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Welcome to RenderMan 24.0

RenderMan 24 is focused on look development and enhancing the visual richness of your renders, both within RIS itself and via our initial release of RenderMan XPU™.Please dive right into the release notes below for more detailed information.version 24 provides major upgrades to look development, with many tools that improve artist workflows and complement the creative process. Here are some of the highlights:

Major Features in RenderMan 24.0

• XPU™ - Pixar’s — Pixar’s hybrid CPU + GPU rendering technology makes its debut. This is a next-gen generation rendering engine, already in use at Pixar for look development work, is available to commercial RenderMan customers
  rewritten for speed and efficiency on film production assets. This first phase of XPU is focused on accelerating look development for shading artists.
  
  

• Lama — A state-of-the- 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 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  -

  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

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• Live Statistics — Watch your rendering resource usage live, thanks to a completely redesigned statistics system that prioritizes interactivity and extensibility
  
  
• New Patterns — 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
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• OSL Patterns — Patterns are now OSL - We have converted the great majority of RIS' C++ patterns to OSL. This conversion allows us to share the sharing of code between RIS and XPU, which in turn gives you provides 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
  
  
• Better Sampling — Blue noise dithering results in a perceptually cleaner image sooner
  
  
• Updates to Artist Tools — Support for Autodesk’s Maya, Foundry’s Katana, and SideFX’s Houdini and Solaris (including support for LPEs and AOVs in Solaris). 
  
  
• Preset Browser — Now supports Presets for Lama and Stylized Looks and ships with examples for both.
  
  

• RenderMan for Blender -  New support — And last but not least, a new plugin for cutting edge RenderMan features in the popular open source content creation tool
  Better Sampling  -  Blue noise dithering results in a perceptually cleaner image sooner . Rewritten to take full advantage of the architecture of version 24.
  

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. 

For further details about RenderMan XPU™, see the following documentation sections:

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RenderMan version 24 provides major upgrades to Look Development, with many tools that improve artist workflows and complement the creative process. By collaborating closely with Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar Animation Studios, we bring you innovations that have been developed for some of the most ambitious VFX and animation work in the world. 

We've made the new non-photorealistic toolset an integral and seamless part of RenderMan, allowing for new creative possibilities.

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