Contents
System Requirements
Hardware
RenderMan RIS requires CPUs capable of running the AVX instruction set or better. A minimum of 4GB of RAM is required . For rendering large scenes with many textures, you will need more RAM.
RenderMan XPU™ requires CPUs capable of running the AVX instruction set or better. It supports GPU acceleration on 64-bit Linux and Windows systems. GPU acceleration is supported on NVIDIA graphics cards from the Quadro, Tesla or Data Center GPU ranges, with the Maxwell architecture or later. A minimum of 11 GB of VRAM is recommended and 24 GB of VRAM is suggested for best performance. A minimum of 16GB of system RAM is recommended for hybrid (CPU + GPU) processing. For more information on driver requirements, please consult the XPU Technical Specifications.
For utilizing the NVIDIA Optix A.I. Denoiser in "it", Optix 7 supported hardware, NVIDIA Maxwell and newer is required.
Operating System
Linux: Compatible with CentOS/RHEL 7.2
Windows: Compatible with Windows 10
macOS: Compatible with 12 Monterey and 13 Ventura
Please visit the installation pages for your bridge product to ensure you have the correct setup before running RenderMan. Note some, like Houdini and Katana, may require manual configuration of environment files.
Bridge Products
Maya: Compatible with 2020, 2022, and 2023.
Katana: Compatible with 3.2+
Houdini: Compatible with 19.5, 19.0, and 18.5 production versions. See the Installation of RenderMan for Houdini page for the specific list of production builds.
Blender: 2.93 LTS, 3.0.x, 3.3.x, 3.5.x
Building Plugins and Tools
Plugins for RenderMan: Custom RenderMan plugins now require C++17 in order to be compiled and must be compiled with gcc 9.3.1 / Visual Studio 2017 / Xcode 10
You can find similar requirements in the 2021 VFX Reference Platform.
The Download Menu. Choose the main installer highlighted here at the top. Versions below are useful for sys admins creating deployments.
On Centos/RHEL, the RtxSVG.so plugin requires the compat-expat1 package be installed.
Installing RenderMan With a Floating License
Pixar's RenderMan is best installed with our integrated installer. Using your forum login and password and the serial number from your purchase, you can use the installer to automatically download the license and install both the license server software and the applications, plugins, and examples.
Only one machine on your network needs to have the Pixar License Server installed, and that machine can be the same machine you install the applications and plugins on. However the machine that runs the license server does not need to have the RenderMan application itself installed. It is recommended that you first run the installer on the machine you want to designate as your license server, before running the installer on other workstations.
For further details, visit each section for the operating system you're installing on:
Installing RenderMan With Node-Locked Licenses
Pixar's RenderMan is delivered as a single installer. The steps to install a Node-locked licenses are the same as the floating-license however there will be no need to install or run the floating license server.
Using your forum login you can use the installer to automatically download the license and install your node-locked licensed copies of the RenderMan Software.
Installing for Large Sites
RenderMan installation is automated and installs to your system drive by default. Other system variables are automatically set to allow:
- Plugin discovery by your DCC Application such as Autodesk Maya
- Command line rendering using the RenderMan executable
If you choose a non-standard installation location you may be required to customize these environment variables yourself to complete the installation.
While it may be possible to install and use RenderMan on a different operating system or even a different version of the supported operating systems, it is not recommended. It may be unstable and a general headache, therefore it is not supported for the sanity of everyone involved.