openSourceVFX.org » nuke

Alembic

Rob Bredow — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:00:04 +0000

Alembic is an open computer graphics interchange framework. Alembic distills complex, animated scenes into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results. This ‘distillation’ of scenes into baked geometry is exactly analogous to the distillation of lighting and rendering scenes into rendered image data.

Alembic is focused on efficiently storing the computed results of complex procedural geometric constructions. It is very specifically NOT concerned with storing the complex dependency graph of procedural tools used to create the computed results. For example, Alembic will efficiently store the animated vertex positions and animated transforms that result from an arbitrarily complex animation and simulation process which could involve enveloping, corrective shapes, volume-preserving simulations, cloth and flesh simulations, and so on. Alembic will not attempt to store a representation of the network of computations (rigs, basically) which are required to produce the final, animated vertex positions and animated transforms.

The production ready version of Alembic 1.0 was announced at Siggraph 2011 and released on August 9th, 2011 by Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks with support from major vendors including Autodesk, Side Effects Software, The Foundry, Luxology, Pixar’s Renderman and NVidia.

Home Page: http://alembic.io/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/alembic/
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, OSX, Windows
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Sony Pictures Imageworks, Lucasfilm

RmanConnect

Larry Gritz — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:09:54 +0000

A RenderMan Interface-compatible display driver and Nuke plugin for direct rendering into the Nuke interface. RmanConnect is based on a simple Client/Server model, suitable for rendering to/from a variety of applications. The TCP/IP interface code is handled using the Boost.Asio library. The display driver will theoretically build using any RenderMan-compatible renderer but the included CMake build script assumes you have 3Delight installed.

Home Page: http://danbethell.github.com/rmanconnect/
Project Page: http://github.com/danbethell/rmanconnect
License: New BSD

Cortex

Philippe Leprince — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:40:21 +0000

The Cortex project aims to provide a set of high quality C++ libraries and Python modules tailored for software development in the visual effects industry. Rather than producing end user tools, the project focuses on creating a reusable set of modules of use to TDs and programmers in a broad range of scenarios – allowing them to focus on the more interesting or innovative aspects of development.

Originally the brainchild of Andrew Chapman, the Cortex project is now being developed around the IECore library developed in house at Image Engine and subsequently released as open source. Initially, Image Engine are providing the core library and Python bindings, along with their RenderMan, Maya, OpenGL, and Nuke support libraries.

It is hoped that the Cortex project will attract contributions from the wider visual effects community, and grow to provide a rich set of functionality and support for further 3rd party applications.

Home Page: http://opensource.image-engine.com/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/cortex-vfx
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Image Engine