The Interface Stream

It is important for a scene description API to be streamable. This allows saving scene description into files, communicating scene state between processes and provide extra flexibility when sending commands to the renderer​1.

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, the authors have decided to use exactly the same format as is used by the RenderMan Interface Bytestream (RIB). This has several advantages:

  • Well defined ASCII and binary formats.

  • The ASCII format is human readable and easy to understand.

  • Easy to integrate into existing renderers (writers and readers already available).

Note that since Lua is part of the API, one can use Lua files for API streaming​2.

Footnotes

1

The streamable nature of the RenderMan API, through RIB, is an undeniable advantage. RenderMan is a registered trademark of Pixar.

2

Preliminary tests show that the Lua parser is as fast as an optimized ASCII RIB parser.