Slim™ — The Shader Tool
Manage and Create Shaders
Slim is a powerful shader management tool developed to meet the demands of sophisticated productions. Through scripting, Slim’s support for Maya attributes, and its general extensibility, Slim provides automated and customized solutions for shading workflow. Slim also functions as a shader generator, allowing RenderMan shaders to be generated interactively, without programming. With Slim it is possible to generate a wide range of the highest quality procedural shaders. Slim, as a combined shader generation and management system, plays a key role in RenderMan Studio™.
Direct Connection to Maya®
From Slim, you can connect Slim networks directly to Maya objects, or import Slim shaders into the Maya hypergraph. Create a new shader, and then immediately import it into Maya where you are able to attach it like any other Maya material. Open multiple palettes, external and internal, and drag and drop between them. When you save your Maya scene, your Slim palettes and shader connections are saved along with it, so the next time you open your Maya® scene, all the Slim information is right there, too.
Versatile Environment
Slim allows artists to create shaders without programming, but Slim's sophisticated environment gives technical shader developers the ability to fully customize Slim for the needs of any studio. With Slim scripting, repetitive tasks can be automated and customized workflows can be developed.
Layer Your Building Blocks
Build new shaders from the ground up, including layered shaders, simply by creating connections with Slim’s powerful set of building blocks. The building blocks come in a variety of types, from surfaces to functions, from image files to animated Maya attributes. There are enough building blocks to create innumerable types of shaders, and once the techniques are mastered, Slim makes generating a wide range of high quality procedural shaders, quick and easy.
Build Your Own Blocks
Slim is highly extensible, allowing developers to go far beyond Slim’s set of core building block functions. Using the familiar RenderMan shading language, developers can modify the existing set of building blocks, or write completely new Slim shader nodes. So instead of writing a completely new shader, developers can now just write a new shader node, which can be used as just another “block” in Slim.
Slim Stands Alone
For even more potential, Slim can be run as a completely independent tool, in stand-alone mode. This allows genuine RenderMan shaders to be authored for custom productions, which can be used in any RenderMan compliant pipeline.
Slim Features
- Artist-Friendly Workflow
- Maya Hypershade Integration
- Co-Shader Support
- Secondary Passes
- Integrated Baking Nodes
- Bake direct to ptex
- Primitive Variables
- Inject RLS into Networks with "SL Boxes"
- Write custom Slim Templates
- Slim Scripting
New Features in 10.0
Templates - New templates provide improved support for Physically Plausible shading techniques.
Light Blockers - Slim now provides Light Blocker nodes, allowing an artist to craft the way light is manipulated in a scene.
Custom Overviews - For representing a user-defined interface for a shading network.
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