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

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: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:Wow... this is actually pretty big

[PRMan]

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