All images from Maya Plugin Power © Course Technology.

This month, VFXWorld continues a series of six excerpts of the Thomson Course Technology book Maya Plugin Power, which will give VFXWorld readers to learn how to take advantage of the myriad of plugins available to Maya users.

Pixar's RenderMan is the "it" renderer for Hollywood visual fx. There are several ways to take advantage of RenderMan in Maya. Sorting through these options has a great deal to do with understanding RenderMan compliance. Here's a look.

RenderMan Compliance
RenderMan for Maya, while being able to take advantage of PRMan, cannot read or write RIB files. It internally converts work done in the Maya interface to be used by the renderer. Output to PRMan through Maya allows the imagery produced to take advantage of the quality and speed of the renderer. More expert qualities, such as writing RIB files, are part of the RenderMan for Maya Pro. This is certainly an impetus for upgrading. There are, however, other Maya-specific products capable of using RenderMan. One of these products is Animal Logic’s MayaMan. This Maya plugin translates a Maya scene into Pixar’s RIB format and converts your materials into RenderMan shaders. Animal Logic is another one of those production house–software developers that makes the fruits of their labor available to the rest of us. MayaMan has been used on the bulk of their production work in film and television over the past decade. Their film work includes Happy Feet, 300, 28 Weeks Later, Fool's Gold, The Matrix, Moulin Rouge! and World Trade Center. Animal Logic also uses MayaMan in their commercial work, as seen in their work for Smirnoff and Toyota, as well as music videos. Stills from this work are shown in Figures 1-3.

[Figure 1] Smirnoff Ice Icicle commercial. Image courtesy of Animal Logic

In Figure 1, in an ice-covered cave, hundreds of Smirnoff Ice bottles are frozen to the ceiling as stalactites. Suddenly, one breaks off, crashing into the ground, creating an instant party. Animal Logic created an entire CG environment for the ad, with only a few small live action elements incorporated in the first few shots. The team created the cave, the CG icicles and bottles, as well as the shattering effect when one bottle falls and breaks through the ice.

The graceful, gliding, four-wheel drive vehicle made of ice shown in Figure 2 was needed for Toyota Prado’s latest television commercial, Ice Sculptures, directed by Bruce Hunt through @radical.media. Animal Logic created the 3D computer-generated ice car and carefully choreographed its movement as it glides across various road surfaces, verging on being out of control.

[FIGURE 2-3] Ice vehicle from a Toyota Prado commercial, and a scene from Telemetry Orchestra’s music video Under the Cherry Tree. Image courtesy of Animal Logic