Q: "u said the mental ray, it's a cool software but, doesn't most of the visual effect houses will use renderman as renderer but not mental ray while produce film?"
A: To implement Renderman in a production environment, you need a dedicated developement staff. A student, individual or smaller studio, is rarely going to have the resources for this. However, any artists can use Mental Ray right out of the box, to create very professional work.
Yes, in the right hands with the proper development resources, RenderMan can produce the best work, or certainly render faster., however, that doesn't really help the student or smaller business. In fact, large studios are SUPPOSE to produce the best work and render faster, they have the money and resources for it.
Now imagine a student showing their demo reel to a prospective employer. Would it make sense for them to say "My work could have been better, but I know that all the big boys use Renderman, and since I didn't have any programming skills, I couldn't make much use of it. " Just as silly is a smaller studio telling customers "We can model and animate for you, but the big studios use Renderman to render, and we don't have the staff for that, so if you need us to actually render frames for you, you'll have to go elsewhere".
Essentially, saying a studio uses Renderman is no different than saying they use C or C++. These are the tools of the programmer and Renderman is just extra code that helps them produce work for the 3D world.
..."but Renderman renders faster!!!" I say, so what. If you can implement it great. However, larger studios have larger render farms, they can already render faster, so what is the point of worrying about who can render faster. It makes much more sense to figure out which solution is best for you...trying to keep up with the biggests studios is a futile effort. If you want to work for them, you have a much better chance rendering professional work with Mental Ray, than you would trying to figure out how to use Renderman if you don't have programming experience. Some individuals can do it, but that doesn't help YOU.
Just my two cents.
Urp
