Mental Ray

[peliosis]

I wonder if sidefx is going to improve mr support in houdini.

For small studios it would be a very big thing.

I'm in the middle of rendering with mental ray, would it be hard to introduce houdini version of phenomenon creator or editor into vops?

There are shaders and many phenomenons ready, now we'd only need an interface to connect them and create new, like in xsi, but to be honest I can smell the superiority of vops version:).

I'm sure it would turn the eyes of thousands towards houdini.

Every software have mr "attached" but not houdini, why is that.

I'd like so much to use houdini exclusively I already showed my emotions toward it but it would be really hard to make it with mantra only and mantra/mental crossfire would be some tremendously powerful combination!!!

I know houdini has mr support and create great mi files but that's not enough for anybody less techy, needless to add the price of master and standalone mr. (but this is a different subject)

I'm not a programmer but it shouldn't be impossible or even hard for C++ team to add mr vops, just an interface using existing shaders.

I wouldn't have another look at xsi or any other beautiful gui if this dream came true.

I know big houses are using mr but nobody here speaks about it.

I'm sure everybody would be delighted:) and many newbies would create beautiful gi's and talk about them everywhere.

Mantra IS superb but as every renderer not for every purpose.

So...is this only a hopeless bow of a pitiful hedgehog?

[Guest xionmark]

Hi there,

It shouldn't be all too long and there will be a VOPs MR phenomonom editor ... I know for a fact that it's being worked on.

--Mark

[TheUsualAlex]

Hey, what 's phenomenon?

[Guest xionmark]

Hey, what 's phenomenon?

26816[/snapback]

Hi Alex,

It's mental ray's term for a shader graph:

http://www.mentalimages.com/2_1_0_mentalray/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Ray

:-)

[peliosis]

Hi there,

It shouldn't be all too long and there will be a VOPs MR phenomonom editor ...  I know for a fact that it's being worked on.

--Mark

26815[/snapback]

AAAA, you almost made me collapse. There is a light in a tunnel then!

And if they would sell mr with houdini they wouldn't force newbies smallies to spend their poverty wages on 1200 per cpu standalone if I'm right.

And if DEAR SESI would add a module just for rendering in 3rd party software We could consider AIR which is sooo nice and quite fast GI solution.

Oh my oh my, I'd be happy like a child to setup all our pipeline in houdini and show them bastards! (maybe with a little help of some silly little poly modeler:))

Xionmark, even if this fact would become a fiction you made my day with it:) Haven't you been saying something about writing such a tool some time ago?

And a phenomenon is a component that look like a shader, but is not written in C++ but composed out of subshaders and use certain rendering options. You don't need to know any programming language to build them.

XSI rendertree operates on shaders and phenomena to build new phenomenons.

So basically mr shaders are little tools for special purposes (like vop nodes) eg. noise, conversion, lookups and you put them together creating a phenomenon.

just a fancy name.

Thanks for the news!

[Jason]

AAAA, you almost made me collapse. There is a light in a tunnel then!

And if they would sell mr with houdini they wouldn't force newbies smallies to spend their poverty wages on 1200 per cpu standalone if I'm right.

And if DEAR SESI would add a module just for rendering in 3rd party software We could consider AIR which is sooo nice and quite fast GI solution.

26822[/snapback]

The Renderman ROP (which is not shipped with Apprentice) does support rendering with AIR, 3Delight and is configurable for various subsets of the Renderman spec.

The thing is, if they allowed rendering to AIR, how would they stop you rendering to Renderman and just rendering any resolution?

[michael]

I believe you can get a rendering module from SESI..I really don't know much about the details but an email to SESI will get you an answer pretty fast...or a post

[TheUsualAlex]

I believe you can get a rendering module from SESI..I really don't know much about the details but an email to SESI will get you an answer pretty fast...or a post 

26831[/snapback]

You mean rscript etc? I thought rscript are essentially hscript, only that the sole purpose of rscript is to execute render tasks and thus you can't use it to modify your OPs. Rscript would definitely make it much cheaper for a farm to render from Houdini without tying up hscript licenses..

[Jason]

You mean rscript etc? I thought rscript are essentially hscript, only that the sole purpose of rscript is to execute render tasks and thus you can't use it to modify your OPs. Rscript would definitely make it much cheaper for a farm to render from Houdini without tying up hscript licenses..

26834[/snapback]

I think he's talking about the RenderPlus license for Select or Escape. It adds Renderman or mental ray or whatever.

[michael]

yeah that's the ticket...renderplus...

[peliosis]

The Renderman ROP (which is not shipped with Apprentice) does support rendering with AIR, 3Delight and is configurable for various subsets of the Renderman spec.

The thing is, if they allowed rendering to AIR, how would they stop you rendering to Renderman and just rendering any resolution?

26829[/snapback]

I know, that would make apprentice something a lot more:)

I was thinking about the old subject of purchasing only needed modules not the whole master license, but perhaps Arctor is right.

I'm testing AIR with rhinoman in my free time but perhaps future mantra will reach it's gi capabilities.

[Visual Cortex Lab]

Hi there,

It shouldn't be all too long and there will be a VOPs MR phenomonom editor ...  I know for a fact that it's being worked on.

--Mark

26815[/snapback]

now that would be definately in my H9 wish list :)

cheers