Contents
Welcome to RenderMan 23.3!
This release introduces improvements to the previous RenderMan in very significant ways.
Please dive right into the release notes below for more detailed information on the latest version of your favorite renderer!
New Features in 23.3
Fixes
PxrProjectionLayer: The missing Alpha value was ignored when a texture didn't have an alpha channel. The missing Alpha is a single float value and can not be textured
PxrMultiTexture: the blur parameter was ignored
Fix a rare crash in PxrRamp, when a node is connected to the splineMap parameter but fails to deliver valid data
A bug causing motion blur to not work with alembic archives has been addressed
PxrProjector: Improved near/far clipping: parrallel to the film plane rather than radial. Fixed filmFit in Fill and Overscan mode
PxrProjector: Added overscan and orthographic camera support. A bug that cause motion blurred alembic archive containing points to not work has been addressed
- The PxrTee inputRGB port now accepts incoming connections of type color, vector, point, or normal.
- Fixed a potential memory overflow in RixRNG
- Fixed a problem with "it" not loading custom commands when the system had a font without a family name
- Improved robustness of OSL divide
- A bug the prevent "int reentrant" [0] from working on non-thread safe procedurals has now been fixed
- Fixed a multi-threading bug in alembicProcPrim
- Setting the post-checkpoint command to an empty string no longer causes the renderer to abort after the checkpoint
Miscellaneous Changes
"it" will not automatically try to apply the nVidia Denoiser to all images when enabled. Images now are catagorized into color and non-color when they are created, and only color ones are denoised. The RGB indicator on the Pixel Readout now changes
to XYZ if "it" does not cosider the AOV to be color. The user can use Image->Toggle Is Color (Shift+A) to override this setting on an image
Add an property to image elements "is color" which is then used to decide if the display should be denoised or not. Add a command to manually flip the property so the user isn't stuck with the automatic guess. The guess is based on a list of REs run against the channel names. The guess is made visible to the user via the pixel readout channel labels- The "darkfalloff" parameter to control adaptive sampling was replaced by exposureBracket in 23.0. But there are cases where "darkfalloff" is the best way to control adaptive sampling, so we have brought it back. (ExposureBracket is a precision tool, but sometimes you need the big hammer. darkfalloff is the big hammer. ExposureBracket is still a good way to finely control where the samples should go.)
- Added a new geometric control: int curve:widthaffectscurvature [0/1]. Default is 1, meaning that the calculation of curvature in round curves geometry will behave exactly as before. Setting the attribute to 0 will make curvature only account for the analytic curvature along the curve itself and ignore any high curvature due to thin curve widths. Setting the attribute to 0 is probably the most artist friendly way to render curves with BxDFs such as PxrSurface but also in the case curvature is used to model shading effects in patterns, for example to vary colors basen on region of hair that may be smooth of fizzy.
- Attempting to run the installer on Windows 10 now results in an error dialog indicating if the hardware specs are too low. Previously it would appear nothing happened and no indication of why.
Known Limitations
Interactive/Live Rendering Limitations
- Bucket order or size cannot be changed during live rendering
- Changes to Presence do not update when using the opacity cache option
- Motion Blur will disappear during interactive rendering with scene changes
- Objects are not re-diced during interactive camera edits
- Mesh lights cannot be interchanged as geometry without restart.
RenderMan Pro Server
- PxrUnified integrator is currently experimental as it does not yet support all the standard rendering features.
- Meshlights cannot be instanced
- Load on demand procedurals are not supported anymore, all procedurals are now loaded immediately
- We do not read point data from OpenVDB files
- PxrSurface back diffuse color is not output to the albedo color AOV
- Analytical lights placed inside volumes may yield artifacts when made visible to the camera. As a work around, the light camera visibility should be turned off, and a geometry with a similar shape should be used (visible to camera, invisible to transmission and indirect rays), with the proper emissive bxdf.
- Using the ' . ' character in the handle for an OSL shader could cause unpredictable results during re-rendering.
- Per-Instance baking is not supported, only the reference instance.
- 3d baking: no direct bake-to-ptex support.
- PxrBakePointCloud cannot directly render ptex.
- Sample/Display filter plug-ins do not have access to lighting services for light dependent effects, e.g. lens flare.
- Adding new mesh light on existing geometry during IPR results in double geometry.
- Motion blurred polygons do not motion blur normals when deformed. Use Subdivision meshes instead.
- When attempting to access an array primvar, you must first check the size of the array primvar and allocate the appropriate space. Not doing so may lead to a crash.
- Points and curves cannot be used as geometric lights.
Deformation motion blurred volumes don't currently work with densityFloatPrimVar or densityColorPrimVar. You will need to use a PxrPrimVar node connected to densityFloat and densityColor instead.