fish@shape.cis.ohio-state.edu (Keith Fish) (10/25/88)
> Subject: Re: What is Renderman Standard? > Reply-To: upstill@pixar.UUCP (Steve Upstill) > Organization: Pixar -- Marin County, California > I'm writing the RenderMan book, so I guess I'm qualified to clear up > a couple of things from this posting: Thanks to Steve for his description of the history, development, work, etc. that went into the RenderMan spec, and for clearing up my misconceptions of the RenderMan spec. Hopefully anyone else out there with an equivalent lack of understanding got just as much out of his response. > This comment is borderline offensive to me, partly because it is admittedly > based on speculation and partly because I was around during the process ... Sorry about that (admittedly not professional). I perceived the endorsements made at Siggraph as marketing-hype and, hence, I was offended that I was being told "RenderMan should be a standard because a bunch of guys say so", and (much) later told "RenderMan should be a standard based on some list of its good/bad attributes for image-application programmers". I'd rather see the attributes with the endorsement as an aside; I'm a little suspicious of endorsements because I don't know if there's any other reason (eg. $$$) for an endorsement than the quality of the product being endorsed. > I appreciate your appreciation, but I wish I knew where these > impressions of yours came from. This is what I gleened while at Siggraph. Most of what I saw/heard was the marketing end of things and I wasn't able to pick up much on the technical side. > If anyone on the net is interested in more information on RenderMan > without investing $15 in a spec, the current issue of Unix Review > includes an article I wrote discussing the major aspects of the > standard. Also, the November issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal has a > cover story on the shading language, which is RenderMan's doorway > for extensibility. > Steve Upstill Keith Fish