The RenderMan 24 release of RenderMan XPU™ has been tailored to work within Look Development workflows.  It has an interactive renderer that is meant to be used by artists on their desktops as they shade and work with assets.  It is the perfect tool to use when shading.  RenderMan XPU has been integrated into Maya, Katana, Houdini, and Blender.

RenderMan XPU can be considered another variant of RenderMan itself – a companion to RenderMan RIS.  All of the techniques you have learned about to use RenderMan RIS apply to using XPU.  The BxDFs and the patterns all are usable with RenderMan XPU.  The look that you get from RenderMan XPU will be predictive of RenderMan RIS.  It won't be pixel-for-pixel accurate.  But it will give you a render that is very close to what you will get from RIS.  Take a look at the general documentation for the BxDFs and Patterns to understand the possibilities you can achieve with RenderMan XPU and RIS. 

It uses the same textures as RenderMan RIS.

It is available to commercial customers of RenderMan.

While you can use RenderMan XPU 24 on your farm, it has not been tailored to work in a farm context.  For example, it doesn't yet have adaptive sampling, which allows your render to terminate much earlier than it would otherwise.

How to use it in your pipeline

Interactive rendering

Integrated into the DCCs