Yining Karl LiMay 18

Over on the bird website, a guy told me to go try RenderMan on a M4 MacBook Pro, presumably because he thinks I don't know what I'm talking about.

...I won a RenderMan Art Challenge once. I also got an honorable mention in the most recent one running RenderMan on a M4 Max MacBook Pro.

I also used to work at Pixar.

I also was literally in an Apple ad a few years ago where I was shown using RenderMan on a MacBook Pro.

Do those count?

Show threadAnders Lindqvist
@yiningkarlli tangent here, but have you seen any presentations on how progress was spent (in accordance with blinns law). I assume algorithmic breakthrough and optimization and new hardware opened something up, but what claimed it? Just curious!
May 18 at 10:17amWeb
Show threadYining Karl LiMay 18

@breakin Vastly larger/more detailed scene complexity and vastly more complex and advanced rendering techniques.

For example, at Pixar and at Disney Animation, a few years ago we stopped rendering clothing as textured meshes and instead now construct clothes out of woven fiber-level curves. We no longer need to simulate the macroscopic appearance of woven fibers with specialized BSDFs because we’re just rendering them as zillions of individual fibers for real.

Show threadThomas SturmMay 18
@yiningkarlli @breakin @cstross 😲
Show threadzen_mMay 18
@yiningkarlli @breakin That is amazing. I figured things would be a lot more detailed but I didn't expect it to be so low level. I do wonder if I would be able to notice the increased fidelity this gives over, say, a very dense mesh simulation. Thanks for sharing!
Show threadAnders LindqvistMay 18
@yiningkarlli That is seriously cool. I've followed the field a bit from a far over the years. I also noticed hugely improved simulations and volumetric rendering being new things at some point. Would be fun with a talk from say Pixar where they for each movie said how they could do per pixel per time unit and then what they spent it on :) But yeah things are crazy these days, I've seen things you post :)
Show threaddunkMay 18

@breakin @yiningkarlli FWIW, I found the "Multithreading for Visual Effects" book very interesting, and has a good chapter on optimising Presto anim tool for mlutithreading. 2015 Monsters University era so slightly before the XPU/full-GPU rendering really kicking in, but has some stuff with OpenCL/GPGPU tests.

https://bartwronski.com/2014/09/21/review-multithreading-for-visual-effects/

Review: “Multithreading for Visual Effects”, CRC Press 2014

Today I wrote a short review about a book I bought and read recently – “Multithreading for Visual Effects” published by CRC Press 2014 and including articles by Martin Watt, Erwin…

Bart Wronski
Show threadAntonio PatriarcaMay 18
@breakin @yiningkarlli While the final renders mostly take the same for the reasons already discussed, I think it is worth noticing there’s been A LOT of improvements in the time non-final quality renders usually take. Having faster iteration times is indeed extremely valuable even if the quality is not on-par to the final movie.