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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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: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

[PRMan]

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

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!