DreamWorks Animation To Release Renderer As Open-Source Software

With annual CG confab SIGGRAPH slated to start Monday in Vancouver, DreamWorks Animation announced its intent to release its proprietary renderer, MoonRay, as open-source software later this year. Hollywood Reporter reports: MoonRay has been used on feature films such as How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Croods: A New Age, The Bad Guys and upcoming Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. MoonRay uses DreamWorks' distributed computation framework, Arras, also to be included in the open-source code base.

"We are thrilled to share with the industry over 10 years of innovation and development on MoonRay's vectorized, threaded, parallel, and distributed code base," said Andrew Pearce, DWA's vp of global technology. "The appetite for rendering at scale grows each year, and MoonRay is set to meet that need. We expect to see the code base grow stronger with community involvement as DreamWorks continues to demonstrate our commitment to open source."

Re:Continues?

[Joce640k]

https://research.dreamworks.co... [dreamworks.com]

Re:

[Bu11etmagnet]

I wish I had so much USD that I'd need a USD Manager for them.

Renderman

[backslashdot]

I guess we'll take what we can get, but isn't it inferior to Renderman?

Re:Renderman

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Renderman isn't open source.

Re:

[Narcocide]

It's probably still better than Cycles.

Re:

[MindPrison]

Even if it was better than Cycles (Cycles is an absolute beast now, and one of the best alternatives to a poor mans renderer if you have an Nvidia card, you can get), I welcome any new render engine as it gives us an expanded artist toolset.

Since Blenders GUI is entirely python based it is super flexible to integrate anything you want, external fluit simulators (just look at flip fluids), paint tools, game engines even, and ofc. any render engine you can think of - you can even make those render "in place"

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...why does it matter for GUI? Do you think MEL in Maya is any better?

Re:

[Ecuador]

Like how MySQL & PostgreSQL are inferior to Oracle? Or GIMP inferior to Photoshop? What is your point?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Adobe is supposedly going to offer the web Photoshop for free.

Yeah, ugh, right? But anyway.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people use Photoshop for "free".

Thanks Dreamworks

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

Seems like a really nice move.

Agreed.

[Gravis Zero]

I was skeptical that they might release their stuff under some "no commercial use" license but everything else they have released is Apache License, Version 2.0 or Modified BSD License. I dislike the "no commercial use" licenses not because I expect to use them for commercial purposes but rather that the software is being released as a tactic to prevent a free alternative from cropping up.

Re:

[kurkosdr]

I don't think that "no commercial use" licenses are considered open-source or free software by the OSI and FSF respectively (and the headline of the article clearly says open-source). But I do get what you say, some people may think a "no commercial use" license is "open-enough"/"free-enough" which can prevent a free alternative from cropping up. But this is not the case here.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

I don't think that "no commercial use" licenses are considered open-source or free software by the OSI and FSF respectively (and the headline of the article clearly says open-source).

1) You are confusing "open source" and "libre"
2) OSI/FSF aren't the ones approving the headlines
3) It's happened before on /.

But this is not the case here.

How do you know? The haven't actually said what the license is and it hasn't been released. We can make an informed guess but without the release, we cannot know.

FOSS renderers are gaining.

[Qbertino]

FOSS renderers are contiunously getting better, as is the prime FOSS 3D Tool Blender and its renderers EVEE and Cycles. AFAIK they are ready (and used) for feature films already. By and large the market for prorprietary 3D tooling is getting smaller and likely drying up soon. There are some tools that still have a userbase, but all new users are starting with and staying with Blender.

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[Viol8]

Can Blender accept plug-ins that have new functionality? I don't know anything about graphics tools but I do know about audio tools and every popular DAW can accept 3rd party plugins that provide new sounds, effects, functionality or a combination of the above.

Re:

[MindPrison]

Yes, absolutely.

Blender's GUI is Python based.
You can make your own GUI on any plugin you want, even make your own add ons. It's got an integrated python environment so no external requirements, there's a dedicated built in editor, and you can save your changes as preferences so you can do literally whatever you want with Blender.

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[Viol8]

Does it run Python natively with a built in interpreter or does it require an external installation of python on the system?

Re:

[MindPrison]

Built in with specialized variables for direct manipulation of the GUI and all Blender functions, you can do what you want with it.
You can jump right into the editor and write code and run it directly within Blender. You can also save them as scripts and have these called upon as "gui" buttons which you make yourself.

Just load your blender default settings (it will show once you download blender and run it), click on the tab that says "Scripting", and the Python interpeter will show as a small (expandable)

Re:

[narcc]

Blender's GUI is Python based.

That's not the selling point you think it is...

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Can Blender accept plug-ins that have new functionality?

A three second web search would have answered that question with a resounding "Yes".

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

FOSS renderers are contiunously getting better, as is the prime FOSS 3D Tool Blender and its renderers EVEE and Cycles. AFAIK they are ready (and used) for feature films already. By and large the market for prorprietary 3D tooling is getting smaller and likely drying up soon.

*shrieks* COMMUNISM! /s

Finally!

[TronNerd82]

Now I can render the perfect Shrek fan movie!

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

This is Slashdot - you should be rendering some hot grits and a CGI Natalie Portman.

Though, Everyone is on pathtracers now.

[BrendaEM]

It's still, good news, but path-tracers have become popular because they don't need a shadow map for each object. The problem with them is: there's more noise.