3Delight has been involved in some other groundbreaking projects. The software team at dna research has been developing 3Delight for many years, and it is now used in their production work. The piece was rendered in RenderMan and was exceptional on many levels. The animation was far more advanced than anything else around. In 1995, dna research, created by Pierre Lachapelle in association with TFX Animation, in Montreal Canada, wowed SIGGRAPH 1995 with a trailer to a film called The Boxer. SIGGRAPH is a place to see the latest in computer graphics technology. Figures 6 and 7 are rendered directly within Maya using 3Delight. As with MayaMan, both Maya materials and RenderMan shaders can be assigned to objects within the Maya scene.ģDelight can achieve some very realistic imagery and has tools such as very high-quality displacement mapping, depth of field, motion blur, ray tracing and shadow maps, subsurface scattering on a per object basis, global illumination supporting HDRI and final gathering. It renders within Maya with its own renderer, or scenes can be exported as RIB files and rendered in another RenderMancompliant renderer. 3Delight integrates smoothly into the Maya interface, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. One of those renderers is 3Delight from dna research. Quite a few RenderMan-compliant renderers are out there. RenderMan for Maya cannot do this unless you are using RenderMan for Maya Pro, which is bundled with RenderMan Pro Server or RenderMan Studio. Additionally, MayaMan can read and attach external custom RenderMan shaders to objects within a Maya scene. Unlike RenderMan for Maya, which renders within Maya using the embedded PRMan, MayaMan can write Maya scene files out to the RIB format for use in other renderers. It translates Maya materials, geometry, lighting, cameras, and more. MayaMan is not specifically a renderer, but like RenderMan for Maya, it allows Maya users to take advantage of RenderMan-compliant rendering solutions such as PRMan, 3Delight, Air and others. The graceful, gliding, four-wheel drive vehicle made of ice shown in Figure 2 was needed for Toyota Prado’s latest television commercial, Ice Sculptures, directed by Bruce Hunt through Animal Logic created the 3D computer-generated ice car and carefully choreographed its movement as it glides across various road surfaces, verging on being out of control. The team created the cave, the CG icicles and bottles, as well as the shattering effect when one bottle falls and breaks through the ice. Animal Logic created an entire CG environment for the ad, with only a few small live action elements incorporated in the first few shots. Suddenly, one breaks off, crashing into the ground, creating an instant party. In Figure 1, in an ice-covered cave, hundreds of Smirnoff Ice bottles are frozen to the ceiling as stalactites. Stills from this work are shown in Figures 1-3. Animal Logic also uses MayaMan in their commercial work, as seen in their work for Smirnoff and Toyota, as well as music videos. Their film work includes Happy Feet, 300, 28 Weeks Later, Fool's Gold, The Matrix, Moulin Rouge! and World Trade Center. MayaMan has been used on the bulk of their production work in film and television over the past decade. Animal Logic is another one of those production house–software developers that makes the fruits of their labor available to the rest of us. This Maya plugin translates a Maya scene into Pixar’s RIB format and converts your materials into RenderMan shaders. One of these products is Animal Logic’s MayaMan. There are, however, other Maya-specific products capable of using RenderMan. This is certainly an impetus for upgrading. More expert qualities, such as writing RIB files, are part of the RenderMan for Maya Pro. Output to PRMan through Maya allows the imagery produced to take advantage of the quality and speed of the renderer. It internally converts work done in the Maya interface to be used by the renderer. RenderMan for Maya, while being able to take advantage of PRMan, cannot read or write RIB files. Sorting through these options has a great deal to do with understanding RenderMan compliance. There are several ways to take advantage of RenderMan in Maya. Pixar's RenderMan is the "it" renderer for Hollywood visual fx. This month, VFXWorld continues a series of six excerpts of the Thomson Course Technology book Maya Plugin Power, which will give VFXWorld readers to learn how to take advantage of the myriad of plugins available to Maya users.
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