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Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan
jones_supa writes: A year ago, animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite would eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into the wild. Free, non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar's new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials.
Sure, as long as you don't re-sell the beer or use it somehow to make money (eg: in-house software for corp).
The FAA claims that's commercial use. Don't know if anyone else would hold that up in court.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Yes, they are so strict about commercial use they don't even allow non-profit orgs to make money off it.
According to the ncr faq:
Non-commercial use? How the fuck is that "free"?
Because it doesn't cost money. It's an accident of the English language that Free as in no-cost, and free as in freedom, share the same word. In pretty much any other language, they are separate words. In French, this is the difference between "Gratuite" and "Libre"
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I'd like to learn a 3D tool just for own self learning, I'd like to be able to add 3D animations to my videos, I'd like to be able to make 3D models using 3D printers etc.
I learned Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Xara and other graphic tools and am pretty proficient, but these are all 2D world. I don't know where to start with 3D. I once installed Blender but its all unfriendly as f*** with every action done its own way. I think that is for the Blender faithful only, I feared I'd be tainted by its quirkiness if I ever got into it, and I'd forget how a mouse is supposed to work.
So I see Maya 3D has a free download, and Renderman has a free download, and Renderman doesn't need Maya, (does Maya need renderman to render decent images?), and I see that these days decent 3D can be done even in the web browser (e.g. http://kottke.org/15/03/the-algorithmic-sea ), and I need a decent understanding of 3D to make 3D models that don't suck and that 3D printers are actually getting quite good.
What apps do I get?
What course do I take?
Which formats do I need for 3D printers?
Do the same packages cover both 3D for printer and 3D for animation? If not why is the main one in each field.
Best printer in the sub $5k range for those tools?
Base level PC CUDA cores needed etc.?
Physics how? including in the package? How to animate it.
What else?
I want it ALL and I want it FREE and I want it NOW and I deserve the SOURCE (and yet, if they hadn't released it for anyone who wants to play with it, at no charge as long as they don't use it to make money, we wouldn't even be having this discussion).
In contrast to companies like Adobe that charge ridiculously exorbitant fees even for students and home hobbyists to use their tools to learn on, I'd say this sort of thing is a big step in the right direction even if it's not the miraculous free-everything-utopia.
For anyone hoping to jump straight in with the same tools that the pros use, note that this RenderMan is just the rendering engine, not a GUI for modelling.
You'll still need something like Maya or Katana to do the modelling in and then you use RenderMan for the final renders of your scene.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
This is nothing more than a press release for some software. It's literally an ad for something made by Pixar published on Pixar's website.
Then what would you like to talk about that doesn't involve mentioning any products at all? If you go to a website that talks about "News for nerds, stuff that matters" then you are going to find that the stuff that matters to nerds will often be products that people sell (or in this case, give away). We can't all be MacGyver building our own supercomputers from coconut shells and earwax.
If a story doesn't interest you, or you think that it is just blatant consumerism, then feel free to go do something else like watch another inspirational episode of MacGyver from the MacGyver Complete Series box set, available at a cheap price and with free shipping at Amazon.
Pros use fast workstations for modelling and rough/low-res rendering. Even those machines have lots of cores and RAM and fast storage.
All the heavy-lifting however then gets handed off to a render farm - which is generally a stack of computers, also with lots of cores and ram and fast storage, and they do all the number crunching.
They can be connected in a more traditional cluster style configuration, or they can be largely independent nodes all rendering individual frames.
Rendering like this is embarrassingly parallel - you get close to a linear increase in speed with more cores thrown at the problem - i.e. 256 cores will render a job roughly twice as fast as 128 cores, all other things being equal.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
You don't. But you now have the choice. Having an option that you happen to not like doesn't mean you can't use Blender.
Not seeing the downside yet. You want to cultivate a pool of bright, dedicated people to work for you one day. You give them a tool - free of charge - for them to play with, develop their skills, maybe use the tool in ways no-one anticipated, let their creativity run free, maybe one of them will produce a product you'd be prepared to buy or license from them, and then offer them a job. Can you point me to a loser in this deal? It's not like a free software advocate, i.e. a Blender user, couldn't produce an impressive CV to show the hirers at Pixar, right? When you have to choose between 2 applicants of equal merit EXCEPT one them knows how to use your tools, and the other doesn't, who do you choose? Who do you choose when the Blender user is *slightly* better than the Renderman user? Of course, someone *really* dedicated will have skills in both packages.
Apple do it. Microsoft do it - although their motivation is less to get you to work for them, than it is to advocate the purchase of their software, wherever you work. There is (or should be) no legal reason that schools can't install free alternatives (and some do just that). They make their decisions based on a lot of factors - the perceived market for their students' skills, the bias of selection committees, ease of use, and outright bribery in some cases - but free software needs to compete on more than its merits, unfortunately.
Show me an easy installation package (LibreOffice ticks that box), a series of relevant templates that meets the teachers' needs (not sure, haven't seen any, yet), and interoperability, and I'll advocate free software. Sadly, it misses out badly on the third criteria. Fortunately, MSOffice since 2007 has been less usable than before, and the free alternatives have become more attractive. I've had customers select LibreOffice over MSOffice 2010/2013 when upgrading, because they just want the old interface (and they've "lost" the Office 2003 installation disc).
All that said, I'm going to try Renderman.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
The FAQ posted by Pixar explictly allows this.
They only prohibit direct revenue.
Indirect revenue (e.g. YouTube ad fees) are permitted, but you must credit RenderMan.
And back in the 1990's we had BMRT (a free renderman clone); until they came and paid/threatened the guy to stop making the free clone available.
Sorta. Larry Gritz, the author of BMRT, went to work for Pixar and then left to start his own company, Exluna, whose main product was a Renderman competitor called Entropy. Unfortunately Pixar's lawyers jumped on Exluna and Exluna was vaporised. BMRT and Entropy were no longer available after this. Larry Gritz went to work for Nvidia after that on a GPU-accelerated renderer, I think.
I'll wait for RenderWoman.
You might think you're getting a better deal because it costs 30% less than RenderMan, but you'll regret it eventually due to high maintenance costs and a tendency to stop working a few days every month.
Just get RenderDog instead, it's RenderMan's best friend.
I see a lot of whining, but I think this is great. For a GUI, use the free edition of Maya. I'm sure there will be a way to get scenes out of Blender. For the hobbyist or student, this is the best news out of Pixar since Typestry. Thanks, Pixar!
Yes, the FAA: Don't post drone videos on Youtube Any more questions?
Also don't shoot video from upper balconies, GoPro headbands while skateboarding 'Ollies' in the air, while hanging from chandeliers, cliffs, standing on the transparent tourist platform atop the Eiffel Tower, from tethered balloons, while being shot from a cannon, while head-butting a ram, riding glass elevators, or suspended from suspenderences such as but not limited to rope or chain, or if you are tall, or if the subject is short.
These distinct camera angles strongly suggest drone use to busy compliance officers, who have been judicially empowered to employ the same 'presumption of use', 'intent to distribute' arguments that have made the War On Drugs the successful endeavor it is today. If your content is flagged, you will be pressed to supply proof that a drone was not present, and unmarked drones may appear next to your your house and photographs taken. Drawing on the 'admissibility loophole' that has made the partnership between Intelligence agencies and Law Enforcement the successful endeavor it is today, where the fact of warrantless, illegal surveillance need not be disclosed, these photos may be presented to Judge and Jury without comment or disclosure of origin.
To avoid unnecessary legal hassle, do not even post footage of model environments such as Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Even obvious depth-of-field artifacts may be targeted by zealous prosecutors if they allege the use of drones in pan-tilt photography. Due to the perceived nature of building giant models and the fact that bugs were in it, the movie "Bugs' Life" is exempt. There is also a blanket exemption for drone footage of cats, or drones that ARE cats.
Fortunately for us... Google has announced they have developed an AI program that detects the use of drone footage with 99% accuracy.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Cycles (Blender's built-in renderer) is slower and less-featured than PRMan. That doesn't prevent you from making great stuff with it, of course, but when scale becomes an issue, you'll want something a bit more industrial-strength.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The free version is limited in that it cannot be connected to other renderman nodes - no networked rendering
You don't pay money for it. Outside the FOSS world, when talking about products, "free" has a particular meaning which this satisfies perfectly.
The only thing you should be angry with is your understanding of the world.
There's always 3Delight, which implements the same standard as PRMan, and is free for up to eight cores.
Ezekiel 23:20
Until the first time you start the program after not using it for too long, and you discover it's chewed up all your meshes, and shit all over your textures.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
As if there weren't a bunch of free tools already?
Dammit, get on the phone and tell them we already have enough!
I think anyone serious about making money is going to be either invested in a proper professional package,
Perhaps people who don't know if they are serious might find out if they are? Perhaps creativity can come from noobs. I'll note that the 3-D animation output these days is starting to look a little self similar.
I've done 3-D work since the frame buffer days of Imagine and Video Toaster/Lightwave on the Amiga to Lightwave on OSX, and am now switched to Maya. All different interfaces. There is a real interest in knowing the software package you might use. My switch to Maya has been a bit painful, having to unlearn all those years of Lightwave. I'm still much faster in Lightwave. The learning curve is very steep with 3-D, and remains steep
So why on earth would a company release a free version of their software? Given the differences between interfaces, you just aren't going to make that switch in 5 minutes.
If you are a Blender user, you'd better be working for a Blender house, or be independent.
So Pixar needs to be condemned for releasing a free version of their software, allowing people to learn and use it.? There is no doubt that they really want people to use Youtube, so they can sneak a peek at the results. Next thing you know, a person who does good work is offered a job. Then they settle in very quickly. Why? Because they already know the software.
Only on Slashdot, will people turn that into some sort of bad thing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, it is not free enough to be useful.
Define useful. Is it useful to a young person who might like to experiment to see if 3-D work is for them?
hint (yes)
Is it useful to a student who is in a college class oriented to 3-D.
hint (yes)
Is it useful to someone who might be wanting to work for Pixar?
hint (yes)
Is it useful to someone who just wants to dabble?
hint (yes)
Is it useful for a commercial enterprise that wants to produce 3-D work?
hint (not so much)
Then again, a commercial enterprise that wants to produce 3-D work will almost certainly have a software suite already in mind, because that's what they were planning on using. 3-D work is not like hiring an accountant out of college and having them use excel, just like every other accountant everywhere else.
Your points, while at some level correct, are completely meaningless.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.