...
XPU™ - Pixar’s hybrid CPU + GPU rendering technology makes its debut. This next-gen rendering engine, already in use at Pixar for look development work, is available to commercial RenderMan customers
Lama - A state of the art material layering system developed at Industrial Light & Magic introduces a modular approach to building material networks and includes recent R&D on dispersion and energy conservation
Stylized Looks™ - Move beyond physically based shading and lighting and into a world where you can easily create a variety of styles for your projects. You can non-destructively control outlines, create sketch patterns, and develop a wide range of unique looks, including Anime, by using the same familiar toolset. Stylized Looks is available only in the Commercial version of RenderMan
- Interactive Instrumentation and statistics - Watch your rendering resource usage live, thanks to a completely redesigned statistics system that prioritizes interactivity and extensibility
- OpenColorIO - Robust support for the industry standard ACES color management system and other color spaces in all bridge products, including the interactive RenderMan Image Tool
- New patterns - We are continually working to provide more artistic options for your look development. New with this release are production-proven technologies Hex Tiling Manifold and Phasor Noise.
- Light Baking - Greatly enhance your real-time and VR rendering needs by baking lighting to 2D texture maps or Point Clouds
- Professional Artist Tools - Support for Maya, Katana, and Houdini, including LPEs and AOVs in Solaris, Houdini’s USD-centric toolset
- Patterns are now OSL - We have converted the great majority of RIS' C++ patterns to OSL. This conversion allows us to share code between RIS and XPU, which in turn gives you confidence that the renders you see from RenderMan XPU are representative of what you will see in RenderMan RIS. C++ patterns are still supported, but they will only work in RIS
RenderMan for Blender - New support for cutting edge RenderMan features in the popular open source content creation tool
Better Sampling - Blue noise dithering improves the visual appearance of noise by organizing the sampling distribution, resulting results in a perceptually cleaner image sooner.
RenderMan XPU™
Pixar’s solution for CPU + GPU rendering uses heterogeneous computing resources to accelerate production path-tracing. Starting from a system architecture that can leverage the latest developments in many-core CPU and GPU hardware, separately or in combination, RenderMan XPU™ is being built to handle the scale and complexity of Pixar’s feature animation projects. Its first use in the studio has been focused on detailed look-development tasks, with more roles and capabilities to come. We are excited to begin sharing this ongoing development work with our commercial customers.
...
RenderMan version 24 offers a holistic experience, with tools that improve artist workflows and complement the creative process. By collaborating closely with Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar Animation, the latest innovations represent industry developments that have been battle tested in the most ambitious VFX and animation work in the world.
We've made the new non-photorealistic toolset an integral and seamless part of the RenderMan experience, allowing for new creative possibilities.
...