The releasing of RenderMan for Maya (RfM) was a well coming news for all users of Maya. As soon as Will knew that we had participated in the RfM beta test program and we were already using it in production, he asked me to write an article about my impressions.
Before begining to talk about RfM it's important to tell a little about our company, after all it's the context of work in which we evaluated the plugin. Conspirao Filmes is a feature films, tv series and publicity film company. With headquarter in Rio de Janeiro, is one of the three biggest brazilian film companies. In the 3D department we are seven artists and Maya is our only 3D application; we have also a license of RenderManProServer/RAT. Besides working in some scenes of effects for feature films, most of our work has to do with the advertising market .
During the beta test period we used the RfM for rendering a 30'' film (all in 3D) and in some effects scenes of others six films.
Surfaces
The RfM supports the three kinds of surfaces created in Maya (NURBS, subdivision surfaces and poligons). Using the NURBS surfaces, you have the advantage of RenderMan being a true NURBS renderer. You will never have problems again with tesselation values because these attributes are ignored by RfM. Regarding subdivision surfaces, the RfM is quicker than Maya's render. During beta, we had no problem with surfaces generated in Maya. All of them were properly rendered in RfM.
Shading
To build the shaders the user continues using the hypershade or multilister editor. The RfM understands barely all of Maya's shading nodes. RFM doesn't have any special editor to build the shaders (as Slim in the RAT).
To access the exclusive properties of RfM you just need to add the attributes to the shader (in the shader Attribute Editor, Attributes> RenderMan> Add Reflection Controls/Add Refraction Controls/Add Sub Surface Scattering). Doing this the user can use unique features as blurred reflections, blurred refractions and sub surface scattering.
Adding RenderMan attributes to a Blinn material.
An interesting possibility is sets's creation for reflection and refraction. In this way, the shader only reflects or refracts the surfaces that are listed in the set, enabling a better control of what is reflected and a increased performance.
The use of sub surface scattering is also very simple. It's only necessary to add the RenderMan's attributes to the shader. And to control the quantity of light that enters the object, you just need to set the value of the attribute Scattering Free Path.
The RenderMan Shader is added to Maya by RfM. Any RSL Shader compiled for RenderMan can be loaded, including those compiled by Slim. Beyond that, in the RfM package is included a compiler for those who wish to program his own shaders.
Hypershade with a RenderMan Shader Loaded
A new horizon for the users of Maya is opened by the use of shaders created in RSL. Now, beyond all the library of existing shaders for RenderMan, there is the possibility of building your own shaders.
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