MtoR and BMRT

[hwy101]

Can BMRT be used instead of PRMan inside of Maya? I'm searching for viable alternatives to Maya's renderer. PRMan looks incredible, but is way too expenseive for a small shop like mine. BMRT can produce similar quality at a much smaller expense (i.e. practically free). The only con seems to be render speed. But considering Maya's renderer is dog slow with 3d blur, my guess is that BMRT isn't much worse.
I'm really intriged at the possibility of a $3,000 MtoR purchase using BMRT. Does it work seamlessly the way it PRman works inside Maya? Are there limitations? Does it even work at all?
A couple more shader questions...
I am not a programmer, and as such, will probably never write a single line of shader code. But Slim looks to allow a visual method of shader creation that looks like it will work well for me. Will I still be able to make lens flares, glows and volume fog lights using BMRT?
Anyway, thanks for any replies. I am eagerly awaiting Pixar Artist Tools 4.5, like everyone else, I suppose. Any word on a projected release date?

[deke-kincaid]

I'm really intriged at the possibility of a $3,000 MtoR purchase using BMRT. Does it work seamlessly the way it
PRman works inside Maya? Are there limitations? Does it even work at all?

RAT comes with a script that allows you to modify MTOR so you can render out to bmrt instead of prman. Some limitations of bmrt are, no motion blur and no dof. Version 2.6 of bmrt added support for subd's, but I am not sure if it allows semi sharp creasing since pixar has a patent on that part of subds. Although there is a good chance exluna licensed that from pixar(donno though). Other limitations of bmrt is that it raytraces everything, so it may very well be slower than maya's renderer. Couple small problems with using slim with bmrt, nothing show stopping, but there are some mtor shaders that are allready compiled for prman and don't come with .sl(uncompiled) versions, so you couldnt use those with bmrt. Also anything that is rendered in a post process in maya cannot be used within Prman/BMRT, and you will have to composite it later. This mainly consists of fur, paintfx, optical fx on lights and any shader glows. Also I am sure that there are many things that I missed that are either not supported or you might have to hand code in order to get. Please anyone else add anything that I might have forgotten.

I am not sure about that $3,000 price tag you have. On pixars price page they list RAT priced at $7500 for nt and $8500 for irix. That does include a Prman license with it, but you would have to contact pixar to see if they would sell the RAT package without Prman.
http://www.pixar.com/products/renderman/pr...ng/pricing.html

But Slim looks to allow a visual method of shader creation that looks like it will work well for me.
Will I still be able to make lens flares, glows and volume fog lights using BMRT?
No, lens flares, and glows are all post processes in all 3d apps including maya. You will have to do this separatly in a compositor.

Anyway, thanks for any replies. I am eagerly awaiting
Pixar Artist Tools 4.5, like everyone else, I suppose. Any word on a projected release date?

It will probably be released around siggraph.

Another consideration is to check out exluna's new renderer that is comming out soon. The head guy, Larry Gritz is the creator of BMRT. Entropy is supposed to be fully featured like prman and will support using rat. It is a scanline renderer, but it also supports raytracing and GI. The price is pretty nice too, $1500 for upto 2 processors.
The only trouble is that it is in the unknown sector. It is brand new, and people are usually very weary of jumping on the bandwagon of unproven technology. Version 1.0 of a software package can be buggy, because it hasn't been beaten to death by the public. It usually takes the beating of working in full production to expose bugs that casual beta testing doesn't reveal.
The nice part is that the people behind Entropy are all industry proven professionals that worked on the Prman team at pixar up till last year.
www.exluna.com

Deke

[hwy101]

Thanks for the reply. The Pixar pricing pages lists MToR as $3,000 without PRMan. That's good considering I wouldn't need PRMan...
Exluna does look great, and not too terribly expense for a small studio. It's about time that there is an actual financial ADVANTAGE to buying dual processors.
One thing you said puzzles me, however. You said that with BMRT there is no motion blur or depth of field. Now, I could SWEAR that BMRT 2.4 supported TRUE DOF and full scene motion blur. Thayt's one of the major reasons I wanted to use BMRT over Maya's renderer. Did Larry actually REMOVE these features for 2.6??
I've tested BMRT in the past using Animal Logic's Maxman. It supported beautiful DOF and motion blur... unless I'm crazy, that is... which is a distinct possibilty.
Can anyone confirm/deny this?
Thanks!

[deke-kincaid]

Ahh, ok, missed the MTOR line for 3k, was looking for RAT.

As for DOF and motion blur, not sure if older versions had these, I can't remember. They are definatly not available anymore.
Here is Larry's reply to a similar question on comp.graphics.rendering.renderman:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe...06d9d5e8904e,22

Will the final 2.6 release have motion blur and depth of field, or will
those be put in a later release?
I'm sorry, 2.6 will not support motion blur and depth of field. Like I said, the currently distributed 2.6 beta is pretty much identical to the 2.6 final, except that subdivision surfaces (and some other, more minor bugs) will be fixed. We are very far from determining the feature list of later BMRT releases.
BTW, Entropy certainly does support these features.
-- lg

Deke