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Welcome to RenderMan for Maya 22!
This new release of RenderMan for Maya 22 (RfM), includes a number of new features to address feedback as well as many improvements to RenderMan for Maya workflow and performance. Many parts of the plugin have been completely rewritten to improve integration into Maya and simply worflow.
Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues!
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 from inside Maya. 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.
Render to Viewport 2.0
Render to the same window where you work! Move objects, make modeling changes, add and alter materials and lights, even import and update asserts without needing to stop the render. RenderMan becomes your viewport at all stages!
Interface Simplification
Better organization, smart exposure of options and attributes, and more-native workflows mark this iteration of the RenderMan for Maya plugin.
Per-face assignments
Added per-face shader assignment for SubDivs and Polygon meshes
Miscellaneous and Important Changes
- Imported older PxrDomeLights will now be reversed. To correct this, remove the negative scale from the X axis.
- TCL has been removed
- Xpath has been removed
- INI files are now in JSON configuration
- The projection editor is removed, native Maya projections are supported.
- Alembic Workflow relies on the standard Maya Cache menu.
- Dynamic Rules have been reworked.
Older Maya scenes that had PxrRamp nodes in it may break. To fix, you can run this python script in the script editor --
import rfm2.utils.scene_updater rfm2.utils.scene_updater.update_pxrramp_nodes()
Improvements since RenderMan 22.0b2
- Improved RenderMan menu and Icons
- The render camera name is used in the naming of batch rendered output images.
- Denoise now works correctly, it can be enabled under the Display/AOV menu. The Features Tab controls are not functional and may be removed.
- New Dynamic Rules editor not yet functional, Xpath-based rules have been removed
- PxrImagePlane sample filter now pays attention to the alpha channel of the "plate" image and writes its newly computed alpha into beautyAlpha
- Improved speed of adding lights during IPR
- Improve handling and messages regarding malformed args files
- Added a txmake preset for image planes to the txmanager
- Simplified camera visibility on lights to a single location for each light
- Image planes now respond to edits during IPR
- Alembic workflow menus re-enabled
- Cache sizes matched with RenderMan 21 changes
- Connections to the global PxrSurface bumpNormal now function correctly when using layered shading
- Edits to sample and display filters now work during IPR in RfM
- Trace sets now work in RfM, however, simple toggling on/off does not work during IPR alone, another geometry edit must happen.
- Fixed an issue where Maya would not draw the correct bounding box for a RIBArchive node
- All objects in RfM now have a small displacement bound of 0.1 so that displacement renders without users having to set the bounds, this may be changed in a future release
Improvements since RenderMan 22.0b1
- Texture manager now works with UDIMs and the Maya File Node
- Light linking is now supported
- Light filter manipulators are now functional
- Improved user experience for Displays and AOVs
- Added the OpenVDB visualizer
- Added per-face shader assignment for SubDivs and Polygon meshes
- Instances now obey material and visibility overrides
- Improved RIB viewing and archive generation
- Meshlights are now available
- PxrPortalLight editing is significantly faster
- Fixed issues with the PxrRamp interface
- Improved the interactivity of Xgen
- Improved VP 2.0 rendering
- Bucket markers are now visible in "it"
- Deleting Pxr nodes no longer deletes downstream nodes
- Errors emitted if a license cannot be found
- The renderer now obeys the set number of CPU threads.
Known Limitations
RenderMan for Maya
- Deselecting "Receive Shadows" does not work.
- Creating a mesh light from existing geometry during IPR will duplicate the geometry in-render. Restart the render to remove the duplicate.
Beta Limitations for RfM - These are expected to be resolved before release
Xgen will not reflect changes in the Collection
Cancelling a preview render may stall Maya
Dicing cameras
Maya Dynamics, various bugs remain.
Render selected objects only not yet supported
Texture Projections do not render correctly.
View statistics, remaining issues to resolve
Alembic procedurals do not yet allow material assignment
Stereo cameras do not render
Checkpoint + Recovery not available
Holdouts not available
Baking not available
Clipping planes not available
- Attributes not supported
dice:micropolygonlength
trace:bias
trace:autobias
trace:intersectpriority
shade:indexofrefraction