Welcome to RenderMan for Houdini 22!

This new release of RenderMan for Houdini 22 (RfH), includes a number of new features to address feedback as well as many improvements to RenderMan for Houdini workflow and performance. The plugin has Many parts of the plugin have been completely rewritten to improve integration into Houdini and simplify workflow.

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What's New

INTERACTIVE RENDERING

Now you can render through all stages of your pipeline! From modeling to final renders, RenderMan is designed to give you immediate feedback. By skipping the export of a scene to RIB, artists can get an immediate look at their work in full ray traced mode and continue to interact and make changes without needing to restart the render.

HOUDINI CONTROLS

Care has been taken to use the standard Houdini controls and menus when possible. Your options for light linking, grouping, and more follow the workflows you've known from Houdini.

THE PRESET BROWSER

The Preset Browser allows you to import and export materials from both Maya and Katana's Preset Browsers, simplifying asset sharing and scene management.

TEXTURE MANAGEMENT

The Texture Manager now parses your scene and prepares the textures for you automatically! Additional options let you set global rules for processing.

CENTRALIZED CONTROLS

The ROP node has been reorganized and old options removed, reducing your choices to make images to the important controls you use every time.

AND MANY MORE...

• Added pxrwireframe, pxrswitch, and pxrshadedside hdas
• Updated PxrMarschnerHair hda
• Now support pre-transforms, "keep position when parenting" parameter, and input independent transforms
• Allow automatic creation of intermediate directories for output display path
• Change to render shelf button for IPR rendering. Renders at current frame rather than frame specified by ROP and renders to mplay or "it" depending on "ri_ipr_device" parameter
• We now override Houdini curve basis with RenderMan parameters
• Updated parameter ranges and default LPE expressions
• We now support User Color creation in RfH
• Invisible geometry is no longer evaluated for rendering
• We now obey focalunits

• Fix issue with scale of lights in light rigs from the preset browser not being correct

• Supply stereo offset and stereo depths parameters on the camera
• Alembic xform motion blur now applied at SOP level
• We can now render interactively from pxrmaterialbuilder digital asset
• Added autocrop option to openexr, deepexr, and tiff display options
• Removed error when stopping render
• Add options for the ri_lensshader
• OSL user options added in the ROP node, Batch OSL execution is defaulted to on
• pre/post render and pre/post frame script attributes should now work on RIS and denoise ROPs
• The Preset Browser in RfH now correctly remembers added libraries
• Renamed BUILDARRAY to DYNAMICARRAY
• Fixed correctness of forcing/candidate subnets
• PxrCollect has been removed, added PxrMaterialBuilder to be used in creating material networks
  

  • The preset browser will now put the material network inside a PxrMaterialBuilder node when importing a material asset

  • Exporting materials to the preset browser now requires a PxrMaterialBuilder node to be selected

  • Shader Shelf buttons create and populate PxrMaterialBuilder
• We now support multi-channel OpenVDBs
• APIs are all updated to the release versions of 16.5, 17.0, and 17.5
• Obey Object Tab's candidate lights/objects when starting IPR, but edits during IPR will restart the render session
• RenderMan ROPs renamed to distinguish them more clearly
• Read shop_materialpath attribute on instances (previously only read for face sets)
• We now apply material or transformation overrides to packed Alembic archives
• RfH now supports creating SHOP procedural nodes from args files
• Geometry with changing topology should now motion blur correctly when velocity is present

• The Denoise channels have been removed from the UI. RfH will add these for the user when Denoise is turned on

• The master of instanced geometry can now be hidden using the usual Houdini display flag, without hiding all the instances
• Added an "As Archive" checkbox under the RIB tab of the RenderMan22 ROP.  The RIB that is written is usable as an archive, via a PxrDelayedReadArchive procedural SHOP
• The default RIB format is now binary. This can be changed under the RIB tab of the RenderMan22 ROP
• On versions of Houdini that support it, Mplay is now launched with the appropriate OCIO LUTs enabled
• Pxr Light colors are now reflected in the light color guides in the sceneview

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