Get 20 free physically based RenderMan material presets
Originally posted on 26 March 2015. Scroll down for details of the extended set of free material presets.
Tools and training firm LollipopShaders has released the RenderMan RIS Starter Kit: a collection of resources for RenderMan users, including 15 20 free physically based material presets.
The kit has been released to mark Pixar’s decision to make the full version of RenderMan free for non-commercial use, and itself comes in free and commercial editions.
Physically based materials, tools and an HDR lightmap
The resources in the kit are designed to be used with RenderMan 19’s new RIS raytracing architecture.
First up, there is a selection of physically based material presets from LollipopShaders’ RIS100 library, designed to be used with the multipurpose PxrDisney material.
The free edition of the kit includes 15 20 presets, ranging from metal to metallic paint, plastic and fabric, and provided as .mel files. The full version contains the entire library of 100 presets.
Next, there is the RIS Integrator: a custom tool that generates fast ambient occlusion renders without the need to assign materials.
The commercial version of the integrator also includes camera autolight functionality and BxDF support.
Finally, there is a low-resolution 1,024 x 512-pixel HDR lightmap of a daytime exterior scene, provided in HDR and EXR formats. The commercial version also includes the EXR file at full 8K resolution.
Availability
The RenderMan RIS Starter Kit is compatible with any system set up for RenderMan 19, on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. The cut-down version of the kit is free; the full commercial version costs $195.
Read more about the RenderMan RIS Starter Kit on LollipopShaders’ website
Updated 22 September: LollipopShaders has just released an extended version of its RIS100 materials library, adding 100 new presets for RenderMan’s PxrLM layered material.
In addition, the firm has upped the number of presets from the old PxrDisney collection available to download for free to 20. You can get them either via the RenderMan RIS Starter Kit (link above) or the new link below.
Updated 23 September: LollipopShaders has now included 20 presets for the PxrLM material in its free downloads, covering the same set of real-world materials as the PxrDisney presets.
At time of posting, the descriptions on its website hadn’t been updated, but if you download the files, you should find that you get both the PxrLM and PxrDisney presets.