Frequently Asked Questions
Submit your questions to info@3delight.com.
1)
What is RenderMan®?
Although this is not necessarily a frequently asked question, we thought we'd answer it anyhow for those of you who may not have it quite right or are simply curious. So, here it is, plain and simple: RenderMan® is a technical specification for interfacing between modeling and rendering programs. For a renderer to be considered a RenderMan® compliant renderer it must meet all of the standard requirements laid out in the spec. There are a few more requirements which are mentioned in the Usenet: comp.graphics.rendering.renderman FAQ.
2)
Can I use 3Delight to render Maya and 3DS scenes?
Liquid is a full featured MAYA plugin that is directly usable with 3Delight. Alternately, MayaMan is a rendering plugin from animal logic for Maya that can be used to export RIB files with everything required to produce high quality images with 3Delight (including shaders). For 3DS, animal logic offers a similar product called MaxMan.
3)
Can I use 3Delight
to render Rhino3D objects?
Yes, by using RhinoMan, which is a rendering pluggin for Rhino3D. Trim curves, a heavily used feature in Rhino3D, are supported by 3Delight.
4)
Can I use 3Delight with Houdini?
Yes, by exporting the scene as a RIB file and feeding it to 3Delight. Houdini shaders can also be exported as RenderMan® Shading Language code and then be compiled and used in 3Delight.
5)
Which Macintosh 3D software export RIB files?
The following packages
are capable of exporting RIB files: Pixels 3D from Pixels
Digital, Poser by Curious
Labs, Modo by Luxology, Silo by
NeverCenter and form-Z by
auto-des-sys.
6)
What else is available for MacOS X users? 3Delighter
is a program that gives you access to all of 3Delight's
functions through Mac's nice aqua GUI. Anyone not familiar with UNIX shells
will like this. There is also TkMatMan,
a shader development interface by Goran Kocov. It has been ported to MacOS
X by Robert Coldwell and can be downloaded here. 7)
How can I distribute my rendering on several computers? One solution is to use
BORG (Borg Open Rendering
GUI), which is a network rendering system for RenderMan® compliant
renderers. The latest version fully supports 3Delight. 8)
What rendering algorithm does 3Delight use? 3Delight
is built around the Reyes algorithm. This algorithm was first described in
1987 in a paper by Robert Cook, Loren Carpenter and Edwin Catmull entitled,
"The Reyes Image Rendering Architecture." This algorithm enables
3Delight
to efficiently compute displacements, motion blur and depth of field effects. Ray tracing
is implemented as a separate algorithm and used only when needed. 10)
Will 3Delight support CSG? Support for CSG is not planned for the near future. 11)
When I download for MacOS X, I get a "download.asp" file, what do
I do with that? This seems like a bug
in Internet Explorer for MacOS X. Rename "download.asp" to "3Delight.pkg.tar"
and double click on it.
