My initial Rendertime calculations were very conservative. I should be able to render this a lot quicker than the 500 hours I first estimated. This also saves me having to build all my shaders in RenderMan SL.

At the moment I have the first module Zarya, rendered in 12 seconds at 1K resolution, so things are looking good.

I enrolled in Computer Graphics this semester which is very interesting. Big workload, but I am learning what goes on behind the scenes with a lot of 3d applications/game engines. I will need to of built a Java Raytracer by the end of it, so it looks like trigonometery does have a use after highschool :)

Finally managed to get texture mapping working inside Maya, using Liquid and rendering with Aqsis. I am probably doing this the long way, and there is probably a much better and faster workflow, but this works. I was asked to add my findings to the Aqsis Wiki, so here it is.

I have been playing with 3Delight for Maya. It appears to have a much better hypershade integration than liquid. 3Delight reads the shader network and builds a SL/RIB equivalent at render time. This saves having to write the texture mappings for the shaders by hand. I have found that the RIB files can be saved out and then dispatched via drqueue. It appears that use of the license is free for non-commerical use, which would be perfect for a mini render-farm at Uni.

Learning how to write RenderMan shaders... I think this will give me a good understanding of what Liquid needs to pass to Aqsis to successfully render.

Having some weird issues with the edge of the opacity layer. It seems that there is a white edge to the transparency map. At first I thought it was the highlight of the Specular, but I turned that down to 0 and it was still there.

Going to try mapping a texture next.

I have Aqsis successfully rendering inside Maya now, thanks to adding the following line to the aqsisrc file:

Option "display" "string liqmaya" ["C:\Program Files\Liquid\displayDrivers\Aqsis\liqmaya.dll"]

I have also found a program called ShaderMan that is helping me learn how the RIB shader language works. Its bit like the Maya hypershade, and it's a pity that the two cannot be fused together, or is this what SLIM and MtoR do when you pay the big bucks?

To get the ShaderMan mini preview window working I also need to add the following to aqsisrc

Option "display" "string sdchwnd" ["C:\shaderMan\d_sdcHWND.dll"]

I did some tests with the default .slx shaders that come with Aqsis.

I need to learn how to map texturemaps with RIB shaders, and if it is possible to map across Maya's UV texture coordinates to the s,t coordinates of the exported RIB file.

Using Liquid Maya and Aqsis and plenty of help from developers of the two products, I can now export RIB files from Maya, with shaders built from the Hypershade, and have them rendered within a Open Source render farm.

My next step is to configure DrQueue to enable remote job submission and monitoring. Hopefully this will enable students using maya licenses at one campus to use the render farm located offsite.

I have been able to contact one of the developers/maintainers at sourceforge for the LiquidMaya program. I am trying to recompile the SVN source against Maya 7.0 (The version at Uni) and Pixie renderer.

I am running into a few problems with my IDE setup (Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 with Platform SDK 2003 R2)

Here are my current compile errors, If anyone has any advice let me know.

http://jiltedreality.pastebin.com/m14ef495

..well thats what I am trying to setup. I want to be able to export RenderMan compliant RIB files from Maya 8.5 with shaders. I have a final year project coming up and will have about 600 Hours of rendertime to try and push through in a week. I am looking at a few different options LiquidMaya and MentalRIB.

As for the renderer itself, Im leaning towards Pixie or Aqsis