3Delight Frequently Asked Questions
- What is RenderMan®?
- Can I use 3Delight to render Maya and 3DS scenes?
- Can I use 3Delight to render Rhino3D objects?
- Can I use 3Delight with Houdini?
- Which Macintosh 3D software export RIB files?
- What else is available for MacOS X users?
- How can I distribute my rendering on several computers?
- What rendering algorithm does 3Delight use?
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?
3Delight comes with a fully featured Maya plug-in. For 3D Studio Max, 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 plug-in for Rhino3D. Trim curves, a heavily used feature in Rhino3D, are supported by 3Delight.
4. Can I use 3Delight with Houdini?
Yes, all details are described on this wiki page.
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.
7. How can I distribute rendering on several computers?
3Delight can render one single frame on several computers without any additional package(s) using special options to the renderdl command. For sequence rendering one can use Sun's Grid Engine, a powerful, well documented (and open source) distributed computing solution. DrQueue is also a good open source distributed rendering manager that readily supports 3Delight, it is probably easier to setup and use than Sun's Grid Engine.
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.