, where would you start?
depends on where you want to get.
you could also get renerman pro server instead for a different flavor of renderer.
I would really want to learn renderman
Renderman is just standard for a scene description language*. Many renderers may implement it. Thing is you dont learn anything spevcific ytou learn how to use 3delight, and create scenes using that. They dont necceserily transtale over to the other products.
If your a ligther then yoru not very likely to write your own geomety exporters so theres little of no added value for you in doing this. Your skills wont transklate very well to other erendering engines out there. Mainly prman, which you can ONLY learn by using prman. And delight is a different beast.
The only real advantage of using the same description language is that you dont need to invest time and money in many different exporters. Since your not going for pixars exporter (and lets fdace it would you youd get the renerman studio which does the rib binding). You probably go on and use delights own or liquid instead.
- its a bit like xml, or html it produces something that in ideal conditions all programs can read but they are not quite the same because the rendering engines differ so wastly.
renderman for maya
Is i just the cheap missing feature binding for prman integrated into maya. If you want to use rib files you actually use rendermans studo, or liquid.