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This release features major updates to interactivity and scalability, thanks to significant advancements to Pixar’s state-of-the-art renderer, RenderMan XPU. RenderMan 26 RIS also features an interactive version of the advanced Denoiser from Disney Research which uses machine learning to significantly accelerate the rendering process.
Improvements to Stylized Looks, significant instancing speedups, an improved statistics system, as well as support for the latest 3D applications, round off this new release.
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RenderMan XPU requires CPUs capable of running the AVX instruction set. It supports GPU acceleration on 64-bit XPU is only supported on Linux and Windows systems. GPU acceleration is supported on NVIDIA graphics cards from the Quadro, Tesla or Data Center GPU ranges, with the Pascal 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. AI Denoiser in "it", Optix 7 supported hardware, NVIDIA Maxwell "Pascal" architectures and newer is required.
RenderMan is compatible with the following 64-bit operating systems:
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- Adaptive sampling has been implemented in XPU. The workflow and controls are the same as in RIS: PixelVariance, "darkfalloff", "exposurebracket", "adaptall", and per-channel "relativepixelvariance". There are two "adaptivemetric"s: "contrast" and "variance", with the latter being the default. RMAN-20888
Warning When rendering with adaptive sampling enabled using the GPU, there are known stability issues that cause crashes. On machines configured with virtualized Nvidia GPUs using GRID, these crashes can trigger a hypervisor driver crash that requires a hypervisor restart. This does not happen when rendering on the CPU only or with adaptive sampling disabled. These issues have already been addressed for the next dot release. You can work around this issue by turning off adaptive sampling by setting minsamples and maxsamples to the same value, or by setting PixelVariance to 0.0. RMAN-22085 - An issue where using Render region in Solaris in XPU mode could lead to a crash has been addressed. RMAN-20929
- XPU will fall back to CPU only mode if the variant is "xpu" and no capable GPU hardware is detected. RMAN-21526
- Multiple crash issues surrounding switching between RIS and XPU in Solaris have been addressed.
- The amount of memory required to compile PTX shaders has been reduced, lowering GPU VRAM requirements significantly in some cases.
Eliminated "IMAGE_REL_AMD64_ADDR32NB relocation requires an ordered section layout." errors that could lead to crashes. RMAN-21782
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- The time to process large on screen subdivision meshes has been greatly improved, resulting in a significant improvement in time to first pixel for e.g. scenes with large ground planes or large characters. RMAN-19710
- ptimizations Optimizations have been made to preprocessing of dense and complicated geometry which also result in significant improvement in time to first pixel for complex scenes. RMAN-21184
- A crash issue with subdivision mesh primvars of type float[X] where X is not 1 or 3 has been fixed. RMAN-21851
- XPU now supports Attribute "dice" "strategy". RMAN-20687
- XPU now supports Attribute "dice" "string referenceinstance". RMAN-20748
- XPU now supports the sphericalprojection dicing strategy. RMAN-20747
- XPU no longer forces a lower bound of 0.1 on the micropolygon length. RMAN-21423
- An issue with support for the near clipping plane in XPU has been fixed. RMAN-20928
- XPU now supports RiClippingPlanes (and the associated Riley entry points). RMAN-20033
- Fixed a crash when rendering motion blurred curves in XPU using RfSolaris or Hydra.
- Several issues surrounding bias calculations for round curves in XPU which could lead to false self-intersections have been addressed. RMAN-21837
A crash on polymeshes with polygon:smoothdisplacement has been fixed. RMAN-20938
Fix an issue in XPU that could lead to sporadic crashing on dense polygon meshes. RMAN-20993
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