Pixar Renderman


The Glimpse PaletteRenderman is an interface specification for generating high quality digital imagery. It is split into two components - scene and appearance descriptions. A modelling/animation system produces a 3D scene file (or one can be programmed by hand) which is then passed through the Renderman system and onto a compliant renderer. At this point appearances are applied to the objects in the scene. Appearances are described as pieces of code known as shaders.

   Renderman converts data from compatible programs into a universal format which is then rendered by a compliant renderer.

   Renderman is not software or platform specific. All it requires is that scene data is output in it's native format (a Renderman Interface Bytestream file or RIB) and that shaders are also supplied in the correct format. Nor does renderman rely on any one particular rendering sytem. As long as rendering software supports all the features specified in the interface description then that renderer will be able to produce images from the RIB and shaders. Renderers can therefore use raytracing, radiosity or any other technique.

   By far the most commonly used renderer at the moment is Pixars Photorealistic Renderman (PRman) which has been used to produce outstanding effects for numerous feature films. This is the renderer which I have used for this project. The screenshot above shows Glimpse, the shader manager for Maya. The window contains a number of instances of my Vangogh shader, each of which is applied to a certain object within the the Maya scene.