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mray and ILM


sirogi

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We were discussing this today. I have a personal theory of what I think happened:

1. ILM has been using MR for it's raytraced layers ever since Flubber.

2. ILM has been betatesting Rman(the new raytrace version) since day 1.

3. ILM has made a strategic decision to upgrade almost *everything* from scratch. This started with implementing LInux everywhere and porting/writing tools and apps.

4. Renderer? Decision time. Understandably, they passed on writing their own renderer from scratch. Prman? Has been great, the raytracing stuff looks promising - but here's the deal - we need to integrate the libraries right into our brand spanking new workflow. The answer from Pixar? Ferget it!(these are the same people that buried Entropy and is claiming patent ownership over their stochastic sampling for motion blur - in use by many).

The result?

ILM said "ferget it!" right back and went with MR, which probably got good reviews from their TDs and was willing to share some of their code with ILM(mentions this in the release quite prominently).

Anyway, that's my theory, not based on fact, IMHO, not responsible for any damage etc etc etc...i.e. it's probably a load 'o bull. :)

Cheers

J.C.(a Peon and proud of it!)

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I think you're right about that sequence of events...

but I was always under the impression that ILM had a special relationship with Pixar, since Pixar (and all the renderman stuff) used to be a part of ILM...special in the sense of - alpha/beta testing, advanced tech support, custom code, pricing etc...

if not, then it is bad news for Pixar indeed...ILM must be their biggest customer...

thinking about Pixar gives me the same feeling as thinking about Disney...never thought that would happen....

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J.C.(a Peon and proud of it!)

WAHA HA HA HA....how ironic! that post made you "illusionist"...which brings another issue to mind...think about a forum would allow your status to go full circle...kinda like go back down when you hit the top....a "circle of life" kinda thing....

oh well disregard the rant....and put it on account of caffeine...

cheers!

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mental ray sure seems to be doing well at the moment, with this news and also it looks like maya is going that way...if it already hasn't. mental ray was also getting rave reviews with the latest couple of updates, the latest about to be released and featured in the upcoming xsi3. this and doesn't ILM have softimage still in heavy usage? so i guess with xsi3 ramping up to be very much a production tool - by all accounts/hype. it does seem to make sense, i guess.

everyone does seem to like mental ray.....

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ILM's softimage use is a very good point...and as you mention, with Maya now including mental ray as a standard rendering option (which makes me pretty mad - A|W's BS about improving maya's renderer is now moot... :angry: ) then their particles/dynamics pipeline can go out to mental ray as well... - which is good news for Maya users because right now the mr plugin for maya doesn't translate subDs or particles - I'm sure ILM will encourage mental images to get that fixed soon :)

plus mr is cheaper/CPU than PRman...

it would be very cool if Pixar released PRman 11 at ~$2500 but I'm not holding my breath...

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arctor

like you say, maya-mental doesn't do subd's, partilces and a couple of others, i think hair and volumetrics may be an issue. why would ILM be pushing for these when something like xsi has better subd tools and interaction and the particles system in xsi has been totally re-written for v3 with the "word" being they are pretty good now, finally.

mental ray is looking like it's positioning itself to come out really well in the long run, not that it isn't doing well already....a great renderer. i think mental users will come out happy in the end....

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I don't think that ILM has used XSI much at all...Yoda was all Softimage 3.9.x and 4...

as for hair...I think they have their own hair software

and you can't get better subDs than Prman...although I don't know how much ILM uses subDs anyway...

and 'pretty good' for particles doesn't compare with Habib Zargarpour and mel...(but times do change news link )...

just when you think things are getting slow they get interesting again :)

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