RenderMan Reviews & Product Details

Easy to access, lots of documentation, proved in production for years, and final quality Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Is not so popular as it should in smaller production teams/studios. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Powerful, infinitely customizable. Documentation is much improved from previous versions. Rib archiving is quite powerful, especially in conjunction with python scripting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not as user friendly as competitors like V-ray or Arnold. Sometimes seems more suited to use by engineers as opposed to artists. Strange limitations on glass shader/output aovs, and sometimes simple things like creating shadow mattes seem to require a lot of jumping through hoops. Documentation, while thorough, can be overly technical and make it hard for the actual solution to an issue to be found. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nice quality renderings abd ability to post edit Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

User interface is very busy and hard to use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's very simple to use and adapt to from previous software. There is a lot of information available to make the transition as smooth as possible and plenty of support for it being taught at high education institutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can take a while to learn how to create and adapt the different techniques to create a range of looks, it is very easy to achieve cartoony aesthetic, but quite a bit more complex to create photorealism. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is simple effective, efficient rendering. Its proven to have great photo-realistic results in movies such as Star Trek, Finding Dory, etc.

For

*students, using 3D for the first time or are trying to render models, animations for their student reel

*non-CG artist professionals who think in terms of real life material properties

* smaller companies trying to use a simpler renderer,

*large companies with tech team,

this is a great, resource and non-commercial license to learn to use.

Visual development is much faster using the resolution technique, instead of going through passes visually which misleads impatient user to think they saw the final colors/values. Overall its much easier to use, while still having great control over the look. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Still under developed, needing more interface. It requires a bit of R&D for smaller companies that don't have an in-studio tech team to help streamline workflow with this software. However it is more efficient in some ways than other software.... it just lacks some technical flexibility and commonality with the other renderers that makes CG professionals have to adjust to new lingo/terminology.

Also from what my company has said, the support needs to be more robust to help make this software spread to more companies.

On a technical note:

Glass-Shader - is kind of strange in that the all-purpose seems more realistic than the Glass-shader, which has black refractions.

Another thing is that we could use an option in the alpha channel to include a level of transparency for glass- like a checkbox- that just uses the thickness of the geometry per camera ray point. V-Ray has this in its renderers.

The layered shader- similar to V-Ray's blend mtl, is almost great, except things are getting a little complex and not so accurate with the types of parameters involved. Is it possible to just layer existing types of shaders such as the Glass, Metal, Subsurface, (meshlight(BlackBox)) and PxrSurface shaders into the Layered Shader- Instead of just using layers with limited general functions?

And like I mentioned above, Having a more easy to use Proxy loader like VRay is really important for medium to small companies.

The simplicity and ease of use hits a plateau in that you really just have to live with the render, if something isn't quite right. But I trust that eventually more tools will be added as time goes on. I'm hoping the Pxr Surface becomes the main shader and improves with time since it matches the industry standard all-purpose shaders of other software. Maybe also allow for the roughness of refraction to be tweaked separately from the reflection. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

All the presets it has are fabulous. It is fast and saves time. You don't have to configure many settings to get the desired result. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The lighting is a bit simple. It doesn't have many variations although it complements perfectly with other extra plugins. There aren't many resources and documentation online. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.