#Pixar renderman tutorial maya how to#

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 houseвЂ“software developers that makes the fruits of their labor available to the rest of us. This Maya plugin translates a Maya scene into PixarвЂ™s RIB format and converts your materials into RenderMan shaders. One of these products is Animal LogicвЂ™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.

#Pixar renderman tutorial maya how to#

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.