jonmoore Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Renderman is another engine that I'd like to see integrated into FormZ. Until a couple of years ago Renderman wasn't very artist friendly and was only usable in larger pipelines with plenty of TD's on hand. Renderman 19/20 has changed this completely (having taken much inspiration from Arnold). As well as the wonderful simplicity of the Disney BXDF and deeper flexibility of the LM shaders v20 introduced a radical denoising technology which really does produce clean renders 10-20 times quicker than before. Here's the results of an experiment I was running yesterday to see how few samples I could get away with and still produce clean results with plenty of detail (it's only a test image so not all surfaces have materials assigned). This unbiased, HDR lit, Monte Carlo scene rendered in a shade over 2 minutes (1st gen nMP with 12 render threads) Here's a zoomed area of the same scene before it was put through the Pixar Denoiser. For animation projects this approach has huge benefits. Far more useful than GPU rendering, which IMHO still has to make far too many compromises. Monte Carlo renders with easily setup shaders that save 10-20 times render time per frame. That's rendering innovation not to be sniffed at. The Denoiser has separate algorithms for single frames and image sequences - which uses a cross frame analysis to ensure the same problem areas are targeted on each frame. The thing I love about this pure Monte Carlo approach is that you don't get any loss of detail. So even on still's, where frame to frame dancing irradiance cache artifacts aren't an issue, you get better quality renders in a fraction of the time. As I've mentioned before, another of the reasons that I think of Renderman as a perfect partner for FormZ is that it's one of the only production renderers that works directly with Nurbs surfaces, without first having to convert those Nurbs to polygons via tessellation.At the moment Renderman 20 has deep integration with Maya (C4D coming soon according to Pixar's London office) and a workable solution with Blender. Independent developers are working on plugins for the likes of Modo & Max too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Hi Jon, Thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 14, 2015 Author Share Posted August 14, 2015 Hi Jon, Thanks for sharing! Pleasure as always. I also think Renderman is a great option for FormZ users as I've noticed you have a large number of non-professional hobbyists as customers and the unrestricted free non commercial version of Renderman can be installed on up to five separate workstations for network rendering. When combined with the denoising algorithm, this makes it possible for hobbyists to render animations without the need of expensive render-farms. Great for schools and colleges too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 14, 2015 Author Share Posted August 14, 2015 Final render of that car fully surfaced. Render time a shade over 5 minutes (1280x960). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMclean Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Jon, I could seriously get behind that... love Maxwell a lot, but render times are killing me... That's stunning work for a five minute render... but unless it's integrated directly I find going out to a renderer via exporting just too disruptive to my workflow... Sigh... Something else to wish for... Thanks for sharing though.. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 14, 2015 Author Share Posted August 14, 2015 Jon, I could seriously get behind that... love Maxwell a lot, but render times are killing me... That's stunning work for a five minute render... but unless it's integrated directly I find going out to a renderer via exporting just too disruptive to my workflow... Sigh... Something else to wish for... Thanks for sharing though.. Doug Agreed Doug, definitely something that needs to be integrated. Hadn't realised you designed a lot of the sets on Caprica. Very nice work. I'd be interested to know a little more about your workflow if you ever feel like sharing it. As for Maxwell. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixar denoising approach is emulated by the likes of Maxwell and Arnold at some point in the future. Bettering the speed of GPU rendering whilst maintaining the aesthetic of high quality CPU rendering. Best of both worlds in my book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrngr Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Very Impressive indeed Jon! Can it be ported to both Window and Mac OS X? Also, I guess it can function as a plugin to other Apps like when you mention Maya, Dan S. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 15, 2015 Author Share Posted August 15, 2015 Very Impressive indeed Jon! Can it be ported to both Window and Mac OS X? Also, I guess it can function as a plugin to other Apps like when you mention Maya, Dan S. Renderman Studio works on OS X, Linux and Windows (the Maya bridge across all three too). They're actually distributed as a single package; the Maya bridge provides an artist friendly way to export the RIB files but the renders are actually created via Renderman Studio. As stated before, the Maya version is already available, the C4D version is in testing (it was demoed at Siggraph this week) and due out in the coming months. A Blender version is available but it's not as artist friendly as the Maya version. Any other ports are being created by passionate individuals (Modo and Max versions have been demoed on each relevant forum). I doubt very much whether the Pixar team will produce something for FormZ but if FormZ still has a large install base in US colleges and universities they might very well get behind it. The reason Pixar made the non commercial version available in the first place was to widen the install base and encourage more innovation (it has a very well documented SDK). It might take someone like Pylon getting behind it to help develop a FormZ specific bridge in much the way as he did for Maxwell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Des Posted August 17, 2015 Share Posted August 17, 2015 FormZ used to be able to export RIB, I wonder why they've stopped just when Renderman is more accessible? Snapshot from v6.7.3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted August 17, 2015 Share Posted August 17, 2015 Hi Des, The RIB Export is supported in formZ v8 for Windows, and v7 for OS X, but the library that we were using previously was only 32 bit and at the time there was not readily available a 64 bit library for OS X, which we would need for formZ v8 on OS X. If a 64 bit library is now available, and if there is sufficient demand for this on OS X, we can look into whether or not this can be added to formZ for OS X in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Des Posted August 17, 2015 Share Posted August 17, 2015 Thanks Tech for the clarification Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 17, 2015 Author Share Posted August 17, 2015 To be frank RIB export isn't a good enough solution with the new RIS engine in Renderman 19/20. It really needs a full bridge in much the same way as Maxwell is bridged with Formz. Otherwise you'll find yourself editing RIB text files rather than having the interactive artist friendly workflows of an integrated bridge. I was having a play again today but this time using the bi-directional VCM engine (unlike Maxwell and Arnold, this traces rays from both the camera and light sources). The great thing about the VCM integrator is that you get beautifully natural caustics for free without having to faff around with photon counts and such like. By using the Denoiser too this 720p test teapot scene with displacement, subsurface scattering and a high quality glass materials, rendered in under 11 minutes on a 12 thread Mac Pro. Stick that through current hardware and you can cut the render time in half. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonmoore Posted August 18, 2015 Author Share Posted August 18, 2015 And before everybody dies of boredom regarding my new found love affair with Renderman. Here's an example of reflective and refractive caustics. So easy to set up and no extra impact on render times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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