On the flip-side, however, many large studios will go with multiple software solutions, including proprietary ones. In fact, proprietary software is used in almost every major FX studio out there.

Studios prefer to use software that is totally scalable and modular, with an SDK that allows their techies to rip it apart and put it back together again in a way that fits their pipeline. Custom scripting for things like redundant tasks or shader creation is essencial.

Maya has a powerful Mel scrip language that appeals to techies, and 3dsmax has a decent Maxscript language. So these kinds of things weigh in heavily on the choice of professionals as well. That's why PRMan and MentalRay are widely considered the best renderers on the market today... they are very very customizable and scaleable, and allow techies to write various efficiency and shader scripts for them.

Most studios choose a software app based around a particular renderer. Notice that almost ALL the big-name apps have MentalRay now as an integrated part of their core system. Maya, 3dsmax v6 and up, XSI... they all use MentalRay as a built-in rendering solution.

Message edited on: 07/24/2005 13:00

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.