Second, I felt that this angle would allow me to limit how expansive of an environment I would need to build around the treehouse. I wound up deciding to go with the camera angle and framing in Figure 6 for several reasons.įirst off, there are just a lot of bits that looked fun to shade, such as the round tower cabin on the left side of the treehouse. Here are a couple of different white clay test renders I did while trying to find a good camera position and framing:
This mode wound up being super useful for scouting being able to interactively play with depth of field settings and see even basic skydome lighting helped a lot in getting a feel for each candidate camera angle. Instead of scouting using just the GL viewport in Maya, I tried using RenderMan for Maya 22’s IPR mode, which replaces the Maya viewport with a live RenderMan render. Since I really wanted to focus on high-detail shading for this project, I decided from close to the beginning to pick a close-up camera angle that would allow for showcasing shading detail, at the trade-off of not depicting the entire treehouse.Ī nice (lazy) bonus is that picking a close-up camera angle meant that I didn’t need to shade the entire treehouse just the parts in-frame. I started with just scouting for some good camera angles. Here is a simple render showing what is provided out of the box: The model is by Alex Shilt, based on a concept by Vasylina Holod. This was a really fun exercise, and I learned a lot!įor this art challenge, Pixar supplied a base model without any sort texturing or shading or lighting or anything else.
#RENDERMAN TUTORIAL NORMAL MAPS MAYA UV MAPPED HOW TO#
Therefore, knowing how these four renderers work and what vocabulary is associated with them tends to be useful when teaching new artists how to use our in-house renderer, and for providing a common frame of reference when we discuss potential improvements and changes to our in-house renderer.Īll of the above is the mindset I went into this project with, so this post is meant to be something of a breakdown of what I did, along with some thoughts and observations made along the way. These lessons are humbling to learn, but also really cool and encouraging if you think about it- these lessons means that for any given problem that arises in the rendering world, as an academic field and as an industry, we get multiple attempts to solve it from many really brilliant minds from a variety of background and a variety of different contexts and environments!Īs a result, something I’ve come to strongly believe is that for rendering engineers, there is enormous value in learning to use outside renderers that are not the one we work on day-to-day ourselves.Īt any given moment, I try to have at least a working familiarity with the latest versions of Pixar’s RenderMan, Solid Angle (Autodesk)’s Arnold, and Chaos Group’s Vray and Corona renderers.Īll of these renderers are excellent, cutting edge tools, and when new artists join our studio, these are the most common commercial renderers that new artists tend to know how to use. One big lesson I have learned since entering the rendering world is that there is no such thing as the absolute best overall renderer- there are only renderers that are the best suited for particular workflows, tasks, environments, people, etc.Įvery in-house renderer is the best renderer in the world for the particular studio that built that renderer, and every commercial renderer is the best renderer in the world for the set of artists that have chosen that renderer as their tool of choice.Īnother big lesson that I have learned is that even though the Hyperion team at Disney Animation has some of the best rendering engineers in the world, so do all of the other major rendering teams, both commercial and in-house. I thought the most recent RenderMan art challenge, “Woodville”, would make a great excuse for playing with RenderMan 22 for Maya here’s the final image I came up with: Woodville RenderMan Art Challenge November 30, 2019Įvery once in a while, I make a point of spending some significant personal time working on a personal project that uses tools outside of the stuff I’m used to working on day-to-day (Disney’s Hyperion renderer professionally, Takua Renderer as a hobby).Ī few times each year, Pixar’s RenderMan group holds an art challenge contest where Pixar provides a un-shaded un-uv’d base model and contestants are responsible for layout, texturing, shading, lighting, additional modeling of supporting elements and surrounding environment, and producing a final image.
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