AutoRIB - Renderman Interface Bytestream made usable
Quite often during my many talks with people about Renderman, I find myself asking whether people have tried using AutoRIB to solve their problem, the response is almost invariably "Auto-what?".
AutoRIB is a great little Java based tool that allows you to modify/add to RIB files on the way to the renderer. RIB files are intended to portray detailed information from a modelling/animation tool to a renderer, the fact that they are usually ASCII should not be read to mean that they are an intermediate format that can/should be hand edited and tweaked. Generally it is not recommended to hand tweak RIB files, they are not designed for this, however there are often situations where you may want to make changes to a RIB file without haveing to go back to the modelling/animation package.
This is where AutoRIB comes in. It is effectively an active filter that can be applied to a RIB file, it reads the RIB into an internal format, then processes an instruction file that defines what the user wants to do to the RIB. Some simple actions include, replacing shaders, changing colors, changing options/attributes etc. More complicated actions that would be very difficult to achieve using the normal approach of Perl/Python etc. filtering include, generation of other render passes such as shadow map, occlusion map and reflection maps for use in the main render. These actions can be defined to act on only certain objects/lightsources within the scene, selectable by name (as defined by the common "identifier" "name" attribute).
I recommend anyone who uses Renderman and RIB on a regular basis to look into AutoRIB, in particular it is of great use to those who do not have access to the power tools such as MtoR for Maya that the pro's have. Given a suitable modelling tool, such as Wings3D, and AutoRIB to massage the output before sending to an OS Renderman renderer, such as Aqsis, many people can get excellent results out of free tools while learning and experiencing the details of the Renderman interface.
AutoRIB is a great little Java based tool that allows you to modify/add to RIB files on the way to the renderer. RIB files are intended to portray detailed information from a modelling/animation tool to a renderer, the fact that they are usually ASCII should not be read to mean that they are an intermediate format that can/should be hand edited and tweaked. Generally it is not recommended to hand tweak RIB files, they are not designed for this, however there are often situations where you may want to make changes to a RIB file without haveing to go back to the modelling/animation package.
This is where AutoRIB comes in. It is effectively an active filter that can be applied to a RIB file, it reads the RIB into an internal format, then processes an instruction file that defines what the user wants to do to the RIB. Some simple actions include, replacing shaders, changing colors, changing options/attributes etc. More complicated actions that would be very difficult to achieve using the normal approach of Perl/Python etc. filtering include, generation of other render passes such as shadow map, occlusion map and reflection maps for use in the main render. These actions can be defined to act on only certain objects/lightsources within the scene, selectable by name (as defined by the common "identifier" "name" attribute).
I recommend anyone who uses Renderman and RIB on a regular basis to look into AutoRIB, in particular it is of great use to those who do not have access to the power tools such as MtoR for Maya that the pro's have. Given a suitable modelling tool, such as Wings3D, and AutoRIB to massage the output before sending to an OS Renderman renderer, such as Aqsis, many people can get excellent results out of free tools while learning and experiencing the details of the Renderman interface.
posted by Paul Gregory at 5:59 AM
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