Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!watmath!watserv1!dwrowley
From: dwrowley@watserv1.waterloo.edu (David W. Rowley)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: A modest proposal
Keywords: standards, raytracing, rendering, renderman
Message-ID: <1990Aug15.012204.19344@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 90 01:22:04 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 46

Raytracers and renderers are a great thing to hack.  Currently we have
a host of well written systems available as freeware or shareware,
including Craig Kolb's excellent Rayshade, David Buck's DKB, Steve
Koren's QRT, Dave Wecker's DKB, Mark VandeWetterig's MTV and the
Australian VORT.  Some have CSG, some have procedural maps, texture 
mapping, gridtracing, kajiya bounding slabs, octrees, heightfields,
snazzy input languages, etc.

But no one program has it all.

One of the problems inherent in a 'raytracing program' is since it
is a 'program', it is limited to its current set of features.

Renderman (tm) takes the approach of a rendering library, along with a
shading language.  The more I think about this approach the more
I like it.  Wouldn't it be great if you could create, say, a
snow procedural map, and donate it to the raytracing community
at large ?  Take one of the 'Graphics Gems' and speed up one
aspect of tracing and contribute that ? 

Bearing this in mind, how about the collective resources on
Usenet, CompuServe, etc pool their efforts to implement a common
raytracing skeleton, perhaps similar in concept to Renderman (tm) ?

In fact, since Pixar allows anyone to license the Renderman (tm)
interface specification, would it be possible to implement a
public domain version of Renderman (tm) itself ?

Would Pixar allow a public domain version ?  Is Renderman (tm) the
best specification for a system like this ?  How about writing it
under the auspices of Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation ?
(gnu-render ?)

We could even write different renderers for the same rendering
language, such as a raytracing version for high quality and a
scanline version for speed / previewing (perhaps built on top
of something like VOGLE ?)

Well, enough rambling.  Let me know what you think.  I'd certainly
like to work on a project like this.  I have seen the benefits of
standards in a variety of arenas.  With the talent around I'm
sure we could create something quite sophisticated.  

David Rowley
Mutual Life of Canada
dwrowley@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca