, if any, that RenderMan has over Blender 3D for such small-scale use, at least.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's talking about cut-scenes. At least i hope that is what he's talking about.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you be more specific about the retarded choices, please?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as those games are free (and not free-to-play, but actually free). If it's being sold, it's commerical.

Just to further clarify your point: it would be required to be ad-free and donation-free, as well.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[PRMan]

I am most assuredly NOT linkable as a shared library! ;)

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[exomondo]

What happens to Blender?

Nothing, RenderMan is a renderer and some Blender users already use RenderMan, others use Yafaray or 3Delight or whatever. If anything more Blender users may use RenderMan as their renderer of choice.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Ah, the ancient trick with registering yourself under a relevant nick ten years before I make a comment? Like I'm going to fall for that!

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[TheInternetGuy]

Ah, the ancient trick with registering yourself under a relevant nick ten years before I make a comment? Like I'm going to fall for that!

Some people will stop at nothing, not even time travel, to pull someones leg.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[spitzak]

I'm pretty certain RenderMan supports subdivision surfaces, same as Blender (although RenderMan may have more advanced ones).

Nurbs are pretty much obsolete for non-engineering models.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[fractoid]

Blender is a modeler, and can integrate with a bunch of different renderers. As I understand it, Renderman is the specification for an interface to a rendering engine. PRMan is Pixar's implementation of the Renderman interface. For a long time there was a free implementation called Blue Moon Rendering Tools, but I think that got pulled after some legal issue with Pixar.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender has subdivision surface "modifiers". You attach them to your polygon mesh, and you get instant subdivision surfaces in either view or render mode. Blender can go up to millions of triangles in rendering, but in edit mode, it does get unusable - there's no occluded object culling to improve rendering time.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[nemyax]

How is Blender an alternative to RenderMan? Apparently you haven't used either.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

LMB select. Everything and the kitchen sink in one app. Independent editors in one window. Silly defaults. Not accepting features that go against Tom's vision even if they are optional and demanded by users. The list never ends.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

so Renderman is best with MAYA?

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. Compared with 3DS Max or Lightwave, working with RenderMan is like flying a Jumbo Jet instead of driving a car. "Why would small software developers" try to do that when many really small media studios don't bother? And I'm talking about people dedicated to doing video/film work, you're talking about a part-time activity.

Well, apparently there are a lot of animators out there. One friend of mine has gone through the school and I get to see all the films that he and his fellow class mates end up doing. Many probably won't go on to do animation even it seems, Still, if the software is useable by a single person or small group and better than other alternatives, I would except these people as well as small film makers (of which there are more than you would expect) to use it to make shorts that will end up at film festivals and such. Realistically, these will be the portfolios of the people involved trying to get jobs.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[nemyax]

LMB select

Change the preference FFS.

Independent editors in one window.

Tear the windows off FFS.

Silly defaults.

Change them FFS.

Not accepting features that go against Tom's vision even if they are optional and demanded by users.

This is normally due to sheer lack of time, especially with all the bugs to fix. And frankly, most user demands are worthless anyway.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[im_thatoneguy]

PRMan doesn't care whether you feed it polygons or NURBS. It will microtesellate whatever comes in.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[im_thatoneguy]

There was essentially no small-scale commercial use because PRMan is terrible for pretty much anyone whose name isn't ILM, Weta or Pixar. For the sorts of work that pretty much everyone does the sacrifices PRMan forces you to accept don't really give you anything in return over VRay or now Arnold.

Re:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Of course, but at whatever level of geometric complexity you're working, a patch model is going to be way faster than any mesh trying to achieve the same level of detail. That's how it was designed to work, and it's the single most important thing any application should do when emitting the RI stream. It says so right there in the PhotoRealistic RenderMan Application Note #11, if you want a citation for that.

BMRT

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they own your ass when you get that animation done and someone wants to pay you for it.

Recruiting Tool

[rodrigoandrade]

This is Disney we're talking about here.

And TNSTAAFL.

They'll obviously use it as a recruiting tool.

1. Release tool
2. Watch amateur animations spring up online
3. Hire amateurs who create awesome animations
4. Save on training costs
5. Profit

Re:Recruiting Tool

[geekoid]

Just like any other companies have done.

You overlook the part where people learn the skills also can make competing companies. Start there own company, and get free training.

Re:Recruiting Tool

[kevmatic]

And are you implying that there is there something wrong with this?

People get to play around with a tool used in industry if they want, Disney (AND other Renderman companies) get better, more passionate hires, people have a way to get their foot in the door for jobs they want without having to put up money...

What's the problem?

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Graydyn Young]

This is also a great way to get their application featured in college courses. And if people learn how to do 3d animation in RenderMan first, they are going to more inclined to use it on future projects.

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! You found out.

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Larger employee pool means lower salaries in a market that already has starvation level wages.

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

a market that already has starvation level wages.

We must have a different definition of "starvation level wages."

I would bet that Disney is more concerned with making the talent pool more familiar with their particular software rather than just 3D software in general. It's probably less about lowering wages than it is about ensuring that other animation studios license their software because that's what most of the talent is familiar with.

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes releasing a free non-commerical license and lowering the commercial license cost for their distributed 3d renderer is all a big conspiracy to lower wages!

I would bet that Disney is more concerned with making the talent pool more familiar with their particular software rather than just 3D software in general.

Assuming you know what Renderman is how does this affect "3D software in general"? Or the industry for that matter when you have competing renders like 3Delight that are already free and watermark free versions of competitors like Arnold?

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting a 3D Animators Guild to protect the body of knowledge?

Re:Recruiting Tool

[Rakarra]

Larger employee pool means lower salaries in a market that already has starvation level wages.

Tech workers do not earn "starvation level wages." They are already over-payed nearly across the board. Yeah, I include animation and effects artists with that.

And this is the first time in awhile that I've heard that ignorance and suppression of knowledge were good things, as they drive costs (salaries) up. If that can happen, then it's a really good sign those workers are already over-payed.

Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit

[c0d3r]

Anyone remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Rendering_Tools? There was a free version a long time ago.

Re:Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya it rocked.. but then the author sold it and started work at Pixar I think.

Re:Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit

[nurb432]

From what i understood when he went to pixar they took ownership of his 'brain' and he was told to stop working on it and to pull all copies he had shared ( of course there were binaries out in the wild that you could still use, but who wanted to do that after Larry was no longer developing it? )

tl;dr

[alphatel]

Damn I thought this said they were giving away Slenderman on Bluray. Kind of creepy considering...

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't some stupid little cunts try to kill someone over this Slenderman character? Like yesterday?

Renderman old news, Presto new news

[clawsoon]

It might be that Pixar considers rendering old news, considering what they've come up with for animators:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tech/watch-a-rare-demo-of-pixars-animation-system-presto-98099.html

If you're not familiar with computer animation, that might not seem like much. To the animators where I work, though, it induced a weird combination of frenzy (as they lusted after it) and depression (once they re-opened the scenes they were working on in Maya). The rest of the industry has to spend hours rendering (in Renderman, or Vray, or whatever) to get a result that Pixar is now creating in-house in real time.

Re:Renderman old news, Presto new news

[Anonymous Coward]

Presto is not even directly related to rendering.

In terms of rendering, try making an architectural visualization with PRman. Try doing product shots. Try doing anything besides exactly what it was built to do within the confines of Pixar. There's a reason other rendering tools exist, and price alone is not it. Keep in mind that PRMan couldn't even do accurate reflections for the longest of times, and the general sentiment at the time was that it didn't need to be able to anyway, as few things in the movies it was being used for had reflective surfaces, and where they did, they could always find a work-around or use another tool. It didn't take very long for them to add a raytracing subsystem, though.

That said, rendering is more or less old news, simply because the computational power now exists to render things using physically accurate equations within a reasonable time frame without having to resort to cheats like photon mapping, render cache, etc. (even if many still opt to do so), and flexible enough to let artists bend the rules of physics where they feel it delivers a better aesthetic result. Moreover, this is within reach of prosumer budgets. Anybody serious enough can buy a decent graphics card, and VRay for [choice of animation package here], and off they go. There haven't been particularly great advances in core rendering technology shown off at, for example, Siggraph or EuroGraphics for a while now. Most of it is just about speeding up the existing computations a little bit more, or finding somewhat more efficient ways to do X, where X is usually a somewhat obscure portion of rendering that might not even be related to the visual at all, but e.g. transfer of properties, sound propagation, and others). If anything, there appears to be more research in Non-Photorealistic Rendering than there is in photorealistic.

So if all rendering is practically equal, where do you get artists to focus? On modeling tools, animations tools, rigging tools, etc. All the actual artist-side-of-things which can interface with whatever renderer they want (as long as they use reasonably agnostic shaders); which are exactly the areas where Pixar's tools shine.

Re:Renderman old news, Presto new news

[gmueckl]

That system is indeed quite nice. While I can totally believe that they can push that level of geometric complexity through a modern GPU at that speed, I am a bit at a loss about how they apply the animation modifiers while maintaining the frame rate. I guess you could get away with doing that on the CPU considering the low complexity of the control meshes.

Still, it's awesome. That's what you can pull off once to can afford to throw a bunch of programmers at such a problem for sufficiently long time...

Re:Renderman old news, Presto new news

[UnknownSoldier]

Thanks for that link.

I didn't realize Rhythm & Hues filed for bankruptcy recently this year?!
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/econ...

Re:Renderman old news, Presto new news

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcasm=on

Who provides the graphic hardware they use? I am not sure he mentionned if it was an ATI graphic cards or not...

Sarcasm=off

Yeah!

[nospam007]

A gazillion Buzz Lightyear 3D porn on Youtube.

Comming soon to Youtube!

[Anonymous Coward]

Toy Story XXX

What's Pixar's RenderMan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixar's RenderMan and RenderMan Interface are two differentent things. Pixar's RenderMan is one of the best 3D rendering programs available because has beed developed by some of the best computer scientists for two and a half decades. It's expensive because it's power relies on crushing numbers in several computers (i.e. several expensive licences), there's almost no point to use it in a project with only one computer, but you still can do it. Also it's somehow complicated to use, and the secret of its power is that RenderMan is highly configurable using a shading language, you can program the look of every surface in the virtual world being rendered.

RenderMan Interface is a file format especification designed by PIXAR so other people can create rendering programs and transfer files between programs (the most common comparison is a Postscript for 3D scenes). There are several commercial, free and open source RenderMan compliant programs, some are: Pixie Renderer (http://www.renderpixie.com/), 3Delight (http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php) or Aqsis (http://www.aqsis.org/).

'Free'

[LetterRip]

So what they really mean is that to increase adoption rate, they need more people trained on it.

personal use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Renderman available free

Requirement: 200 core i7 server farm.

3D rendering is really great.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Forget Toy Story, and other pixar stuff. The 3D rendering has made real impact for the fans of the Superstar. It means the Superstar has become immortal. His latest release has Rajnikant rendered by 3D software. Hollywood touches up its actors and actresses on the sly and pretends it does not do it. Kollywood shows the way, unabashed 3D rendering, quite openly, flagrantly! It says, "OK OK our Superstar is an ageing balding fella. But look! he is young and spritely dancing with the twentysomething all thanks to 3D rendering".

Free, unencumbered license for "non commercial use"? Makes no difference, they already have it all boot legged.

smart move on their part

[WindBourne]

Get ppl to learn it, so that they do not have to train them.

In addition, if they give it away, but block their competitors, it means that they have a leg up.
Of course, many of their competitors are using OSS, so.....

An Intoduction To Presto

[westlake]

Presto is Pixar's proprietary, fully featured, animation package. Besides the main interactive application, Presto is built on top of a rich set of reusable libraries. The application supports integrated workflows for a variety of feature film departments including rigging, layout, animation and simulation. It also provides built in media playback and asset management tools.

For the purposes of this course, we will mainly discuss Presto's Execution System. We will use two common disciplines, rigging and animation, to illustrate how the system works.

One of the challenges in Presto is its integrated architecture. In a single session, the user may wish to animate or do some rigging or run a sim or all three without an explicit context switch. Some of these tasks do not lend themselves well to a multithreading environment, and yet must coexist seamlessly with all features of the application.

Presto Execution System: An Asynchronous Computation Engine for Animation

[George ElKoura, Pixar Animation Studios, July 24, 2013]

Re:An Intoduction To Presto

[UnknownSoldier]

Mod parent up as informative

That PDF was a great read on the design of Presto. Interesing they are using Python in a multi-threaded context binding with C++.

One thing to note about this situation is that if, in the main thread, the call was made from C++,
then there would be no need to hold the GIL in the main thread, and everything would be fine. If,
however, it is called from Python, we get the hang. Moreover, neither subsystem knows about
the other, the locks are taken in client code. The client code could be smarter about the order in
which the locks are acquired, but that's not always a viable solution. In this case, the client is
calling out to a function in a library, and may be unaware about it taking the GIL to begin with.

One solution in this case is that, in the main thread, we no longer need to be holding the GIL
once we make a computation request in C++. Ideally, you would structure your bindings to
always release the GIL upon reÂentry to C++.

Answer to Blender?

[NotInHere]

My guess would be that they see the popularity of FLOSS Blender as a threat and want to gain market share by giving it away for free for non-commercial movies. Perhaps they also got tired of training their new personell, which used Blender before, to use their software.

Re:Answer to Blender?

[jones_supa]

RenderMan is only a renderer. It cannot replace the modeling interface of Blender anyway.

Re:Answer to Blender?

[luckymutt]

It is a rendering engine. It is not in direct competition with, nor do they see Blender as a "threat."
They are not even making a Blender compatible version.
RenderMan is only available for Maya.
If they are doing this in response to anything they see as a threat, it is in response to V-Ray who recently (past couple of years) released a version for Maya and it has been widely adopted in film and vfx.
V-Ray has been around for years as a rendering engine for 3dsMax and has really dominated. (I can't remember the last time I even heard about anyone using Final Render, Brazil, or even mentalray for that matter) Chaos Group has aggressively pursued the other major 3D platforms these past couple of years and has been adopted quite widely, and for good reason.

Re:Answer to Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad Renderman cant do what Blender can. OR dont you know they are two completely different types of software?

Re:Answer to Blender?

[exomondo]

Answer to Blender?

No.

Re:Answer to Blender?

[spitzak]

Arnold is the real threat

I'll get back at them!

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan on using this software to make a movie like "Cars" only called "Dildoes".

Then there's my porn movie the "Awesomes" and you guess it, it'll be like the "Incredibles."

Oh, and wait till you see MY version of Toy Story - Oh! There WILL be toys!!

Re:I'll get back at them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's gonna do the voices for Woody? ;-)

I hear Blu Ray has been looking for work recently, something to do with the Bi Torrent, I believe.

25 Years of RenderMan

[westlake]

It's just good talent retention. If your software is free to learn on... people will learn on it. Which increases your talent pool.

I don't see retention or recruitment as a problem for RenderMan, which has been around since "The Wrath of Khan." and "Young Sherlock Holmes."

Movies and Awards

Re:25 Years of RenderMan

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm pretty sure that both of those films predate RenderMan, and I vaguely recall that Young Sherlock Holmes even didn't use the nascent A-buffer/REYES technology but rather was done using image manipulation rather than image synthesis (have to read up on that again, though).

Re:25 Years of RenderMan

[daremonai]

I don't think Pixar actually used the name "RenderMan" until the late '80's, but they do count their earlier work as part of it now (http://renderman.pixar.com/view/brief-introduction-to-renderman).

I'll download and play with it . . .

[nehumanuscrede]

just to see what the differences are between it and Mental Ray and / or V-Ray. ( I own both ) Unless it adds some serious " just gotta have it " reasons over Mental Ray or the other commercial renderers, then most folks probably won't bother with it.

The new hotness, however, is GPU rendering. ( eg: I-Ray or Octane )

If Renderman supports GPU rendering, then it will gain a lot more interest as it won't be considered a deprecated rendering solution.

Re:I'll download and play with it . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

A deprecated rendering solution? Um, hello? They used it to render Monsters University. When your I-Ray renders are within an order of magnitude of the quality that Pixar produces, you get to decide what's deprecated and what's current. Until then, seriously, STFU.

What does "basic cable" mean to the majority?

[tepples]

ESPN is not in basic cable most places. It is in extended basic.

I was under the impression that to most people, "basic cable" meant expanded basic (which Xfinity now calls "Digital Starter"), not limited basic (locals + public access + home shopping).

Disney owns ABC

[tepples]

Try getting cable or sat television without a Disney-owned channel on it.

That's impossible because of must-carry. Try getting broadcast television without a Disney-owned channel on it.

Re:Disney owns ABC

[Anonymous Coward]

Must carry does not exist anymore. It was part of the dergulation in the 90s. But now ABC can ask to get paid (and they do).

Renderman

[Anonymous Coward]

Effective immediately, Pixar is also announcing that the price of the current version of RenderMan is $495 per license for commercial use.

beware if you use Windows: Renderman only works on 64 bit Windows Vista, 7 and 8. Too bad it won't run on my cheap laptop running 32 bit Windows 7. Oh well, the video card probably is too slow any ways. 3D graphics probably use more than 2 GB of memory too. I get low memory errors with Daz Studio 32 bit and Luxrender. yeah, I'm using Luxrender on a dual-core laptop... hopefully the CPU won't melt. lol and I thought Pentium 4 computers ran hot. hah.

I mean, I can barely play Second Life which uses OpenGL and some new DirectX 10 games are slow. Anyways, thanks for the post.

Re:Renderman

[fleabay]

I hope this is a troll post and you're not serious.

Because Blender and Luxrender on GPU is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Renderman on and off for over a decade but the combination of Blender And Luxrender being so fast these days has made caused advantages of Renderman to diminished significantly.

Great...

[rolias]

Great... more non-commercial licensed stuff to confuse with open source...

PBRT

[nurb432]

For those old timers...

Was a great thing in its day, then got yanked from underneath us.. I don't want a repeat performance..

Actually drag racing sounds kind of interesting...

[Ecuador]

until you find out it is just a bunch of weird vehicles with funny looking microscopic front wheels, racing for 10 seconds in a straight line (when successful) and converting a small fraction of their fuel's chemical energy into kinetic energy of the vehicle - most going in heat (that burns rubber) and sound energy. The worse part is not one of the hillbillies that "drive" them is ever in drag! Talk about a let-down...

Re:Actually drag racing sounds kind of interesting

[kwbauer]

You've been watching some damn slow cars if it took 10 seconds to make a pass.

Have they implemented the "stripmining" strategy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"... The system, sincethestart,hasbeendesignedtosupportastrip-miningstrategyfor multithreading where all the requested vectorizedelementsareprocessedinparallelinequal chunks among the available number of cores. We haven't yet taken advantageofthatapproach butwewouldliketo ... "

Wonder if they have successfully implemented the strip-mining strategy for multithreading feature as has outlined above, between when the PDF was made, July 2013, and now ?

Threat of competition

[Anonymous Coward]

I think part of this is to attack the growth of renderers that have surpassed Renderman, such as Arion and Maxwell, which are un-biased, simple to use, and very, very fast. Arion f.ex. uses full GPU-acceleration and stands in a class of its own.

The piracy argument

[Methadras]

This is the kind of business move that more or less undercuts the anti-piracy argument.

PRMan on NeXT

[jhhl]

NeXT computers came with prman, a pretty early version of it: no motion blur for instance. And of course, it was a bit much to expect great results when viewed on a 2-bit gray and white display. It was one of those things thrown into the mix to see if it could fly, like the complete works of Shakespeare, indexed, and NeXTMail, which let you include multimedia in email (predating MIME). Funny that it wasn't bundled with OS X.