...are all I know on OSX. If you want to do character animation, Maya will top Lightwave and probably Electric Image or Maxon. But Maya's renderer is crap and buggy, and I don't know how good mental ray integration is yet, especially on OSX.
Lightwave has a good renderer, but sucks for character animation. Also, not all the plugins you may need are available under OSX.
If only to poke PIXAR in the eye over its treatment of Exluna and BMRT. I love PIXAR, but they seemed very predatory in their treatment of Exluna, and now they have denied BMRT to the world. How long will it be before they restrict the Renderman Spec itself? If memory serves, you have to get permission (or at least notify) PIXAR when you make a RIB-compatable renderer.
In any case, you can at least save some money by not buying MTOR, and, since it is OSS, you can re-write it to support any custom features you may need for your production. Also, if PIXAR should become more restrictive, you can re-target the export for a different renderer.
If I were to feel bad for anyone, it would be animal logic, since this will comepete with their MayaMan product. But since it is unlikely to support automatic conversion of Maya shading networks to RIB, they will probably maintain their market. You will still have to write your own shaders with Liquid (or use the defaults.)
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...are all I know on OSX. If you want to do character animation, Maya will top Lightwave and probably Electric Image or Maxon. But Maya's renderer is crap and buggy, and I don't know how good mental ray integration is yet, especially on OSX. Lightwave has a good renderer, but sucks for character animation. Also, not all the plugins you may need are available under OSX.
If only to poke PIXAR in the eye over its treatment of Exluna and BMRT. I love PIXAR, but they seemed very predatory in their treatment of Exluna, and now they have denied BMRT to the world. How long will it be before they restrict the Renderman Spec itself? If memory serves, you have to get permission (or at least notify) PIXAR when you make a RIB-compatable renderer. In any case, you can at least save some money by not buying MTOR, and, since it is OSS, you can re-write it to support any custom features you may need for your production. Also, if PIXAR should become more restrictive, you can re-target the export for a different renderer. If I were to feel bad for anyone, it would be animal logic, since this will comepete with their MayaMan product. But since it is unlikely to support automatic conversion of Maya shading networks to RIB, they will probably maintain their market. You will still have to write your own shaders with Liquid (or use the defaults.)
If you bother to check PIXAR's price list, you will see that MTOR adds 3$k on top of the Renderman Toolkit, which is a significant increase, IMHO.