As I had downloaded render-man for a different project I decided to mess around with it a little bit to try and get used to it as the interface is different to the build in renderers within Maya. To do this I created a low poly penguin and placed a Pxr Shader onto it. The reason I chose low poly was because it was easy to create and I also wanted it to have a cartoon feel as render-man is what the Pixar movies use.
These are the different renders of the model using different lights. The first render was done using a light that illuminates the whole section so that the model is lighted equally.
The second render I used a single point light so it looked pretty dark but the model still looks detailed.
For the third render I used 3 point lighting. This gave the model a more defined edge.
Considering my penguin is pretty low detail as it is low poly Render-man has given it a pretty cool look.
This is what the character looked like using the default Maya renderer.
joshforrestnextgen 