Pixar Renderman compatability with Rhino 3D 5.0 64

I will be getting Renderman as a gift/promotion for free. This will be the full commercial version, I cannot use it to make money. Does anyone think that Renderman will ever be compatible with Rhino3D, in the sense that it could be used from within Rhino?

Does anyone have any suggestions? :pray:

Looks like your answer is a yes.

http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/rhinoman

RhinoMan is a Rhino rendering plug-in that provides a graphical user interface for several RenderMan compliant rendering applications. You can render directly from Rhino without exporting to another application. RenderMan is a modeler-renderer communication standard developed by Pixar which renderer developers can use. Pixar sells its own RenderMan compliant rendering application called “Photorealistic Renderman” (PrMan for short) and is the application used to generate all their animated films. PrMan is also used heavily in the movie industry by many different special effects houses.

“The Rhino3 version has been available for a couple years and the Rhino4 version will be available soon.” does seem like it’s been actively developed.

Have you been to “Rhinoman’s” website/ It doesn’t exist. It has not been available, and I don’t know where to get it if it is.

The website is “nonfunctional”.

I am downloading and installing Rhino "Air’, will this work? :slight_smile:

@zathros Did you succeed using RenderMan with Rhino 5 64?

I am asking because Pixar just released a free non-commercial version of RenderMan:

Source: Ars Technica

Plugin support for Rhino is listed as potential:

RenderMan non-commercial would be perfect for my use-case as a hobbyist. I cannot justify spending $$$ on a tool that I use only occasionally.

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I am waiting for a confirmation letter. When I get it, I will try, but I doubt it will work, not that I know how to use it. A friend of mine has done many Disney movies and says he will help me, as I have helped him with Rhino…see what happens! :slight_smile:

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Got it. I downloaded all versions that go with Maya. They state “extremely technically savvy people” can use Renderman without Maya. That sounds like the group that puts out Rhino3D. I wish someone here at Mcneel would make this compatible with Maya. It shouldn’t be very difficult, C’mon McNeel, let’s get up to speed here. Adding this animation program to the compatibility list means more money for the both of you! It would be fantastic!:slight_smile:

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I was under the impression this thread was about integrating Renderman rendering from within Rhino. Where does this “animation program” get into the picture?

I intend to to use it for that, but it should have wrote “make Renderman compatible with Rhino”, It was the middle of the night! Renderman works with MAYA animated products. If Rhino3D were compatible with MAYA, then it would (maybe) work with Renderman. There is the logic. Make Rhino compatible with Maya, or Make Renderman compatible with Rhino3D. I didn’t think I needed to spell it out. It would be nice to be able to animate with Rhino, to be able to make two gears spinning, and have them inter mesh, to make sure they work, etc. It would be great to open Maya files. I have friends in the animation business, I could get some interesting files, if I could open them.

Don’t be so picayune! Sheesh!

I’ll be just at picayune as I think I need to be…

Rhino - per today - is compatible with both Maya and Renderman. That means that anything that is not captured by that line, you’ll need to spell it out.

You can export to a RIB (“RenderMan Interface Bytestream”) file from Rhino, you can export to file formats that can be read by Maya, and from Maya you can export to a file format that can be read by Rhino. Your animation friends can start shipping models over to you.

That’s possible using the Bongo plugin. A quick example can be seen here: Gears animated with Bongo on Vimeo

btw,

The answer is Yes.

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You are wrong. The idea is working WITHOUT having Maya, I cannot stand people with you kind of your attitude, I will not engage in anymore conversation with you and continue without telling anyone anything. I do not owe you or anyone else here anything.

Thanks for your help in answering forum questions Wim, it’s much appreciated.

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No worries.

When I try to render an .rib file exported from Rhino, RenderMan Pro Server complains about missing textures:

C:\Temp>prman box2.rib
S01001 {WARNING} Cannot load shader "rh_background". [<Loading Shader>] (System Error: No such file or directory)
S01001 {WARNING} Cannot load shader "rh_paintedplastic". [<Loading Shader> Object: ] (System Error: No such file or directory)
R12001 {ERROR}   File Cherry Polished cannot be opened by RiReadArchive. (System Error: No such file or directory)

Are Rhino textures even compatible with RenderMan? If not, how do I assign textures for use with RenderMan?

Good support for RenderMan would be really nice to have, especially as there is a version that runs under Linux, so is easily deployed on cheap and fast servers, e.g. those offered by DigitalOcean.

Same problem here. The of the cuff answers aren’t backed by much. Just because Rhino exports, saves, whatever, in .rib, it doesn’t mean you can do anything with it. There is a problem. The files load in “In” but that is not the Render program. Something is not working,. This thread should be only for people who actually have Renderman, not those who only intellectualize an answer, with no substance, or stated experience…

Just mentioning @clement in this thread in the hope of getting some expert feedback…

Thanks Wim for your great support !

As Wim said, Rhino had a RIB (renderman interface bytestream) export since version 1. That does not mean it works like a click and go process a new user would expect from nowadays rendering and animation software. The exported rib file can be opened with prman and from there you pretty much have to do your stuff on your own. eg. setting up searchpaths so it can find your shaders, textures etc. *.rib files are textbased, you can open them and, if you are “tech safe”, type in there to change them :wink:

just some history, so it is easier for other new users to understand the current state of Rhino`s support for renderman based renderers:

To make things easier, there has been a Plugin for Rhino called RhinoMan developed by Brian Perry years ago. It worked in Rhino version 2, 3 and 4. When this has been available, there where options in its plugin dialog to export rhino geometry, material colors etc. into *.rib files suitable for various other different renderers using the renderman standart eg. PrMan, Aqsis, Render DotC and AIR.

While the development of the RhinoMan plugin stopped, Scott Iverson, the developer of AIR included a new Plugin to be used with his renderer called AIR. The AIR renderer is very close to prman, but not identical. Thus the plugins rib output cannot be used directly, it has to be changed (in file) so renderman specific options and attributes are properly accessed. This has to be done by a user who wants to use PrMan together with the *.rib files RhinoAIR exports out of Rhino.

This plugin RhinoAIR is free and still in active development for Rhino 5 and the upcoming version 6. The RhinoAIR plugin works best with AIR so in order to use its *.rib output for PrMan you would need to have a large understanding of options, attributes and shaders which are different between AIR and PrMan. At any case, learning PrMan is not a quick process as you won`t find much tutorials for it online. I tend to say, there are more free user friendly packages available for new Rhino users, eg. Neon and soon Cycles (!) . Both use the GPU which makes tweaking things and faster renders much easier.

@zathros, if you really want to learn PrMan you need to have a lot of interest and willingness to discover it, and patience. I´m not shure that is still common in todays generations.

c.

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Yes, I do agree today’s generation are not so committed to learn, they are also smart with their non substantiated replies. The first language learned was APL, the BASIC, then Fortran, I started robotics at Sikorsky Aircraft, I programmed 4 axis and 8 axis CNC and robotic arm. I am quite older than what you may think, Considering I worked for Sikorsky Aircraft, Hubble Corporation, and I had me own T.V. and general electronics repair shop for 10 years. I worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons for 3 years. I am just hitting 58, so YES, I do agree some people do not have the stamina. It is also sad that someone has to post in this forum to get someone else’s attention. I guess it is the cliquish nature. I have 50,000 people in my forum, and no one their has to have smoke blown up their unmentionables to get an answer. So in essence, Rhino is not actually compatible with Renderman, in the sense that MAYA is, it exports a file that other programs are needed to work with, and sound like you may need code experience? In the very least write paths, is this done is the DOS interface.

“I´m not shure that is still common in todays generations.” That reads almost as an insult. Today’s generation sure should check their spelling too.

I will check out your information, I already have installed AIR. You guys should have snatched up the rights to Rhinoman. Just think how much more you could have offered, how many more people you would attract. I was looking for a FREE method. My lord, if Pixar gave me Renderman, why would I pay someone for some script to interface the two? You guys are lowering you usually high standard.

To sum it up, go somewhere else, good luck, what we offer falls short, and we have no plan to improve on it.

O.K., got it. I am 57 years old, just for the record. My forum is www.zealot.com Everyone can learn at. any stage of their life. Maybe if you check out my forum, you will see where you potential sales are going to. I push Rhino a lot there, but why bother with Rhino when people are doing fantastic things with Blender?

I appreciate your information. I don’t know what “support” you are thanking “Wim” for, he has give none in this thread. In fact, with his picayune attitude, he has probably driven many away.

Interesting thread, is the negative sense. I hope this does not represents Rhino’s new 'tude, as I have had Rhino since Rhino 2.0, and questions were answered without response to perceived age, or by who posted in the thread, they were answered with dignity.

I don’t think it sad or cliquish at all you didn’t get many replies. It is simply a renderer that almost no Rhino users apparently use. You did get some replies from people who tried to help, but while you were not satisfied with the answers you received, which is fine, you made your displeasure abundantly clear in a manner which I would think was not an incentive for others to try and offer help. I also don’t think is realistic to expect McNeel and Associates to write support for every renderer available into Rhino. Out of however many hundred of thousands of users they have, the requests for for a Renderman specific export have been extraordinarily rare (this being the first request I’ve seen since Rhinoman was abandoned). It would take some amount of development time away from features which have a much higher request rate.

What the Rhino team has done is to provide fantastic tools to developers which gives third parties (which includes professional developers, users, and hobbyist) the ability to create their own plugins, scripts, and macros, which could be used to some form of Renderman plugin, most likely an exporter. As an example Rhinoman was a personal project of Brian Perry’s. I’m not sure why you would expect a Rhino / Renderman plugin to be free.

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Sorry, that was not meant as an insult. It is just a sad experience i got from teaching for the last 15 years. Many people do expect magic things from very complex software without the time, willingness and patience to discover.

Great. You can try to start with that and maybe later open the rib files RhinoAIR generated with PrMan. Note that not all shaders, variables, Attributes and Options will directly pass. So expect errors in your rendering console. The searchpaths can go into the rib file. Alternatively, you can put them into Air.rib which resides in your AIR homedirectory. This should be similar using PrMan.

I don`t know why we should have done that. Brian Perry targeted RhinoMan mostly to AIR as this was the fastest and most affordable renderman based renderer with (still) great support. When his plugin was available, PrMan was pretty expensive. Therefore Larry Gritz made BMRT (a raytracer wow!) which a few rhino users tried to interface with as well using RhinoMan.

I was thanking Wim for the same reason Brian did. If someone invests time to answer someone else’s questions, to help out for free, politeness is required. Not shure if this is my language barrier, but it did not come through from your answer.

Hm, I do not see it as negative. I think people here where maybe trying to prevent you from learing something extremely complex (PrMan) which currently can not be used to it`s capacity from within Rhino. Like SamPage pointed out, it was not yet requested from any users to enhance Rhino’s built in renderman support. I think the reason is because PrMan and Maya are targeted to film and animation while Rhino seems to be more targeted to construction and (stills) rendering.

c.