MayaMan is not specifically a renderer, but like RenderMan for Maya, it allows Maya users to take advantage of RenderMan-compliant rendering solutions such as PRMan, 3Delight, Air and others. It translates Maya materials, geometry, lighting, cameras, and more. Unlike RenderMan for Maya, which renders within Maya using the embedded PRMan, MayaMan can write Maya scene files out to the RIB format for use in other renderers. Additionally, MayaMan can read and attach external custom RenderMan shaders to objects within a Maya scene. RenderMan for Maya cannot do this unless you are using RenderMan for Maya Pro, which is bundled with RenderMan Pro Server or RenderMan Studio.

Quite a few RenderMan-compliant renderers are out there. One of those renderers is 3Delight from dna research. 3Delight integrates smoothly into the Maya interface, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. It renders within Maya with its own renderer, or scenes can be exported as RIB files and rendered in another RenderMancompliant renderer. As with MayaMan, both Maya materials and RenderMan shaders can be assigned to objects within the Maya scene.

[FIGURE 4] Rendering of specific render passes within the Maya Interface with 3Delight.

[FIGURE 5] The 3Delight Shader Manager, 3Delight Shader Assignment, and 3Delight Attribs Node Manager are part of the 3Delight interface within Maya.