David Bastidas
09-Apr-2006, 02:10 PM
Nueva version de Renderman for Maya:
RenderMan for Maya 1.2 was released a week ago. This is RfM’s second minor version, few months after the program’s launch, to fix bugs. It demonstrates Pixar’s compromise with the software and their clients.
The main enhancements, comparing with the 1.1 version, in my opinion are:
Improved support for arbitrary outputs. There are new diffuse_noshadow and surfacecolor output types and the outputs are premultiplied by opacity.
Added support for the useBackground and +/- nodes.
Hair and Fur now support global illumination.
RenderMan for Maya is now large address aware on Windows. This allows RenderMan for Maya to access more memory if XP is booted with /3GB flag in boot.ini. The reason why I referred first to the “Improved support for arbitrary outputs” is because this discussion started in this site (see the “Bug or feature?” (http://gustavobraga.com/english/?p=26) post). After opening a thread in Pixar’s RfM forum, a wealthy discussion about how should the outputs be was started. As an answer we have these enhancements: the diffuse channel without shadows and without color and a separated surface color channel.
The main bugs fixed are:
Fixed a “Bad Nesting Error” crash related to Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces.
Reflectivity settings for Paint Effects are now handled properly.
Fur attribute maps can now be arbitrary image types, not just .iff.
Ramps with animated color values are now translated correctly.
Added support for animation along motion paths.
Fixed a bug where textures wouldn’t be converted for file nodes connected to lights.
Fixed a bug where samplerInfo wouldn’t work in displacement material networks.
Fixed a bug where fur shading didn’t look correct in reflections and refractions. But not all in this release are good news. Unfortunately, a bug with Area Lights creating white pixels in the images is not totally fixed. In the RfM’s 1.1 release notes was written that this bug was fixed, but it wasn’t. Now in the 1.2 version, happened the same. The bug is still there.
RenderMan for Maya 1.2 was released a week ago. This is RfM’s second minor version, few months after the program’s launch, to fix bugs. It demonstrates Pixar’s compromise with the software and their clients.
The main enhancements, comparing with the 1.1 version, in my opinion are:
Improved support for arbitrary outputs. There are new diffuse_noshadow and surfacecolor output types and the outputs are premultiplied by opacity.
Added support for the useBackground and +/- nodes.
Hair and Fur now support global illumination.
RenderMan for Maya is now large address aware on Windows. This allows RenderMan for Maya to access more memory if XP is booted with /3GB flag in boot.ini. The reason why I referred first to the “Improved support for arbitrary outputs” is because this discussion started in this site (see the “Bug or feature?” (http://gustavobraga.com/english/?p=26) post). After opening a thread in Pixar’s RfM forum, a wealthy discussion about how should the outputs be was started. As an answer we have these enhancements: the diffuse channel without shadows and without color and a separated surface color channel.
The main bugs fixed are:
Fixed a “Bad Nesting Error” crash related to Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces.
Reflectivity settings for Paint Effects are now handled properly.
Fur attribute maps can now be arbitrary image types, not just .iff.
Ramps with animated color values are now translated correctly.
Added support for animation along motion paths.
Fixed a bug where textures wouldn’t be converted for file nodes connected to lights.
Fixed a bug where samplerInfo wouldn’t work in displacement material networks.
Fixed a bug where fur shading didn’t look correct in reflections and refractions. But not all in this release are good news. Unfortunately, a bug with Area Lights creating white pixels in the images is not totally fixed. In the RfM’s 1.1 release notes was written that this bug was fixed, but it wasn’t. Now in the 1.2 version, happened the same. The bug is still there.