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Welcome to RenderMan for Maya (RfM) 21.3!

This release introduces improvements and some fixes to the previous release.

New Features:

  • For holdouts, the holdout shadow AOV is now written into the alpha channel of the primary image by default. To cause a separate image to be written out for holdout shadows, there is a setting under the Advanced tab in the Render Settings called "Output Shadow AOV" which can be set to "As Separate AOV".
  • We've introduced new passes to the menu, Ci (color), a (alpha), and shadow.
  • Xgen custom shader parameters are now attached as primvars when using Xgen archive instancing.

Miscellaneous Changes

  • Significantly faster translation of scenes with many lights and shaders.

Bug Fixes

  • Light linking now works as expected for lights that aren't members of the defaultLightSet.
  • Fixed an error in PxrProjector that would prevent the "WPref+WNref" method from working.

  • Fixed a bug where when using the custom geometry API, cachShape was called more than once per motion sample.
  • Fixed a bug where batch renders of a single frame with motion blur enabled would fail.
  • Fixed a crash when rendering OpenVDB on headless render nodes.
  • Don't emit "could not acquire texture" warnings for Maya File atlas textures.

Known Limitations

RenderMan for Maya

  • Modifying light visibility while in IPR mode does not change light visibility
  • Maya fluids will currently only render if you add RenderMan volume controls. Select the fluid shape and in the AE, do Attributes->RenderMan->Add Volume Controls
  • Creating a mesh light during IPR will retain the old geometry (non-mesh light). A refreshed IPR session will remove the old geometry.
  • Prior versions of RenderMan for Maya are not compatible with RenderMan 21.0. Trying to load the version 20.0 plugin with RenderMan Pro Server 21 installed will cause the following warnings: "rfm Warning: skipping unknown Slim keyword: requires" when loaded. The 20.X plugin will not function correctly.
  • Deselecting "Receive Shadows" does not work.