Contents
Welcome to RenderMan for Maya 22!
This latest release of RenderMan for Maya 22 (RfM), includes a number of features to address feedback as well as some fixes to RenderMan for Maya workflow and performance.
Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues! You may also wish to visit the migration page for selected highlights.
Nvidia's AI Denoiser in "it"
What's New
- Added Nvidia's AI Denoiser to "it"
- Pattern soloing now works using the Maya solo (S) button in the Hypershade
- Added live cropping to the Viewport Renders as well as fast PxrVisualizer switching
- Added an option for using light learning schemes while rendering, this is found under RenderMan Settings > Advanced Tab > Learn Light Results
- Presets for selected parameters on materials and render settings can be accessed using the triple bar icons as seen below
Miscellaneous and Important Changes
When using crossframe denoising, the render jobs will now render all the frames first and then denoise them all once the renders are complete to avoid race conditions between frames not being finished and denoising running before they are finished
- Primvary Visibility and Visible in Reflections are now available in the Attribute Editor for RenderManArchive and RenderManProcedural nodes
- Slider maximum changed for diffuse and specular depth to match max path length
- Do not emit invalid R16001 messages about empty procedural location nodes in RfM
- Added support for MASH's instancer node
- Improved possible freezing issues when using Xgen interactive
- For meshes that are treated as subdivs, RfM now translates invisible faces as holes via subdiv "hole" tag
RfM's Dynamic Rules Editor material connections must be rebuilt to support a change in material binding conventions. Material bindings are now based on the shading group name and not surface shader name
Fixes
Improved selection of the camera being used during RIB export. A new selection has been added to allow the user to state which camera to use during export when multiple cameras are available in the scene
- Fixed a bug where animated shader parameters weren't updating in DG mode
- Fixed an issue where UVs may not update when tweaking interactively
- Fixed a crash that could occur if user was creating/deleting nodes via script
- Fixed an issue where the pre/post render mel may have been ignored in some rendering modes
- Nested PxrLayerMixers now work as expected
- Clicking the connection button by the Shading Group attr on Maya fluid nodes now works
Developer Documentation
You can find a useful Doxygenated developer documentation in the Developers' Guide under RfM2
Known Limitations
RenderMan for Maya
- Holdout Shelf Button does not function, this will be resolved in 22.3
- Light Linking volumes is not currently supported
- Deselecting "Receive Shadows" does not work.
- Creating a mesh light from existing geometry during IPR will duplicate the geometry in-render. Restart the render to remove the duplicate.
- We do not support Camera Facing Curves in Xgen
- Xgen will not reflect changes in the Collection
- Maya Fur Feedback is not supported
Xgen : Xgen will crash during live rendering unless you set Window > Preferences > Xgen > Multithreading to "off" (unchecked).