3Delight and Houdini

[Symbolic]

Hi,

I am sure this has been asked hundreds of times, I have checked some of the answers but it seemed abit fragmented. So I decided to ask some questions, once again.

* So what exactly is 3Delight? Well, it is a RenderMan®-compliant renderer. But is it a (Any Package: Lights, Geo, Shaders) -> RIB -> RenderMan kind of a thing or is it stand alone renderer that uses similar technology to RenderMan? (Does it actually need RenderMan installed?)

* Are all built in RenderMan functions (Lights, RSL constructors etc.) of Houdini %100 compatible with 3Delight?

* If we want to experience a RenderMan workflow, thus: Practising shading techniques from any RenderMan book, practising and learning techniques like geo instancing, point cloud baking (occlusion, colour bleed etc.), render time geometry operations like "delay load" etc., will 3Delight provide those?

* This automatically brings us to this question: Should one go with the Educational RenderMan (~$199) or 3Delight (free)?

Thanks.

[pclaes]

First of all renderman is not a package. It is a standard. Like saying I have linux installed, which one? Fedora, Ubuntu, ...? In the same way you can ask which renderman compliant render engine do you have installed? 3Delight, PRman, Air,...

Generally though when people refer to "I have renderman installed" it is implied it is PRman.

*) A renderman compliant renderer means that it can render a rib file. Where that rib file comes from is irrelevant to the render engine.

There are plugins such as renderman studio for Maya that will perform the scene translation from the 3d package to a rib file. Houdini provides a scene file conversion to rib out of the box. This knowledge can help you debug when trying to find where the error lies. Sometimes working with a custom output format is better as houdini currently does not support exporting binary rib files. Only asci... good for reading and understanding what is inside quickly, but bad for huge amounts of data.

*) Compatibility: Most likely there will be a few new features missing. But most of it should be compatible... it should be compatible with the latest RIB standard. And 3delight should be compatible with that standard as well.

*) renderman workflow: Yes, you will definitely be able to create shaders in houdini (using the rsl vopnodes - or coding them from scratch) and render them with 3delight.

Houdini -> renderman:

Delayed load -> dynamic load

Mantra program procedurals -> renderman run program

+ rib archives (ie: rib files reading rib files reading rib files - at the moment Houdini's ifd files can't do this).

*) If you are just starting out learning I would go for 3delight. It takes a little bit of configuration, but is fairly straightforward. I've used it myself when I was first learning a bit of rsl. I have not used it for pointcloud baking stuff though. When you really need more advanced things you can still consider investing in the educational version of PRman.

Good luck!

[Symbolic]

Thanks Peter.

[Alanw]

Sometimes working with a custom output format is better as houdini currently does not support exporting binary rib files. Only asci... good for reading and understanding what is inside quickly, but bad for huge amounts of data.

Speaking of binary RIB. I noticed the prman soho output driver has a parameter 'ri_ribformat' with ASCII + Binary as available choices, but I have yet to experiment with it.

[drukpa]

I am trying to utilize 3dl 9 in H10 on linux (debian), and I can find no user friendly way to use point cloud for GI/color bleed calc. - not without coding involvement I fear: http://joomla.renderwiki.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=267

I examined all sectors where I would implement pcloud write and read on a parameter and node basis, but no luck. I assumed I could do it in rsl vop, but no such operator. Even if I extract it out of vex, where to use it for 3dl gi except writing the code?! I looked through 3dl parameter interface -same thing - no parameter involving pcloud whatsoever. The last place I can think of is adding an extra AOV plane for pcloud or something similar, but again if succeed (which is not logical), how to implement it back into occlusion/indirect diffuse node anyway.

I mean, is it that complicated, or I'm missing something trivial?

Edited February 21, 2012 by drukpa