kelvin@nth.UUCP (Kelvin Thompson) (07/17/88)
I would like to increase my understanding of the context of
RenderMan.
I have seen the spec -- I read the first half (the basic stuff)
moderately closely, but I only skimmed the second half (the
shading language). It looked pretty mouth-watering from a user's
(application programmer's) point of view, but it looked pretty
frightening from an implementor's point of view. It looks like
it would take several man-years to do a decent implementation.
I have some big questions:
Is anybody selling a device-independent implementation of this?
Who is writing the implementations(?) for all those companies
that endorsed RenderMan?
My guess is that only a very few companies are going to be able to
implement this in any reasonable amount of time (say within a year).
Pixar could fer sher. Probably the likes of Alias, Wavefront, and
Pacific Data could port some of their stuff in a few months. Probably
a couple of hot graphics universities as well.
My theory:
RenderMan is a publication of the Pixar marketing department.
Graphics nerds around the world will give it a close looking-over
and decide they want an implementation. But !oops! the only
way you can get it before the 1990's is to go to Pixar.
If Pixar is smart, they will have a portable implementation
ready very soon (or have they announced?). If they're less
smart, they'll make you buy some Pixar hardware.
Of course, if everybody *does* jump on Pixar's bandwagon, then things
could be a lot nicer in a few years, when you can jam a mini-Pixar
into your Mac II.
-- Kelvin Thompson, conspiracy-ologist
kelvin%nth.uucp@cs.utexas.edu {...,uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!nth!kelvinharmon@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu (07/21/88)
Renderman may die an untimely death.....I would adopt a wait and see attitude.