Renderman is the renderer-of-choice for many Hollywood VFX studios, and there are many ways to use the Renderman renderer in Maya. However, each method has it’s own pros and cons, and can be pretty daunting upon first inspection. VFXWorld continues its series from the Thomson Course Technology book “Maya Plugin Power” by looking into the pros and cons of various Maya plugins.
RenderMan for Maya, while being able to take advantage of PRMan, cannot read or write RIB files. It internally converts work done in the Maya interface to be used by the renderer. Output to PRMan through Maya allows the imagery produced to take advantage of the quality and speed of the renderer. More expert qualities, such as writing RIB files, are part of the RenderMan for Maya Pro. This is certainly an impetus for upgrading.
