Renderman

Hoping others will add to this... I'd like this section to stay focused on renderman as it relates to maya, there's several sites already for pure renderman. Here's some links to a few:

• haggi's render wiki, excellent intro: http://joomla.renderwiki.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=239&Itemid=213
• rendermania - http://www.rendermania.com/
• renderman repository - http://www.renderman.org/
• shaderman - http://www.dream.com.ua/thetool.html

choices for renderman renderers

• prman https://renderman.pixar.com/
• aqsis - http://www.aqsis.com/
• pixie - http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~okan/Pixie/pixie.htm
• 3delight - http://www.3delight.com/
• air - http://www.sitexgraphics.com/index.html
• jig - http://www.steamboat-software.com/jigwhat.html

ribgen tools

• mtor - https://renderman.pixar.com/products/tools/mtor.html
• liquid - http://sourceforge.net/projects/liquidmaya/ - massive update, well worth a look!
• mayaman - http://www.animallogic.com/research/mayaman/
• renderman for maya - https://renderman.pixar.com/products/tools/rfm_webinfopage.html
• 3delight for maya - http://www.3delight.com

Pre Render Scripts

What they mean is not really a script, as much as a function. I have just done a render where i want to pRef from a deformed object, but not include all the deformers. Basically i have a blendshape that then is deformed by bones. Now i want to pRef the original blendshape, after the bone deformation, and then render the other blend shape with the bone deformation on there. So i wrote a quick script to do all this,and put that in the pre frame field in mtor... no use... it didnt work. So i saved the script in a file and sourced that from the pre frame script field, and by magic, it works!! ahhh nice.

setting pRef from mel

Just a simple one...

MtorPrefFreeze;

-- PeterHartwig? - 30 Mar 2005

Matte ribBox

Create a ribBox and add this to make it be matted from the beauty but not the other passes (such as shadow...)

[if { $ELEMENTTYPE == "final" } {return "Matte 1"} else { return "Matte 0" } ]

readarchives and 3delight

Used to require fiddling, now its all built in and easy to use. Watch paolo berto's excellent video tutorials to learn more:

http://www.jupiter-jazz.com/trixr4kids/3delightedition/Video_Tutorials/Entries/2007/12/12_Tutorial_05.html

3delight for Maya and Mental Ray shaders

3delight from v9.0 onwards supports the misss_* shaders. Though not all attributes are translated, it works nevertheless. It also supports few other mr hypershade nodes like the car paint, metallic paint and glossy reflection/refraction nodes.