What renderers are used (within this community) the most with Houdini?
And why?

EDIT: I'm beginning to think no one here actually uses Houdini. :roll:

Pixar's renderman (don't know why they stopped calling it Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman…)
and mantra
are thee top two I'd say….

“EDIT: I'm beginning to think no one here actually uses Houdini. ”

?…not sure what you mean…most of the people who post to these forums either work for side effects or are working in the industry with Houdini…there are people here from C.O.R.E., Digital Domain, R&H, Axyz, Henson etc etc…

arctor
Pixar's renderman (don't know why they stopped calling it Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman…)
and mantra
are thee top two I'd say….

“EDIT: I'm beginning to think no one here actually uses Houdini. ”

?…not sure what you mean…most of the people who post to these forums either work for side effects or are working in the industry with Houdini…there are people here from C.O.R.E., Digital Domain, R&H, Axyz, Henson etc etc…

Well arctor I was just getting a little confused as to why there were so many views and no responces. I didn't think it was such a confusing question.

Then the answer is Mantra and RenderMan but RenderMan has to be installed separately. If you are saying these are th top two then there are other choices?
I liked Brazil when using Max but don't see it supported for Houdini.
What are the other supported renderers and their advantage or disadvantage if any?

I think there are a lot of lurkers, don't know why they never reply, maybe shy students, who knows.

The other supported renders are Mental Ray and any renderman complient renderer.

we use Mantra only, but we are a small shop with very limited budget. When you get a class renderer like mantra for free with pretty much unlimited render licenses you don't worry about any others. But for the big boys Renderman is usually the only choice I think, mantra too for the same reason as us, it's there it's good and it's free.

Simon
I think there are a lot of lurkers, don't know why they never reply, maybe shy students, who knows.

The other supported renders are Mental Ray and any renderman complient renderer.

we use Mantra only, but we are a small shop with very limited budget. When you get a class renderer like mantra for free with pretty much unlimited render licenses you don't worry about any others. But for the big boys Renderman is usually the only choice I think, mantra too for the same reason as us, it's there it's good and it's free.

Could you elaborate on “renderman compliant renderer”? From what I understand, RenderMan is not an actuall renderer but a tool that tells a “renderer” how and what to render, is this correct?

Omen, you should expect plenty of views without comments - that has no bearing on anything other than there's lots of people scanning the forums. Not everyone has the time to answer every question, especially one like that which can be so open-ended. Specific questions tend to get more answers - that's the case for pretty well every forum out there, CG or not, unless it's more of a social forum.

As far as the renderman question - there's two things - there's the Renderman Spec, which is indeed a specification which is followed by several renderers out there, and there's Pixar's Renderman, often referred to as Renderman, which is one of them. Simon was referring to the first instance, any renderer that follows the spec, but of course some are easier to implement that others.

For the record, I don't particulartly agree with the comment about rman being “for the big boys” and mantra being “good enough” for small shops. All software has it's strengths…and weaknesses, and rman is no exception.

Cheers,

J.C.

All I really meant was that you hear a lot more about Renderman being used in production than mantra, so I naturally assume it is used more. But as usual I guess this may be more to do with Sesi shyness than anything. Sesi just don't seem to like blowing their own trumpet, and no-one's going to blow it for them…

I am new here and I have rendered some stuff in mantra and must say that I am very pleased with results,
last week I was trying marios sss and it works nice
othervise I am used to maya and mental ray and renderman through maya via RAT.
I will post renders as sonn as I can,
I think there are a lot of misconceptions around concerning renders,
peple think(at least around me) that prman is for “cartoony stuff” and mental ray is for serious movie realism… and they hardlay know mantra,
If I would rank them concerning colors, antialiasing, qaulity of shaders….usability in production…
it would go like this:
1.prman, mantra
2.mental ray
3.maya and others
I have rendered the same scene with some default medium setting with all three and nothing comes close to prman, and mantra freshnes of colur an antialiasing and not last speeeeeed!
If you want to get fresh vibrant colours, rich colored shadows… you are in a big trouble in maya so I work this out by loading some colour info in all available shader parameters from diffuse to specular…all!
then I come close to prman colours and not some muddy tones.. but I still dont have antialiasing, impecable alpha , no artifacts and speed I want!