Pre-rendering a 3D scene programmatically

Question

For a level generator for a computer game, I need a way to programmatically render a 3D scene. To be more precise, I don't mean 3D-APIs like OpenGL or Direct3D, the scene shouldn't be rendered at runtime of the game, but rather the scene should be rendered off-line for later use.

I know of RenderMan, but I'd be interested if there are other alternatives. Concerning RenderMan, is this a suitable tool for this purpose at all?

Could a 3D scene be described using COLLADA and fed into a renderer?

Thanks Johannes

Answer 1

You have lots of options. Here's three:

3DSMax - pricey

Blender - free

POVRay - free

Skizz

Answer 2

So, yes, rendering offline images is what RenderMan is for. Blizzard is an example of a game company that uses it for that purpose. And yes, you could also export to another scene format like COLLADA and use a different renderer. There's the matter of authoring a scene and then rendering it. Renderers do operate on scene files, which may be in ascii format, and of course you don't want to write one by hand. Maybe you're exporting the scene from a game engine or level editor? Or else you'll want to create it in a modeling/animation package like Maya, Houdini, Max, Sketchup, Blender, etc. These packages have various plug-in exporters and renderers. The term RenderMan is used to refer to a scene description specification, like COLLADA, and it can also refer specifically to Pixar's renderer, which accepts the RenderMan format. Several other renderers also accept the RenderMan format, and some are even free, like Pixie. Picking a modeling package and renderer depends on your budget and requirements...