Have tried myself with Renderman some time ago...really awesome renderer, don't know how they get those images out of this renderer, though it's only a scanline renderer (since version 11 it's also a raytracing engine integrated for HDRI and GI, but slow as hell). So lot of these effects they use are only fake, f.ex. the reflections, colored shadows from semi-transparent objects. You don't really need shader writing skill, alltough it's helpful. The Renderman Artist Tools for MAYA use SLIM to create the shading networks, similar to the Hypershader withing Maya with the connection nodes aso. The thing that makes the renderer such awesome is it's speed in calculation motion blur (at the moment the biggest plus or PRMAN). Renderman is slower than Mental Ray in most cases of pure Scanline Rendering, not to speak from Raytracing or GI and Final Gathering. As far as I know, Pixar uses Maya to model, but to animate them, they use their In-House Software "Marionette", and Rendering with Renderman of course.

What's so awesome at Pixar is, the new technologies, they invent for every feature film....in this case for the underwater scenes....for Final Fantasy they've invented the DeepShadow technology for SquarePictures.

For me Pixar and SquarePictures are the most outstanding factories for Computer Animation at the moment (ILM doesn't count, because they only create commercials, and VFX for movies, and only very little, full animated products).

That's my opinion.......but I'm still wondering how they create those images...it's not a question of the renderer....nearly every renderer can create similar images (except Adobe Dimensions ;O))...it's the Know-How behind them, the things no one else can see..the technical background. They know how to fake things so they look real, but need only half of the rendertime...that makes an artist to an artist....

b u l l e t