Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!daemon
From: fish@shape.cis.ohio-state.edu (Keith Fish)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: RE: What is Renderman Standard?
Message-ID: <25225@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 15:35:06 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Lines: 42


I'm sure PIXAR is more than willing to send you a spec of Renderman ...
just ask them.  Also, there may be something available through the
Siggraph 88 proceedings.

<<< The following is MY understanding of Renderman >>>

Renderman is an attempt by PIXAR to force a defacto standard interface in the
Graphics Rendering/Imaging arena.  My understanding is that this interface
is based on tools/routines that they have developed throughout the years for
use on their hardware.  Because it was not designed for general/varying
graphics architectures, many companies wonder if it will only work well on
their systems -- hence, making their hardware also the defacto standard.
More importantly, PIXAR already has the software written for this "standard"
so if this becomes a standard, any competitor of PIXAR would have to make the
$$$ investment to write this software -- a good way to limit your competition.

PIXAR made a big push for Renderman at Siggraph 88.  Although a few companies
agreed to endorse this package (SUN, of course ... they'd endorse anything to
get their name in lights ;-), many took a more intelligent approach and said
that they would evaluate it.  PIXAR basically used a lot of marketing hype
to get support initially and even listed supporters who, when you would
walk up to their booth at Siggraph and ask them, said they did not support it.

Many (most ?) of the companies who looked at Renderman have decided that it
still needs a lot of work before it can be considered as even a base to start
the development of a standard in the rendering/imaging arena.  There are
several problems in the area of getting Renderman to mesh with other current
standard graphics environments (eg. phigs, cgi, ...) so that it becomes a
natural extension to the less-interesting/fancy graphics people do today.
Even for the niche market of image-rendering, Renderman does not include
many (any ?) ideas from the companies that have been in this business for
years ...  Wavefront, Alias Research, Neo-Visuals, Disney, etc.

Keith Fish

PS. I'm not cutting down PIXAR -- I think that the work they do is
    fantastic (literally)!  I just don't like marketing ploys to degrade
    what should be good technology, and this is what the Renderman-hype
    seems to be.  I think that the industry can develope a good imaging
    interface standard if everyone (animation software companies,
    universities, graphics hardware companies, etc.) gets to contribute.