Custom Slim Node

There are three types of shader in Renderman for Maya which are a Maya shader that is converted by RFM in render time, and Custom shader that is written and compiled by user and imported in Maya, and the last ting is a Slim Template. Actually Maya shader converted by RFM is pretty good. If you add Renderman Attribute such as a subsurface scattering to Maya shader, you can do almost everything that you want. However, for more flexibility and speed, you can also use a Custom shader or Slim Template.

Slim Template can be considered an expanded custom shader in terms of user interface. The major difference from custom shader is that parameters in Slim Template are connectable which means you can use lots of Pixar’s Slim Template library as your parameter without re-implementing everything. It can specify surface color but doesn’t have to be a surface shader or displacement shader like SL. It is more like a custom node in Hypershade.

stripe.slim

This is my stripe template. It is relatively simpler then custom shader because I didn’t implement everything like noise or turbulence. I just made a very simple structure that can hold external input. I did pretty fine tweaking, but it’s done in external Pixar’s nodes, so I could concentrate on only what they don’t provide.

Below picture shows how a simple node can be a complex shader.

 

One more cool thing is that one node can be anything. For example, dots node becomes both a displacement shader and surface shader, so the pattern can be matched without complicated massage passing.

dots.slim