With RenderMan, Pixar takes production rendering to a new level with photorealism, a redesigned core for interactive rendering of shaders, lights, and geometry, and some epic live rendering options.
New in RenderMan 22.5
- Adaptive Sampling Fixes (up to 10% to 15% faster)
- Interactive displacement
- Interactive volume density
- Intel Partnership to Accelerate OSL
- RenderMan for Houdini
Live rendering is one the most exciting features of RenderMan 22. Artists have access to a lightning fast iterative workflows, giving you the tools you need to generate new versions for feedback on the fly.
Advanced lighting technologies - used in Pixar’s own films including Cars 3 and Incredibles 2 - have also been included.
RenderMan 22 retains the RIS architectural factoring and composability features introduced over the last several releases. Many scenes built for RenderMan 21 will render with no change in version 22. However, the latest version introduces significant updates to system architecture, APIs, and data handling that enable its new interactive live rendering capabilities.
"Artist freedom and productivity are both critical to large scale productions" said SVP Technology & Infrastructure, Production Services Damien Fagnou, “MPC Film chooses RenderMan because it is always driven forward by the requirements of real productions, and the latest release reflects that. It is a platform that provides great artistic versatility, scalable productivity, and inventive technical solutions that support the team in delivering ground breaking visuals for major feature films.”
RenderMan for Houdini
- Full support for geometry: curves, points, volumes, meshes, and packed primitives
- Interactive placement and deformation of geometry
- Interactive editing of lights and cameras
- Interactive manipulation of light filters
- Support for Material Builder shader networks using RenderMan’s shading nodes
- Interactive Render Region support
- Support for rendering to Houdini’s native mplay framebuffer and renderview
- Texture Manager - Automatic texture conversion to Pixar’s texture format.
- Preset Browser - Collaborate with Maya and Katana by importing and exporting shaders, light rigs, and HDRI maps
- Check out the full feature set here: https://rmanwiki.pixar.com/display/REN22/Release+Notes