Overview

Starting with 23.3, Current RenderMan can bake integrator results to images or points clouds.

Potential applications include transferring pre-computed global illumination for real-time realtime playback or optimising optimizing render times for large static assets.

Additional details are provided in the baking app note.

Limitations

The current implementation comes with a number of important limitations:

• Baking is non-incremental. 
  • This limitation excludes integrators that can not be setup to render in a single increment, like PxrVCM.
  • PxrPathTracer, PxrDirectLighting, PxrOcclusion and PxrVisualizer are compatible.
• Baking is incompatible with curves.
• Baking cannot be used with sample filters or display filters
• Each baking display can use at most one RGBA display channel.
  • Use multiple display drivers to output multiple signals.
• All images are baked at the same resolution.
• No breakpointing / stop-and-resume during baking
• There is no separate irradiance output
  

  • As a workaround, we suggest baking illumination and albedo: dividing the illumination by the albedo gives the irradiance.

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The images below shows albedo, direct diffuse, and indirect diffuse for the  Cornell box with two spheres.