Is Mantra Used A Lot In Production?

[rohandalvi]

hi,

I am a fairly new user of HOUDINI. Been using it on and off for about a year, purely as a hobby. I live in India and there isnt much of a demand for HOUDINI here at a professional level.

Still, I love the software and hope to use it someday for a project.

Anyways, coming to my question, Is MANTRA used a lot for high-end production rendering? Like in films and Adflims

Most of the articles that I have read at sidefx or at cgsociety about productions using HOUDINI , most tend to mention that the final rendering was done using Renderman or any other renderman-compliant renderer.

I have been trying out mantra, I find it quite powerful but a little slow ( I have been spoiled by the years of using VRAY ) But I do like rendering, lighting and shader building a lot, That is sort of like my area of speciality.

The reason for asking the question is that , should I spend time learning MANTRA, or would it be wiser to invest the same time into learning something like 3delight or any other renderman-compliant renderer.

with regards

Rohan Dalvi

[symek]

Hey Rohan,

This topic is brought from time to time. Search for a topics here and on SESI forum.

Or just here:

http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/ProductionsUsingMantra

The reason you read about PRMan is that these are cases of big infrastructures with mixed environment with Maya, massive, etc. So they already have PRMan there. Houdini also for years was a bridge between Maya and PRMan, and in many places this is still valid.

What doesn't change the fact that according to Jason all DD's work from Houdini is rendered with mantra. Also Sony uses it a lot, like Framestore or R&H. Mantra is simply great. Why not to use it? And every realise it becoming better. Slow? In basic GI setup perhaps, which is good for... I not sure for what.

I know that you don't mean anything wrong, but comparing Mantra and VRay is misunderstanding. Really.

Have you ever work on massive scale project in real world scenario, when all geometry is dense, you need lots of them displaced and motion blured, lit with dozens of sources... And moreover you have a clear vision about the particular look of your surfaces and any package's shaders cannot serve your needs or make your renders slow?

VRay was designed, is sold mostly, and has a biggest profits from people with complete different expectations. Fast with minimal efforts, 3dMax users, small studios, freelance, Viz. Hit the button and wait for a pretty images. It's great but this is not film renderer.

And I guaranty you that in case of the scene mantra is designed for it's much, much slower.

cheers,

sy.

Edited December 24, 2007 by SYmek

[digitallysane]

You can read the interview with Jordi Bares from The Mill on the odforce homepage, there is some talk about Mantra in production.

Dragos

[Marc]

Actually, Sony doesn't use mantra at all sadly. Mostly prman with a few shows rendered/rendering in Arnold.

[Rafal123]

I've read somewhere r+h use Mantra as much as possible... Jason could you correct it?

[rohandalvi]

thanks a lot guys,

Sorry for not searching the forums first, guess was a little lazy .

I do continuously read up all the various article I can find about houdini, Since I didnt hear too much of a mention of Mantra in a lot of the article I decided to put up the question.

Also, I fully agree about the point you made about VRAY. I wasnt comparing vray and mantra at all. I dont have any experience of working at fim level, so cant really comment about the level of complexities faced at that level.

It is just that you sort of get used to the ease of setup, which a renderer like vray give you and the speed of GI.

But as you said, it is really not very suitable for film level productions, with really dense geometries ,displacement and lots of motion blur, where a renderer like Mantra really shines, Vray would probably die.

I mean, most of the average renderers that you get, like Vray, Final render or Brazil, dont even give you true nurbs, subdivision or metaball rendering like mantra gives you.

I am very well aware of the strengths of Mantra, Its just that you dont really hear so much about Mantra in a lot of the production articles, So I got curious.

So thanks a lot again. Dont mean to ruffle any feathers, just curious.

with regards

Rohan Dalvi

Edited December 25, 2007 by rohandalvi

[Jason]

So I got curious.

So thanks a lot again. Dont mean to ruffle any feathers, just curious.

No, you're totally right about different renderers having different strengths. No feathers ruffled:)

Mantra (like PrMan) is a general purpose renderer - it can render a variety of entities with user programmable shaders. It doesn't necessarily force the user down the road of realistic rendering although it provides a wealth of functionality to take you there. Being able to generate any type of shading your entities is absolutely invaluable in feature work - especially in FX work where you end up rendering strange unrealistic things often such as light effects (strange glows/beams/lightning/alien auras/etc) and need to lever progammable shaders. Its a slow process to paint/generate bizarre evolving noise effects and such.

Digital Domain and Rhythm and Hues both use Mantra a lot. Both render almost all FX type elements with it - debris, particles, that type of thing. As of H9, Mantra's new Volume rendering is now the primary rendering engine behind the volumetric rendering at both these companies too. The generation of voxel/procedural data are still both proprietary solutions mostly, but the rendering itself is handled by Mantra. Of course, H9 provides ways for populating the voxel data but both companies have great development invested in their own volume tools.

As for regular lighting tasks of "hard" surfaces (not volumes/particles/lightfx), Mantra has been used on a number of productions. I was involved in the rendering of Transformers at Digital Domain and was using Mantra 9 for the task. What made the entire project viable was the fact that the lighting team which was assigned were very well versed in PrMan and their shader-writing skills were directly applicable to Mantra. The entire renderer "vocabulary" was directly mappable from PrMan to Mantra so they could easily understand what each quality knob and such in Mantra stood for. Believe me, this is no small benefit. I've seen lighters attempt to cross over to other renderers with disastrous misunderstandings on how to tune and handle the renderer.

Personally I'm encouraged by Mantra 9 - they are making large strides to close the gap between the Reyes-style programmable shading and the specialization of renderers like V-Ray, Brazil and Maxwell Render (the benefit of whose specialization is sharply evident in the pretty pictures they produce). The addition of Physically Based Rendering is the first step here and the concept is very exciting - especially useful (at first) to smaller facilities. Large features still require a tightly controlled pipeline wrt rendering but PBR is making headway into this too.

If you have any more specific questions about Mantra, its features or performance, please ask - there is just too much to tell if I just start prattling

[johner]

Digital Domain and Rhythm and Hues both use Mantra a lot. Both render almost all FX type elements with it - debris, particles, that type of thing. As of H9, Mantra's new Volume rendering is now the primary rendering engine behind the volumetric rendering at both these companies too. The generation of voxel/procedural data are still both proprietary solutions mostly, but the rendering itself is handled by Mantra. Of course, H9 provides ways for populating the voxel data but both companies have great development invested in their own volume tools.

Jason, does that mean DD is using Mantra 9 over VoxelB***h / Storm? That's impressive if that's the case. Is the performance comparable? Any other insights you could give us about why the switch?

Thanks

[Netvudu]

Dunno, but here guessing that

Edited December 27, 2007 by Netvudu

[Jason]

Dunno, but here guessing that

[stu]

I'm using mantra 9 pbr in production right now.

[TheUsualAlex]

As for Storm's Starving Artist Ed: Really I believe that SESI could make the need for Felt and Storm kinda obsolete quickly (for the general case) if they just develop Volume generation support inside Houdini strategically. It could just take a couple of months if they do it right, IMHO.

Totally second that.

[rohandalvi]

hi,

Thanks a lot Jason for all the Info.

Also for the information about the R&H volume renderer CLOUDTANK. I had never heard of that one before.

So I guess I will start concentrating more on figuring out Mantra, after all.

Also

Wishing everyone a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

with regards

Rohan Dalvi