Marcos Fajardo’s Arnold (Messiah) renderer has spurred a lot of experimentation and development on the rendering front lately. In the latest chapter, Larry Gritz, of BMRT, has just posted a webpage demonstrating how the similar effect can be achieved in BMRT. The discussion is very nicely written, showing the progression towards the same effect and a very effective shadowmap hack that achieves a similar effect faster.
RIB files and rendertimes are available on the webpage.
BMRT is a renderman compliant raytrace/radiosity renderer available for free for non-commercial use and is very inexpensive for commercial use.
Animal Logic has a (very nicely written) free 3D Studio MAX to BMRT renderman exporter, MaxMan, available for download from their site.
