Getting started Renderman with MS Visual Studio?

[alts]

I'm just a beginner on Renderman.

I have a list of questions about it.

Currently on the PC (Windows XP) I can access, there installed all the pixar stuff I believe, including the following:

Mayaman,
MaxMan
Active Perl.
RAT....
and some *ini file in it

Only Mtor does work in Maya but there is sth wrong with rendering because of the networking.

As I assume, a shader writer will write the code and complie it somewhere and then convert it to a texture.

I even have no idea on how to get started now.

*sl will be the code we're going to complie, right?

So, I assume in the Visual Studio we need to put some header file, like "ri.h" in the code.

I'm trying to find the header file"ri.h" in the renderman folder but no result. Where should we find it? Or should we compile it in "Slim" or somewhere else?

So. I'm wondering if anyone could give me a quick guide of renderman working procedure in Windows.

My question as following?

First, if we've done the code, is it good to compile in Studio.NET for Windows user? How about the header file?

Second, When we complie it, can we see some images, like openGL programming?

Third, for the code, how can we save or convert it as a *sl file or whatever the renderman need?

Fourth, what it the final result after the texture converting? what kind of file do we have? is that the texture stuff we can apply in Maya?

Fifth, without openning Maya, we can also write the code and see the result we have, right?

I did try to read some online guide but get no result.

Thanks for you help

[deke-kincaid]

You really should open up those darn online manuals that come with prman every once in a while because they would instantly answer most of your questions. They come with basic tutorials on getting started with mtor.

So, I assume in the Visual Studio we need to put some header file, like "ri.h" in the code.

No, prman comes with a shader compiler rightly called "shader". You don't need visual c++ to use this. You only need VC++ if your going to use DSO's.