Hey White Rabbit. I’ve downloaded the pack and tried to follow the tutorial on Blender 2 Renderman and got some strange results. Also, there were no code fragments in the standard mosaic download that are described in the tut for the popcorn material.
Do you have a link to the latest and greatest version I can download that is newer than the ‘standard’ one? For a variety of logistical reasons, I am unable to compile my own or run any cvs tools.
Thanks
Hey Tea_Monster 
The “MOSAIC Beta-0.2” download package from the downloads section is up-to-date with the CVS 1.39 at the moment (although I plan on updating CVS this week with big changes again). You may be having issues with Aqsis itself, I’m hearing about black dots in the env map and issues with SSS. I haven’t had any problems with their SVN build however… I think you can get nightly builds for windows here and mac here. If your on Linux you’ll have to build from source 
Thanks. Yes, I am having strange artifacts with the sss materials. I got the test scene in the tut working apart from that though and am wanting now to learn more and try to optimize renders for animation.
I’ll try the cvs aqsis. I’ve not yet got Pixie working properly, but that is probably just a matter of time.
…This is what pros do…LOl:D. Cheers nice work!
Does anyone know of any Shader editors? I’ve looked up shaderman next and one or two others and you have to install five (FIVE???!!!) different flavors of Python to get them to work.
Is there anything reliable that works natively (i.e. you install it and it works) under Windows?
On windows I actually still prefer the old ShaderMan which you can find here.
I’m running Linux but I believe SLER can be setup to run on windows (not sure whats involved with that thou), you can find that here.
Hello
I have some noob questions ,when i will start render (mosaic.py script ) i become this error :
Could not write output directories, check paths and permissions!
Can anyone tell me how do it ? cheers .
p.s i use pixie
Hi white rabbit,
Is it possible yet to bake renders within the interface with aqsis?
I’m studying the bake example in that comes with aqsis and modifying
that seems impossible, as I am pretty inexperienced at modifying .ribs.
The ‘sphere.rib’ and the ‘bakesphere.rib’ look practically exactly the same. 
Good job on all this!
Hey Rangiz:
That error happens when the export directory either doesn’t exist or has locked permisions (*nix systems). If your using a newer version of MOSAIC (CVS 1.40) the default path is /tmp/ (c: mp for windows). This is also the default export directory that Blender uses, you could either create it or goto the “MOSAIC Settings” tab in MOSAIC and select “Export Directory” to point it somewhere new
andy circus:
I actualy haven’t looked at that yet (even thou I’ve been running Aqsis for a while now :s), when I get off work I’ll see if I can wip up a blend for you to pick apart showing how to setup with MOSAIC
I put together a simple blend that does the same thing as the Aqsis example but bakes a Suzanne instead of just a sphere. The blend has the shaders and the latest copy of MOSAIC already in it. All you have to do is make sure you have Aqsis installed and working, open the blend, execute the mosaic.py script, set MOSAIC’s preset renderer to “Aqsis” (if you haven’t already) and press render 
The example uses a single surface shader in two passes to bake a procedural noise surface color on Suzanne from the first pass to a 2048 optimized texture used by the same shader on the second pass with a gradient background image shader. I won’t get into the details of setting this up in MOSAIC but the general idea is:
There is two scenes, one called “bake” and one as a linked object copy called “test” each used as a render pass. The “bake” scene has a text file called “cf_bake” thats attached to the “Frame Begin Code” that creates a user option called “bake”. The “test” scene has a text file called “cf_test” thats attached to the “Frame Begin Code” that creates a user option called “test”. The material applied to the Suzanne object has the “expensive.sl” shader applied to it. Lastly the “bake” scene has a text file called “cf_texture” applied to the “Frame End Code” that generates the baked texture.
How this works is MOSAIC renders the “bake” pass which renders Suzanne with the “expensive.sl” shader that looks for the “bake” option to know to render with a noise shader and bake those s t colors to a file. When the pass is complete the “cf_texture” optimizes the baked file into a 2048 texture. Then MOSAIC starts the “test” pass which now sets the option to “test” so the same “expensive.sl” shader now renders Suzanne with the texture.
This technique is the reason the RIBs both looked the same theres only a couple lines that are different (the option setups) and both are using the same scene geometry, lights and shaders.
If you want to understand this further I also recommend hanging out and asking questions with the guys over at Aqsis
Below on the left is the what the bake pass should look like, the right is what the beauty pass should look like and of course the blend file to play with 
bake.blend (348 KB)
Thanks, I think I understand the aqsis .ribs render pass a little better now.
Is there a way to lower the baked tiff quality to 16 or 24 bit?
What a great script though, an exporter for 12 renderman renderers!
I hope you figure out a way to get rich from all this!
That would be a question for the Aqsis devs, don’t think there is but I’m sure they could add it
As far as money goes thats not why I’m doing this… I believe very strongly in community and sharing knowledge, and so far in my life knowledge and experience makes any trade or service more valuable
Hi White Rabbit,
Just downloaded MOSAIC Beta-0.2. When I try to run the script, I get ‘ImportError: No module named subprocess’.
Thanks for any suggestions,
PabloE
Sounds like your Blender is using the wrong python version…
The package download of MOSAIC as well as the current CVS version require Blender 2.46-2.47 built with python 2.5 (latest windows installer automatically uses 2.5, other packages you have to choose)
WHiTeRaBBiT
Sorted, thanks!
First of all, thanks WHiTeRaBBiT for doing grat job and for sharing it.
Just wanted to mention some details noticed in renderers.
3Delight: I think there are missing shadow in the ear and below head;
Gelatto: noticed some patch-edges in shadow area near the eye;
Pixie: don’t know for sure if it’s some kind of artifact, but jaw doesn’t look smooth to me (like there is some kind of extra polys).