RenderMan & mental ray export

wahn · Post by **wahn** » Mon Sep 22, 2003 2:18 pm

Hi,

My old web pages (see http://www.q-bus.de/Blender/ and http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/) are dead (not updated) for quite a while. Just in case people do follow the links and wonder why I do NOT answer any emails concerning this web pages. So I had to start a new one

http://www.wahn.demon.co.uk/

Seeing progress in the new Python API I thought it might be a good idea to work on my export scripts (again). This time I will be a bit more careful publishing stuff (that's why you can't find the export scripts there RIGHT NOW).

Just to inform you: I have started a RIB (RenderMan) and MI (mental ray) exporter. Both scripts use Python. You load the scripts press ALT-P and (on Linux) some files (blender.rib or blender.mi) are written to /var/tmp (can be changed for Windows users). Assuming you have a proper installation for one of the RenderMan compatible renderers (I use AIR and some other RenderMan compatible renderers privately and full lizenses of PRMan and mental ray commercially at work) the scripts renders directly into an existing window (like airshow) or pops up with a image viewer after rendering finished.

Concerning the lights (and other things):

I wrote RenderMan light shaders which do mimic the Blender settings. Mental ray shaders will follow ...

I do not know how much time I can spend on this. And before I publish things again I want to know how many people would be interested. I'm very busy with commercial work (see http://www.mill.co.uk/) and I will publish not only Blender stuff (this time). You will find Houdini, Maya, XSI, RenderMan, mental ray, and other stuff (once I tested things properly) on the same web page. I will grant student from the German Filmakademie ( see http://www.animationsinstitut.de where I will start to give lectures from time to time) access to certain material to make tests and learn about "shader writing" in general.

Concerning Blender I will NOT publish my new email addresses on the web page because I just don't have time to answer all this emails. I will check from time to time this forum and I might give selected people early access to the things I have done in case they want to contribute. Dependend on how things work out I might give everybody access to the experimental stuff ...

Cheers,

Jan

Pablosbrain · Post by **Pablosbrain** » Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:22 pm

I am very interested to finally have more complete renderman output!

wahn · Post by **wahn** » Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:35 pm

Hi,

Pablosbrain wrote:I am very interested to finally have more complete renderman output!

Are you interested on a user level (just using the scripts without trying to understand it), would you like to do beta testing, or would you like to help improving the scripts (shaders)?

If you leave an email address I could contact you and we could discuss things outside this forum ...

Cheers,

Jan

Pablosbrain · Post by **Pablosbrain** » Mon Sep 22, 2003 6:11 pm

I am currently working on an animated short, FWD-REV (www.fwd-rev.com), and would love to take advantage of a better renderer for features like DOF as well as the overall quality of render and features that can be exploited in renderman compliant renderers. So I guess mainly as a User of the scripts. I have some fairly complex scenes which I think would do well in testing the scripts as well. So let me know (paul@pablosbrain.com) how the progress goes and I will try and give as much feedback as possible!

cekuhnen · Post by **cekuhnen** » Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:51 pm

HI WHAN

it is sometime ago since i wrote my own shaders for 3delight nearly two years, but i woul dbe very interested in a renderman shader support.

also in beta testing.

take care and good luck

claas

wahn · Post by **wahn** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 12:42 pm

Hi,

cekuhnen wrote:it is sometime ago since i wrote my own shaders for 3delight nearly two years, but i woul dbe very interested in a renderman shader support.

also in beta testing.

The problem is that somehow the shaders should be attached to the geometry (and the lights) in the BLENDER scene. Other packages like Maya and XSI have user defined variables which can be attached to nearly everything. For Blender someone has to re-invent this technology (like attaching properties in the former game engine) and give people access to a GUI for the shaders ...

How can this be automated? For lights it's easy. I write for each light type a RenderMan light shader which will take exactly the same argumets as you use within Blender. For materials it's getting too complicated AND RenderMan does support DISPLACEMENT SHADERS. So for each object you might want to attach two types of shaders: Surface and displacement shaders. This shaders might come with your RenderMan renderer OR you might want to write (and attach) your own shaders (with their own parameter) set. In Houdini (for example) you can parse the mental ray and RenderMan shaders automatically and generate a GUI for all the shader parameters ...

I'm working with a patched version of Blender because I had to fix a few Python API problems to make the export work (I reported the problems and they should be fixed for the next release). Concering the shaders I will make my own tests first BEFORE I will release my Python scripts. If people are interested in being beta testers please leave your EMAIL ADDRESS here. I will contact you ...

Cheers,

Jan

wahn · Post by **wahn** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 12:43 pm

Hi,

Pablosbrain wrote:I am currently working on an animated short, FWD-REV (www.fwd-rev.com), and would love to take advantage of a better renderer for features like DOF as well as the overall quality of render and features that can be exploited in renderman compliant renderers. So I guess mainly as a User of the scripts. I have some fairly complex scenes which I think would do well in testing the scripts as well. So let me know (paul@pablosbrain.com) how the progress goes and I will try and give as much feedback as possible!

I tried to contact you via email. Did you get it?

Cheers,

Jan

cekuhnen · Post by **cekuhnen** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:23 pm

hi wahn

well i know the shading szstem could be outside blender.

when you just give objects a name and add a meterial
blender could export the name only.

in bbedit you could add the line and arguments for renderman shaders and render them then.

i do not know how crafter will be build into blender.

when it could be included its a lot easier.

claas

Little_Cube · Post by **Little_Cube** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 12:40 pm

Hi Jan,

Sorry for going OT, but I sent a reply to your message seven days ago and since I got no answer yet I was just wondering if you recieved my mail?

Regards,
Goran

birras · Post by **birras** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 1:31 pm

Volunteer for beta-testing
Just send me the script.....
..will try it on div. RM-comp. ...and see how it goes

P.S. Why don´t you work together with goran and his BlenderMan
project....so you could do some job-sharing instaed of working alone doing + or - the same thing?

birras2002@yahoo.es

vmx · Post by **vmx** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 4:29 pm

Hi Jan!

I've written some kind of shaderloader a long time ago (it parses the output of slctell (or any other programm of that kind) and creats a gui out of it). perhaps it could be implemented.
Another thing is, that Goran Kocov goes on with developing Greens Blenderman. Perhaps it is a good thing to merge these projects (I think you Project would be a nice starting point), as a think a pythonscript is mch better than hardcoding Renderman support.

Cu,
Volker.

P.S: Perhaps you still remember me from former times

wahn · Post by **wahn** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 12:17 pm

Hi,

yes, I'm in contact with Goran and Green. I think (at least for the RenderMan export) I will not publish the export scripts yet. Goran will take care about the RenderMan export and we can discuss things offline. I'm too busy with other projects and I add features to the mental ray and RenderMan export on a very individual basis (my needs). Anyway if somebody wants to try it: Tell me on this forum and leave your email address. I will contact you ...

And be patient with me. When I'm REALLY, REALLY busy it can happen that I do NOT answer my emails for a month

Cheers,

Jan

Hiroshi · Post by **Hiroshi** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 12:36 pm

Jan,

I apologize I'm really away touch with you.

wahn wrote: And be patient with me. When I'm REALLY, REALLY busy it can happen that I do NOT answer my emails for a month

I'm working on a project for CARTOON NETWORK at japanese cartoon studio.
I'm really busy as well.

I'm using MRfM to get contour rendering.
Personaly I'm interested in Volume and Ray Marching of MentalRay too.

Well, I just drop my current e-mail addresss, today:
hiroshi.saito@mac.com

If you could have got any spare time, try to contact me please.

Talk you later

Hiroshi

cekuhnen · Post by **cekuhnen** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 8:15 pm

very interested in it since i use mental ray and maya

claas@jrkuhnen.de
cekuhnen@gmx.net

stew · Post by **stew** » Fri Oct 31, 2003 10:18 am

Hi Jan,

I'd be interested in helping, I wrote a basic RenderMan exporter for Poser in Python (cgkit) a while ago (see my web page, link below). I don't have experience with MR (yet), but I'd be willing to learn in case the MR version that comes with XSI Exp is sufficient. To contact me, I have my mail address on my web page.

Stefan

// Hi Claas

Blender.org

RenderMan & mental ray export

RenderMan & mental ray export

Mainly a user level

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Re: Mainly a user level