Rendering Software Used In LoTR Goes Open Source 225
donglekey writes "The software used by Weta to output scenes to be rendered on the LOTR trilogy has been made open source under the Mozilla license. Called Liquid, it outputs from Maya to any Renderman compliant renderer. This is extremely good news as it may quickly become a standard in high end 3D, as well as greasing the wheels for Aqsis, a GPLed Renderman renderer."
Pleasant Endorsement (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice to see. The more people who associate O/S with first class production companies (like WETA) and their work (LOTR) the better cred it'll have to the populace in general.
Re:Pleasant Endorsement (Score:2)
That is, of course, unless rendering massive feature-film CG effects has become a cool thing to do at home.
Why Do You Think Jack Valenti is so Rabid? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, of course, unless rendering massive feature-film CG effects has become a cool thing to do at home.
That is the crux of the matter. It will only be a year or two before home computers are powerful enough for people to render home-made movies with CG effects to rival that of the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
With GNU/Linux, Blender, Liquid, Aqsis, Wings 3D, Film Gimp, Cinelerra, and other free software packages it will soon be possible for individuals to create feature length movies of blockbuster quality (though likely with much better story lines than much of the tripe eminating from Hollywood), and to distribute those movies on-line either as DVD iso images or xvid (mpeg4) avi files for world consumption.
A popular audio-video culture, where hobbiests create and share movies with one another the way free software enthusiasts do software today.
Suddenly Jack Velenti's rabid approach in trying to make it impossible to distribute content, any content (even your own) via the internet starts to make a lot more sense, doesn't it. They've grown used to the money and power that comes from controlling the media we see and hear, and nothing galls or freightens them more than the thought that we might have the freedom to ignore them and go somewhere else for our entertainment. This is why the RIAA seeks to destroy P2P, and it is why Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti want to turn every home PC into a governance police device (Microsoft's willingness to accomodate this has to do with their desire to displace the RIAA and MPAA as the gatekeepers of modern culture, such as it is, but that is a tangent for another day).
Now all we need is an open source cave troll (Score:2, Funny)
Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool. We got Blender. Next step, do we have free RenderMan compatible programs? Pov-Ray has been around for ages, but is it RenderMan compatible?
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:1)
Blue Moon Render Tools? (Score:3, Interesting)
BMRT was pretty spectacular for free software then.
BMRT no more, Aqsis suggested by Exluna... (Score:5, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aqsis/ [sourceforge.net]
Tear Rolling... (Score:4, Interesting)
Before I joined the military, I loved building RC airplanes. But moving every 2 years makes having a big project impractical. I took up 3d modeling as a substitute.
I started with the Rhino3d beta test. The problem was, Rhino lacked (and probably still lacks) a good render engine. So, I'd have Rhino open to my project, and BMRT ready to run in a command box. I remember the frustration of trying to figure out lighting and cameras as arguments to a command-line call of BMRT. Those were the days.
It almost feels like being told a friend I haven't seen in years has died. I gots to remember to pour a swig from tha' 40oz on tha' ground for my fallen homie...or something like that.
Re:BMRT no more, Aqsis suggested by Exluna... (Score:2)
Exluna, the company that once distributed BMRT (prior to being acquired by NVIDIA), has its own commercial, proprietary system called "Entropy."
Of course, BMRT was only distributed in binary form to begin with, but at least it was a cheap ("free") Renderman complient ray-tracer that was useful for learning the renderman system.
Re:BMRT no more, Aqsis suggested by Exluna... (Score:2)
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:1, Informative)
Read the post one more time
*hint* Aqsis *hint*
Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible programs (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.renderman.org/RMR/OtherLinks/blackSIGGR APH.html [renderman.org]
As you will see on the page, Pixar made BMRT and entropy 'go away' in July of this year. So, it looks like that is why Aqsis is being suggested as the only remaining contender.
Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for any insights you can give me.
Beats me (Score:5, Interesting)
I played with BMRT and Povray a bit, povray kind of sucked (IMHO) but I didn't really have an application that demanded raytracing or NURBs and shaders.
I don't recall BMRT being Open Source, just free, so I have strong doubts as to whether Aqsis could get a hold of the source for BMRT/entropy. Gritz et al. have families to support, houses to pay mortgages on, etc.; you can't expect people to just give away prime intellectual property in a vertical market. That's insane. What was nice with BMRT et al. is that they let you use the tools they built, for free, often advancing the state of the art in the process.
I'm sure they have nice jobs with nVidia but it's a damn shame that Pixar sought to end their competition via Microsoftian fund-sapping lawsuits. Not very impressive.
FWIW one of my friends works for WETA (used to work for ILM) and I will probably ask him whether Maya-to-Renderman is the de rigeur toolchain or if other toys are now used too. I wouldn't know.
--t
Re:Beats me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr (Score:2)
Proof of the importance of open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proof of the importance of open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you say this because an open-source BMRT would have been open to public scrutiny, forcing Pixar to explicitly identify the infringing source code? Or because an open-source BMRT would have been well-distributed and dispersed, preventing the shutdown of a single distribution point?
I might buy the first argument, but not the second.
Re:Proof of the importance of open source (Score:2)
I can't think of any case where an open source program was written but became completely unavailable because of patent problems.
Re:Used to hav MULTIPLE RenderMan compatible progr (Score:4, Interesting)
Pixar was suing not just Entropy, but also several of the founders of the company personally. If they fought the case, not only would they lose years and thousands in legal fees, there was the danger of jail time. (I'm not entirely clear how someone can get jail time from a lawsuit). They decided it wasn't worth the risk. As a result, Larry Gritz's life work (BMRT and Entropy) is gone forever.
The main theory I heard about why Pixar did this is investor relations. Renderman has a near-monopoly in its small market, and Entropy had a change to challenge that monopoly (it had several advantages over Renderman). Renderman doesn't make a huge amount of money, but investors like to see a diversified company.
Public companies in the US have a financial obligation to their investors; it seems like once they go public, they are required by law to become mercenary, snarling beasts.
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, first step is to make Blender as good as Maya or at least 3DSM. And this should not be particularily easy
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:4, Insightful)
Simultaneously, the next tool that is needed to extend the chain of tools (possibly more than one) starts being worked on by those who are most interested in THAT.
At some point the chain of tools becomes complete, even though much of them need more polish. Then some people start using the entire chain of tools, so any glitches in the interfaces are worked on.
Then you just keep on improving everything. Well, differnt groups are improving each of the parts
This keeps on forever, or until only maintenance is needed.
This whole process can happen faster if commercial entities subsidize it. But the licenses MUST ensure that the entire chain remains forkable at will.
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:2, Informative)
Not by any means, but it does have a couple of things that come to mind, and some that sound familiar...
Besides, some features you list (such as fur) are something that should be implemented in the render end rather than the modeling end... and if Blender ever gets that Renderman output thing I dreamed of, it will be there. One day.
NURBS are there, and also lattice deforms too (I know they're there, I've used them myself =) Particles likewise (though the UI for them is admittedly a bit cryptic). UV mapping, yep (since 1.8, I think). IK - sounds familiar, but not sure. And I'm not sure what you mean with "SubD" (not used other 3D apps that much), and the only web page I found quickly seemed to talk of stuff that's similar to Blender's subsufs, so maybe it's there...
Thanks for $2000! I think I'll use this for something that's more important for a poor student like me - pasta, tuna, and microwave pizzas - and program-wise use stuff like Blender that gives much more bang per price and has all features I need. =)
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:2)
Re:Sweet ... "Toolchain" is getting free (Score:2)
Real3D? Whoa... It is ages since I used that app, but it sure was cool at the time!
But nowadays it is called Realsoft 3D [realsoft.fi].
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
3D-modeler: Open Blender
Kde has also a modeller Gui tool for pov
Oh, it would be nice if Open source and Linux gets the graphic geeks of the apple community on the open source train...
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why you were modded down...
Anyway, what gets me is that Linux and open source are getting all these 3D tools, but we don't even have the 2D tools necessary to operate a prepress environment based on Linux yet.
So we have Gimp and Killustrator (or whatever they changed the name to after the lawsuit)... Gimp can't work in CYMK colorspace... I havn't tried Killustrator, but I doubt it comes close to the similar Adobe product.
We have nothing that does what Quark does... we have a barely maintained OPI daemon, no open source trapping software that I am aware of... etc.
The 2D prepress industry is probably many times larger than 3D... Why don't we have better software?
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this is a flip answer, but I suspect it's often closer to the mark than some would care to admit.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Gimp, from what I have heard, will have CYMK capabilities in the 2.0 release along with a ton of other improvements...but who know's when this will actually get released.
and check out Scribus"
it's still fairly young in development but is pretty nice.
Homepage [altmuehlnet.de]
apps.kde.com entry [kde.com]
I have already used it to create some pretty nice PDF files.
Better lawyers (Score:3, Informative)
Patents and copyrights. The prepress industry has happily allowed itself to standardize on patented Pantone technology and copyrighted fonts.
The movie industry understands the value of ownership and control, since that's how they make their money. So they go out of their way NOT to get locked in to other people's property, if possible. When they do license patents and copyrighted materials, they negotiate better deals - if there's any extortion involved, they want to be the one's doing it.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Examples: tgif, xfig, pstoedit, gnuplot, xgraph, fig2java, xv, and so on. I find tgif [usc.edu] useful for laying out EPS and PS files (you can draw and edit too), xfig [lbl.gov] is a nice general vector draw tool.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Probably because there a lot more programmers and itches to be scratched in the 3D industry than in the 2D industry? After all, it was the 3D industry to put together Film Gimp [gimp.org] (The Gimp modified to handle 16 bits per channel).
In order to have good programs, well, you also need programmers with a good experience in the field (something that I'd believe is quite rare in the 2D prepress industry, regardless of the huge userbase).
Not such a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:4, Informative)
radiosity used to be a feature of BMRT/entropy (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dctsystems.freeserve.co.uk/rmanBasics.
It was later commercially expanded into a faster program called 'entropy'. Exluna was a company that Larry Gritz and some coworkers from Pixar (Gritz joined and then left Pixar) founded. Apparently entropy was fast enough for commercial use (eg. LOTR-scale projects that required photorealistic scenes). Pixar did not like this. At all. The sequelae were as documented here:
http://www.renderman.org/RMR/OtherLinks/blackSIGG
Now this is probably not relevant to you if you're working at wetafx or ILM or other big shops, but it's still kind of a shame that, when a product came along that WAS able to compete with PRMan, Pixar chose to squash it with lawyers rather than innovation. I'm not claiming that the case was clear-cut, but the original lawsuit apparently lacked legal merit, and Pixar then went after the individual founders of the company in an effort to drain their resources, which is rather unimpressive.
So the point is that, for a time, there WAS an alternative to PRman for big (cinematic) projects, and Pixar used lawsuits to bury it.
D'oh.
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Ehhhh, First LOTR was rendered with the standard Photorealistic RenderMan, they didn't use radiosity or global illumination.
Second you don't get MTOR automatically, it's part of the RenderMan Artist Tools (RAT). You can also buy PRMan separate with no RAT, after all why would you need RAT in render nodes.
Third over 90% of movies VFX are rendered with PRman and most of the time with no GI of any kind, for over 15 years that PRMan and Pixar came to being. That's what good lighting TDs do. GI is not the be all end all for movie VFX production work.
Fourth, Pixar announce this past SIGGRAPH that PRMan 11 will support GI via photon mapping, which included many interesting new shading language calls. This seems to have been in response to Exluna's Entropy before it's demise:
Pixar Announces Ray Tracing and Global Illumination in RenderMan® Release 11 [pixar.com]New RenderMan Shading Language Functions [deathfall.com]
On RenderMan 11 - Interview with Dana Batali from Pixar [3dfestival.com]
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
I keep hearing this claim. Don't you think that it might also have something to do with the entry of Blue Sky Studios (and their ray tracing/GI renderer) into the feature animation club?
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
The software market is not the only market that Pixar competes in.
Remember that the commercial version of PRMan is exactly the same one that they use to make their own movies. Unless someone with an awful lot of money wanted raytracing and GI, there are only two reasons why Pixar would add them. 1) They wanted another check-point for the "product features" list, or 2) They wanted to use it themselves. Given that there is someone else making feature animations now with a GI-capable renderer, the latter is the more likely explanation (IMO).
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:5, Informative)
The other thing, well did you really miss the or notice any GI absence problems in Monster's Inc. Animated films are very art directed. One example, say you wanted to modify where a shadow falls without altering the compositon of the rest of the elements. With raytrcing and other such GI solutions it would be difficult or at leats much more than say in a renderer like PRMan wher you can generate the shadow map independently or even use a paint program. A specific example is Geri's glasses in Geri's game. The refraction you see there is not realistic, it was cheated to make his eyes look bigger and angelic. A raytacer would have put something else, not what the director intended.
As I mentioned Entropy was quicly catching up to PRman to the point where major Pixar clients were starting to use it. ILM needs a raytracer for specific techniques, like generating reflection maps, handling HDRI, and the all important occlusion maps used since Pearl HArbor and JP3. From what an important ILM VFX supervisor mentioned they were excited about a RenderMan renderer where they could combine the best of both worlds, the speed, flexibility and robustness of REYES plus the specific features of GI.
I doubt Ice Age had anything to do with it. After all PDI uses some sort of A-buffer scanline renderer as far as I know with no GI, or at least none for quite some time. Shrek looked fantastic basicly with no GI either. The lighting philosophy of both these places doesn't hinge on having GI on the renderer.
But you are also right, they might have the best of both worlds to compete, not only on their coomercial products, but on their animated movies. Last SIGGRAPH at the photon maps course, one of the presenters was a guy from Rhythm and Hues, so I guess their propietary renderer might get GI. I also saw people frmo ILM, PDI and a whole other studios. So maybe in the end or in the future you are absolutely right. Just to many facts and changes to deal with
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
I agree that so far, Pixar films have not used, and did not need, GI. Pixar also concedes that PRMan version 11's GI/ray tracing support will not be ready for "prime time". It's only a matter of time, though. Animated movies with ray tracing and GI are being done for the first time now, and Pixar had better have a good implementation of both ready for when it does finally become an issue. That, IMO, is why they're putting it in now.
PDI's renderer (at least the one used on Antz and Shrek; they're rewriting it for the next film) does not use GI but it does support ray tracing. Pixar used a small amount of ray tracing (with BMRT, no less) in A Bug's Life. So this feature, at least, will almost certainly be used more over the next decade.
Incidentally, I used to work for Dot C, so I have a pretty good idea what people want from Pixar's competitors. :-)
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand Entropy was a commercial product much cheaper than PRMan (about 1/5 or 1/4 of the price). It was primarily geared towards small studios and 3DMax users, but many of the big studios used it at least a little bit, including ILM, probably Pixar's most important customer. It was even used in one small sequence on Attack of the Clones, and from a recent posting by Larry Gritz apparently it was also used in Reign of Fire and Stuart Little 2. I'm sure Pixar didn't like that.
Also at past SIGGRAPH you could hear some complaints that not enough was done to improve PRMan, and Exluna was much more responsive and much quicker on their innovations. One example is how Pixar didn't implement deep shadow maps (which came out from a paper they presented at SIGGRAPH 2000, used in Monsters Inc., but it won't come out until PRMan 11). While Entropy lacked some features they were making fast progress and in some instances apparently surpassing PRMan. Actually if you look at PRMan 11's list of features you get a feeling much of the new stuff is things Entropy had, some even have claimed that PRMan 11 has included some Entropy specific extensions, though I can't verufy 100%.
It's too bad this debacle happened. You have to wonder if Pixar will sue Colin or someone for providing a tool like Liquid. On the other hand hopefully Thad Beier from Hammerhead will just show how senseles some of this patent software business is.
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if it's only a converter, studying its source would make it easier to learn the formats of the file types it converts from and to. Even if you could get specifications for those formats from somewhere else (I don't know if you could or not), it would still be easier with source. If someone were going to start their own project and they wanted to do stuff with Maya or Renderman files, Liquid would probably be the place to start.
At the same time, you're probably right that it's not such a big deal. But hey, that's slashdot for you.
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:2)
Not true.
RenderMan is not like POVRay. It's an algorithm neutral interface between modellers and renderers. The idea is that whether your renderer is a REYES-esque scanline renderer, a raytracer, a Monte Carlo radiosity raytracer or whatever, your file should still work.
That means that sometimes the modeller has to do a lot of work which in some renderer algorithms would be done for you. For example, in a REYES renderer, reflections are done with multiple render passes, just like in OpenGL. The modeller has to emit RenderMan code to do these multiple passes. In a raytracer, this would be done for you, but you would have to retain all of the scene geometry in memory, plus you lose coherency. (Most animation/visual effects scenes do not use raytracing for this reason. It's just too damn slow for "real" scenes.)
That's one reason why good Maya -> RenderMan interfaces are worth quite a lot of money (MTOR is US$3k).
Aqsis [aqsis.com] is a GPL'd RenderMan-compliant REYES renderer. Liquid is now open source. All it takes is a good open source modeller (disclaimer: I don't know if Blender is "good" enough for this kind of use) and we're in business.
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes but the standrd RenderMan exporter included in Maya is less than ideal for production work, mainly only exporting only geometry and not even doing a good job at that. That's why MTOR is necessary for good RenderMan connectivity.
BTW there was a Python script to export from Blender to RenderMan:
Jan Walter's Blender Pages [uk.com]Export Blender Animations To Other Renderers [q-bus.de]
Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ? (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the specific tasks of Maya/Blender/Liquid/Renderman?
What does Liquid do, what is not already included in tools which come with Renderman?
What role plays Blender?
Cheers, Peter
Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ? (Score:5, Informative)
Renderman itself is just a standard which defines a couple of things including which functions a compatible renderer must provide and what a bytestream sent to a renderer looks like. Pixar's renderer is called PhotoRealistic Renderman (or PRMan for short). The main reason the final output of a RenderMan-compatible renderer surpasses Maya's and Blender's built-in output routines is that textures and surfaces and lighting can be defined by shaders. These are little C-like programs which calculate what a given pixel will look like based on its position, lighting and so on.
This is roughly the order of creation:
Disclaimer: I am not a professional rendering artist/shader writer/modeller, but I have played around with all three to produce some amazing results. It's great fun to get into - but to make any progress you need serious CPU cycles.
Excuse me, Aqsis compilation just bailed with some error...
Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ? (Score:4, Funny)
So glad someone finally explained this; I always thought that "PRMan" was some suit from Pixar whose job it is to put good spin on things.
Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ? (Score:3, Informative)
We used it for a feature film... and it turned out great.
Jonah: A Veggietales Movie [jonahmovie.com]
-Tim
Re:Connection Maya-Liquid-Renderman ? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Ask Slashdot... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been (no more than) a 3d-tinkerer ever since Quake was released, periodically fooling around with whatever 3d packages I can find to learn and experiment with, for my enjoyment only, and maybe producing something I can shoot. When blender was GPL'd, I took a look at it, and with today's story, I have downloaded the non-commercial version of Maya. I have about a bagillion questions.
- Are the tools discussed today (Aqsis, Liquid) compatible with the NC version of Maya, or do they require the Pro version? Will I even need them for less than professional rendering?
- Are there things that blender cannot yet do that Maya can that I might conceivably use as a hobbyist?
- Is the level of user support, tutorials, manuals, etc. for blender comparable to that of Maya? From a cursory examination, it appears that Maya has several tutorials and discussion forums [aliaswavefront.com] on the Alias [aliaswavefront.com] Community website, and tons [google.com] of active community websites.
- blender [blender.org] may eventually rival the community size, but I don't think it has yet. The blender "documentation" [blender.org]
appears to be incomplete or incorrect, and comes with this disclaimer: This document is at the current state meant as a example how a possible way of organising and writing documentation could look like. It contains many old and obsolete information especially in terms of license and publishing rights. I have found a few tutorial [ingiebee.com] sites. I have heard that the learning curve is steep, and without a lot of documentation, that kind of worries me.
So, to all who have some experience with one or both of the packages, which do you think will provide the most satisfying hobbyist experience? Power to do the things I will probably want to do, useful learning of 3d modelling, and usefulness of produced files (I noticed the Maya non-commercial version of the "Kompleet" package watermarks its files and is not compatible with the commercial version file-formats), and especially overall enjoyment of the activity.
If you know of any good learning resources for any of the tools, please post them. Thanks from all us 3d newbies...
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say the question is a no-brainer -- learn Maya. There are so many resources available for someone willing to learn - college courses, books, online tutorials, etc. Maya is also very robust, with nifty particle systems, super easy character setup, and much, much more. Blender is cool and holds promise (even more now that it's been GPL'd) but the level of support and size of the community is much smaller at this point.
If you're just learning Maya for the fun of it, don't worry too much about whether the free version supports PRMan (which costs $thousands, btw) Maya's renderer is pretty good if you take the time to learn it -- most artists render in Maya, not PRMan -- only the uber-high-end stuff does that.
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:2)
3D Studio Max has a big following for game work, though.
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:3)
The non-commercial version of Maya ( referred to as Maya Personal Learning Edition ) is a full version of Maya Complete with the following exceptions.
- Uses a different file format from the commercial version.
- All rendered output has a watermark on it.
- There is no 3d-party plugin support.
Due to lack of plugin support, tools like Liquid will not work. The Maya Personal Learning Edition is basically intended to be used to learn Maya and not intended to be used for any real work.
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:3, Informative)
I have said it many times and most people (not you specifically of course) refuse to believe that Blender is not even in the same world as Maya. No way no how, there is absolutly no comparison. The differences are too extreme to list and I wish I could give more examples, but it isn't one big thing, it is many little concrete things, like driven keys, nurbs tools, subdivision surface tools, customizable interface, particles handling, hardware buffer rendering, and on and on and on. It is also big abstract things, like node based architecture, ( or object architecture like Softimage or 3D studio), and underyling scripting language called MEL, which is the foundation of Maya.
Professional 3D programs have lots of documentation. I GUARANTEE learning Maya will be easier than Blender. Companies depend on people learning their software well and using it to its fullest extent. Piracy comes into play here, and it is pretty much not something the companies worry about on an individual level, because it increases mindshare. If you want to learn 3D, you have to pirate software, it just works like that. Professionals ( eighther at studios or freelance ) buy the software when they use it professionally, because it is well worth it , is the legal thing to do, and is the right thing to do. No one cares if you pirate Maya to learn it.
If you want to get into 3D, go get Maya 4.5 (and a 3 button mouse). Load it up, watch the intro movies and you will be navigating around in no time. Then, hit F1 to see all the wonderful tutorials it comes with and you will be able to go through and learn all the features of the program easily. To take it further, practice sculting or go and get a book on cartoon animation, or lighting, or photography. Softimage XSI is also very easy to learn, although there is not as much documentaion as Maya. Learning the features is easy, learning the artistic side is hard. But it's great fun.
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:2)
Now things have changed and Softimage XSI is probably the best modeler (polygons/subD's now, and just wait for 3.0, it rocks), Maya is possibly the best animation package (because of Maya Embedded Language, its stability and its rigging tools) and Houdini isn't needed near as much (because of Maya Embedded Language and Maya's node based architecture). PRman still seems to be one of the only renderers with its priorities straight for high end production rendering, the others being Entropy (gone, killed by Pixar) and Final Render (only for 3DS) and maybe Brazil (only for 3DS).
The average high end pipeling doesn't really reflect this yet, and it is very varied, but many times everything is done in Maya because it is so complete. I think the average pipeline will be very scattered from here on out and that there won't be a standard way of doing things like in the past.
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:2)
There are tons of tutorials (from NaN but mostly from the community), user and technical docs assmebled over several years of NaN's existence as well as the two books. As far as I remember, not all of this is available at the moment, it's in the process of being organized in some fasion and made available at blender.org; basically it should be coming in a usable form fairly soon.
(btw, I don't think they Blender Foundation got the rights to the second book, which is a shame, but I do believe the person who wrote it (the name escapes me) will be working on new docs.
Could someone explain this to me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Its a plugin? You still need Maya and Renderman? Which as far as I understand are horrendously expensive... so what does it really matter there is a free plugin?
Re:Could someone explain this to me? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Liquid only allows you to connect (seamlessly) Maya to a RenderMan renderer. PRMan is U$5000 per license. RAT is even more expensive. Maya Complete now is U$2000, but Unlimited is U$7,000:
Pixar software price list [pixar.com]Maya store [aliaswavefront.com]
As you can see from the list prices with Liquid you are partially subsituting RAT, which is $8,500. Specifically you are substituting MTOR which is the bridge between Maya and PRMan, You would still miss on things like Alfred, Slim and It.
Why it does matter is that now small studios or even artists can afford a Maya to RenderMan bridge. Potentially they could combine it with cheaper alternatives like RenderDotC, AIR or 3Delight on the renderer part, and something like Smedge for distributing the rendering jobs. So potentially it could be easier to save the cost of RAT for artists workstations. Also if a studio has in house tools, they could potentially integrate them easier since the code for Liquid will be available.
Thanks.. (Score:2)
Re:Could someone explain this to me? (Score:2, Informative)
Maya's renderer is pretty good, but doesn't quite handle many things as well as most people would like. It could be faster, and its handling of large scenes and high resolutions needs to be improved, although it is still workable. Its depth of field and motion blur are 2D, and its 3D motion blur is very slow to get looking artifact free.
Note to the idiot who moderated the question (Score:2)
Another high profile switcher to Mac OS X (Score:2, Interesting)
I've built quiet a few tools over the years, anything from little scripts to manage renders to water simulation plugins. Over time I'll place information about the tools here as well as make some available. Since getting a Mac my mind has been on overdrive, thinking about what new things I can put together - OS/X has such a nice development environment.
so, where is it? (Score:2, Funny)
the cvs tree is empty.
forums empty.
if it weren't for LoTR being rendered with it, I would consider this vaporware...
Why I think this is a big deal (submitter) (Score:5, Informative)
First of all I will say that I have known about Blender for quite a while, and while it does share many of the basic features of other high-end software (basic being the key word), it really is not acceptable to use for anything except as an intoduction to 3D. The magic 4 programs that are used for professional 3D are Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Softimage | 3D and XSI, and Maya. They are very well architectured, very fast, and very elegant to use. There are many others but these are the programs that are used to make 90 % of the 3D CGI out there.
Maya does have Renderman output, but it is abysmal and not suitable for anything but experimentation. I have used it to test Renderman shaders and I still needed to edit the actual
This is important because it encourages standards and it encourages open source. By far the area that Linux is penetrating the fastest is the high end computer graphics market. Large studios have made sweeping conversions, not just on render farms, but on workstsations. Softimage 3D and XSI now run on Linux as does Maya. Almost every software based compositor out there runs on Linux (the exceptions being After Effects and Combustion). Many studios that have proprietary software are porting it to Linux. ILM , Digital Domain, PDI, and Weta have very big investments in it. Being open source helps, but open source is not the reason it is there. This tool being open source is one more piece of the puzzle as far open source penetrating large graphics studios. High end studios will be going to sourceforge to get a tool that they may end up depending on to get the job done. Some will start becoming active in its development, and this is very good. Its sets a precedent for releasing proprietary tools into the OS world. There are many extremely skilled programmers working in 3D.
More importantly than open source being furthered however is that it encourages standards. There are many Renderman compliant renderers out there, (Renderman is a frame description standard) Pixar's own implementation, Photorealistic Renderman is the most popular one. Most people just use the internal renderer of the software package they are using because the only standard for going between a 3D package and a renderer is Renderman, and a plugin is needed to facilitate that. Until now all of the choices were very expensive (somtimes more expensive than Maya itself believe it or not). Now that this part is free, people may start to see the benefits that come along with having a standard in place.
Aren't those graphics applications still ungodly expensive? Yes and no. Maya is now at $2000 USD for the base version (everything you need is there) which is one hell of a deal. Don't I still need Pixar's PRman? Yes and No. It is not the only Renderman renderer, but it is the best. It is sold alone or with many tools to go between Maya and itself (more expensive). If someone uses Liquid, eighther way they are saving alot of money and getting a production proven tool.
So is the entire pipeling Free? No, of course not, but that isn't the point. Open Source getting into 3D graphics studios is a very good thing, and this is a pretty cool step in the right direction. You want open minded people who just want to get the job done, and use the very best tools for their situation? That's 3D, perhaps overall one of the most intelligent and dynamic industries out there. They do their own thing and that's why Linux is taking over and OS can too, it just has to meet extremely high quality standards.
P.S. No Hollywood is a hyprocrite crap today please. Visual effects and computer graphics as a whole is so far removed from the issue that making a connection between the MPAA and a visual effects house just shows how little you know about it, and it isn't fair to the people working in the 3D industry.
Good for some (Score:4, Interesting)
Any studio that is working on a feature film will use solutions with tech support. When you are spending millions of dollars to make a film, it is worth spending a couple million to make sure that it really does get done.
For people with Maya that want an indexpensive solution, use the native renderer or possibly look at MentalRay. I used the native renderer in a feature film and it held its own (Jonah: A Veggietales Movie [jonahmovie.com]). Sure there were a few issues, but that is where tech support and documentation comes in. We would not have been able to finish without the help of Alias|Wavefront.
If you want to see how well it can do, go into the theater and watch it. Which, btw, was fully rendered on Linux boxes (if that is more of an incentive for us geek types to go).
-Tim
Ooh! Yes, yes, yes!! (Score:3, Funny)
Production-Quality rendering all around! No more waiting days upon days for a distribution-quality movie file. Next year, preview your work in real time, full-quality! w00t!
This is great! (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a bit confused.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2, Insightful)
We both know that Moore's law has held true and will probably hold true. In 15 years, computers may be 1,000 times faster - or more.
We all know how powerful the human brain is, but, in truth, it's just a computer. Typycal estimates put it at about 10,000 times more powerful than the fastest computers today (although making a comparision is extremely difficult and probably not very reliable).
No, CG is not photorealistic. But neither are paintings (brush strokes, anyone?). Most paintings are far from photorealistic, just because the best way to get photorealism is to TAKE A PHOTOGRAPH. Go watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and tell me that we're not getting close.
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:3, Funny)
Even the ships, the easiest thing to model do not look real. Maybe it's the colors, the texture, etc. The eye can tell the difference between real stuff and wanabe real stuff. The slightest difference from what you would expect in the tiniest detail, and the illusion goes away.
And if it's a real living creature, well... The original Joda looked much more real even though they've done a great job on AotC. A real younger Yoda WOULD look different.
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
It looks more cartoonish maybe...
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
To name two examples: Yoda on AoC (already mentioned) and Golem in LOTR T2T. The skin and light do not look real to me. They certainly look too plasticalike and not real mosnter flesh.
In Jurasic Park I did not experienced these problem. They looked more real, I don't know why. The texture and (textured) body expresions looked so much more convincing.
My feeling could be summarized: hiperrealistic carttons. They look like hyperreal animations, not like filmed creatures.
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
I'll bite: You've already been fooled hundreds of times over. Matte paintings are in every movie, and I guarantee you that many if not all have escaped your perception.
Check out this example:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s10mat
This one's more detailed:
http://fxtc.net/Matte_Paintings.html
So.. yeah, keep ranting.
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
Heck, even better just check the pages of Matte World Digital. And it's also something that it's not recent, just check their pages of the SIGGRAPH 1998 presentations, or the brand new released book, The Invisible Art, by Craig Barron:
Matte World Digital film credits [matteworld.com]Matte Painting in the Digital Age [matteworld.com]
The Invisible Art [chroniclebooks.com]
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:3D modelers are nice to play with ... (Score:2)
Re:Not all good news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Colin, the creator who giveth to open source here, has been receiving payment for his work on LOTR. There will be no shortage of artists working on projects for pay. In fact if the tools (software) are "free" it opens up participation for more people to create more art products for which they are paid. Open source simply moves the marble from one pocket to another. The tools of creation are improved and built as needed by participants and contributed back to the community.
It is not
Re:Not all good news... (Score:2, Insightful)
programming positions.
Even in a completely OSS world the scenerio would work out something like this...
Some Company uses someApp but they need additional functionality, they would hire programmers to do the work -or- use in house programmers to do it.
on top of that there is always going to be company specific in house software, which even if open sourced will be maintained in-house becasue likely it will have little use to the general public or even it's competitors.
OSS isn't the death of the software industry...it's just another way of looking at it.
Look at some of what's going on now...IBM, HP, SGI, Red Hat (and most of the other distro's) have paid programmers working on Linux or other OSS software.
And why does OSS mean fewer people getting paid for IT work? Last I checked runing a network and supporting users wasn't dependent on propriety software? does this mean if all software is OSS networks automatically just work and users all of the sudden no longer need help?
marketers are definetly out of a job! we all know OSS software sells itself!
Re:Not all good news... (Score:2)
OSS may sell itself, but it won't sell businesses on the idea as long as there's a path of doom and destruction following hopeful upstarts who gleefully opensource all their work.
With OSS we know what we need to do. It's the how that gets you in the end.
Re:Not all good news... (Score:3, Informative)
Aside from coming up with new software, there's also improving on an existing one for private companies. People actually get paid to develop opensource software and some of these improvements actually go back to the community.
Re: Not all good news... (Score:3, Insightful)
> I'm sure that all of the various programmers, IT people, marketers, etc. working at other companies that make rendering software aren't too happy. Another open sourced product means fewer people will get paid for IT related work. Imagine... a world where *nobody* gets paid for writing software! I don't know about everybody else, but I think that this really sucks.
IOW, "Halt progress because it's going to eliminate my cushy niche!" Nice to know that the Luddite movement is still alive and has an articulate spokesman.
It must have sucked to have been a sailmaker when the switch to steamships came around, too. Adapt or go extinct; the choice is yours, Ned.
Re:povray's still the best (Score:5, Informative)
Re:povray's still the best (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters is THE GOD DAMN RESULTS, and you can use whatever you want. This guy gets good results with POV-Ray. Far better than the 3 sphere's and checkboard plane crap 99% of people who pirate Maya can make.
Re:povray's still the best (Score:2)
Re:povray's still the best (Score:2)
Sure, PovRay is a great raytracer, but that is only a portion of the creative process.
Somebody interested in creating 3D images also needs to be able to model and animate the scene, and PovRay is mostly unsuitable for those things, except maybe for simple objects and a very small handful of people that spend an amazingly disproportionate amount of time at it. The guy who created the scenes in your link used multiple tools (some non-free) for modeling objects, and also borrows many of his objects from other people.
PovRay by itself puts a very low ceiling on creativity, even for the intelligent and technically inclined; you really need a good all-around 3D modeling/rendering/animation package. It's unfortunate that the programs that are any good are so expensive.
When you can model this kind of stuff [i12.com] in PovRay let me know!
Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies (Score:3, Interesting)
I would disagree with you, in that I think it's the filmmaker's vision that determines how flat something looks, not that it's cg. Take FOTR and AOTC for example, I think that FOTR looks vibrant, alive, grubby, and very nice. AOTC looks antiseptic and lifeless.
Okay, maybe greed does enter into the equation, based on my refernces, but you can't tell me that Shrek looks flat. I think it looks gorgeous and fairy tale like
Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies (Score:2)
Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies (Score:2)
As far as expenses sometimes it's just cheaper to leave it for post. You sometimes hear that a day a production falls behind schedule or can't film (say the day is cloudy, when they need sunshine) costs the production X amount of money, say $100,000. It might be cheaper to just film and then do a sky replacement in post. There is also the matter of art direction, maybe you can't find the tree you need. Take the one from What Dreams May Come. And of course there are things you can't just plain film, where are you going to get out there a real dinosaur, Yoda, a balrog or 100 operational and flying Japanese Zeroes that you can also crash and destroy?
If there is a problem it's the studios approving these awful stories. You can have movies with good stories that use tons of FX like LOTR, Harry Potter or AI, but then you get all these projects that are just there for the "popcorn" value, say Armageddon, Resident Evil, etc. Worst part is that a lot of the general public enjoys and consumes this sort of movies, just look at the box office charts and see how many of these types of films become hits or at least rake in cash in the opening weeks.
Pixar's house style (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a stylistic choice. Pixar work is the tromp l'oeil of animation, where extreme detail is the norm. There are other styles. Shrek, a Dreamworks product, was also all-CG, but definitely didn't have the Pixar look. The Shrek team struggled with how photorealistic they should be; they ended up backing off a bit from photorealism. Final Fantasy, all CG from yet another team, had a totally different look from either Dreamworks or Pixar. Sadly, that team broke up after the picture flopped, due mostly to the bad plot.
Pixar/Disney has good stories. If they didn't, the rendering couldn't carry the film. Compare Lucasfilm, where the story and acting are weak, but the production design makes up for it.
Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Please, please, no more CGI movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:blender GPLd (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what dept? (Score:2)
And it's not too bad, after all some of these films are developed over 3 or 4 years, so really they are kinda cheap compared to Summer popcorn extrabaganzas.