[RS.com]fxphd - Renderman 101

by **Admin** Sun 22 Aug 2010, 1:04 pm

Pixar's Renderman@ is a core rendering technology that has been powering production pipelines since 1985. Leading digital effects houses and computer graphics specialists use Pixar's RenderMan@ because it is the highest quality renderer available anywhere and has been production tested through successful use in feature films for over ten years. RenderMan?s powerful features such as programmable shading language and anti-aliased motion blur allow designers to believably integrate stunning synthetic effects with live-action footage. RenderMan is used for Pixar?s own feature film productions.

This fxphd course provides an introduction to the core concepts and fundamental features of Pixar's Renderman Pro Server software. It will cover the structures used in the RIB interface to describe scene data and introduce RSL, the Renderman Shading Language through the implementation of a set of simple custom shaders. The course also analyzes REYES, the core rendering algorithm, and the implications on shader design as well as rendering optimization strategies.

By the end of the course, students should have a firm understanding of how to render a scene with Renderman, take advantage of the rich feature set to precisely control render time and image quality. They will also learn how to write custom shaders in the RSL language such as the ones developed by professional shading technical directors in the demanding environment of motion picture production. Note : this course does not cover the RendermanStudio or Slim user interfaces.

Manuel Kraemer is currently a software engineering technical director in the Production Engineering group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Teesside (UK) in 1996. In London, he contributed to projects such as the BBC Science documentary ?The Planets? and Universal's sci-fi thriller ?Pitch Black?. In 2000 he relocated to the US at the Walt Disney Company, working on the stereoscopic ride "The Magic Lamp" and then moving on to the research project "Gemini Man", exploring photorealistic facial capture and rendering technologies. He started at Pixar Animation Studios in 2002, developing the skin rendering software for the Oscar winning "Incredibles" movie and contributing to the shading and rendering technologies of titles such as "Cars", "Ratatouille", "Wall-e" and "Up".

Professor: Manuel Kraemer (mkraemer)

Class 1: Introduction: Renderman@ is a specification, prman is the software : a brief history of this 20 years old software - quick tour of the prman software package and the various utilities - "hello sphere" : write a simple RIB to render a sphere - overview of the structure of a RIB - context stacks.

Class 2: RIB structure : creating a scene - basic transformations (and matrix concatenation) - positioning the camera - basic geometric primitives - parenting - options & attributes

Class 3: REYES: in-depth look at the REYES algorithm, does it really Render Everything You Ever Saw ? - core concepts : splitting, dicing, micropolygons and shaders - render options : taking control of your memory, speed and image quality

Class 4: Custom Shaders: introduction to the shading language grammar, syntax & data types, compilation - implementation of a simple plastic shader - implementation of a simple light shader - attaching the shaders to the geometry.

Class 5: ImageFeatures: motion blur, motion samples, multi-segment blur, limitations - depth of field - uniform / varying - flow control - fBm

Class 6: Passing Data: coordinate systems, space transformations

Class 7: Shading, texture maps: txmake and texture( ) - geometric primitives - texture coordinates

Class 8: Shading, Illumination: Illuminance, Illuminate : diffuse & specular reflections

Class 9: Bump & Displacement: bump mapping - displacement mapping - displacement bounds - practical application of sub-pixel displacement

Class 10: Shadows: shadow maps - bias - blur - samples - workflow in Maya / Slim

Download:

Code:: http://rapidshare.com/files/363169220/Renderman_101.part01.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363169360/Renderman_101.part02.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363169548/Renderman_101.part03.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363173096/Renderman_101.part04.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363173508/Renderman_101.part05.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363173633/Renderman_101.part06.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363173868/Renderman_101.part07.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363177138/Renderman_101.part08.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363177494/Renderman_101.part09.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363177679/Renderman_101.part10.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363177916/Renderman_101.part11.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363181184/Renderman_101.part12.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363181499/Renderman_101.part13.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363181606/Renderman_101.part14.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363181897/Renderman_101.part15.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363185105/Renderman_101.part16.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363185579/Renderman_101.part17.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363185664/Renderman_101.part18.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/363185898/Renderman_101.part19.rar

Please say thanks!