When I first learned how to use Maya, Mental Ray was the renderer of choice. These days, however, Pixar's Renderman is the new go-to rendering tool. So, I did some studying and redid my Star Trek animation utilizing this new system. I'm actually pretty impressed with Renderman, and it has quickly become my new favorite for rendering my Maya productions.
This new video is a rework of my original Star Trek animation with my full-scale model of the U.S.S. Discovery... but utilizing Renderman instead! Where it took me quite a while to set up the original using Arnold (textures, lighting, and so on), this new version using Renderman was much easier to set up. And, instead of taking over a week to render out the animation in Arnold, it took me only a few days to do the same in Renderman at an equal to... if not better than... resolution! The most amazing aspect is that, once I initiated the Renderman batch render and it was loaded into LocalQueue, I was able to close out Maya while the render proceeded independently! Much more efficient than Mental Ray or Arnold!
I also added an atmospheric envelope around the planet in the animation. I had originally hoped to use a PXRVolume shape to simulate this, but ran into issues due to the scale of my starship. So, I used a PXRSurface material for the sphere and tweaked the settings to mimic a lightly frosted glass, with some added tweaks to the fresnel settings to soften the outer edge of the glass.
Pixar's Renderman is a powerful tool, and I like what I've seen so far! Let me know what you think of the rework, and I hope you enjoy it!