CompuServe Messages

That ASC->RIb converter is about as thorough as it can get… It turns each triangle into a generalized polygon in RIB format. What else do you want? To advance any further, you need to add materials. ASC files don't have materials, aside from names, and the ASC->RIB converter adds comments in the style of several RIB editors to help you remember which polygons have which materials. Now, no one has stepped forward to write Renderman shaders that duplicate 3DS's rendering techniques. I've never seen any translator of RIB for any PC-based 3D program that does that. There are several very expensive SGI-based converters that go from, say, Softimage to RIB with all sorts of extra info intact. Now that Pixar has announced that they will no longer support or sell any Mac- or PC-based Renderman products, you're either looking at people who use freeware Blue Moon Rendering Tools or you're talking about someone who has a very expensive SGI and most likely owns an expensive 3D program in addition to Renderman for the SGI. I've talked to many people about their desire to convert models to Renderman formats. I'd love to be proved wrong about any of my opinions about this. First of all, I'd love to talk with someone who uses Renderman for rendering on a daily basis. Someday, I'd love to meet one who doesn't write their own scripts in a text editor. 🙂