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Welcome to RenderMan for Blender 24!

This new release of RenderMan for Blender 24 (RfB) has been completely rewritten to take advantage of the RenderMan 24 toolset, including XPU™, Stylized Looks, and MaterialX Lama.

RenderMan for Blender 24 represents a completely new code path compared to the previous version of RenderMan for Blender (which supported RenderMan 21).  This version takes advantage of the new interactive rendering capabilities that were introduced into RenderMan several years ago, where the old version was batch render oriented.

This current release offers support for:

  • Blender 2.83 LTS
  • Blender 2.92

Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues!

What's New

RenderMan for Blender has been extended to support all of the features of RenderMan 24, including:

  • Interactive rendering – As you make updates to your geometry, shading, or lighting, RenderMan for Blender will communicate your changes through to RenderMan so that you can constantly see updates of your work within a path traced environment

  • XPU™ – Switch to XPU for doing Look Development.  XPU is Pixar’s hybrid CPU + GPU rendering technology is a next-generation rendering engine, rewritten for speed and efficiency on film production assets. This first phase of XPU is focused on accelerating look development for shading artists.  XPU is only available if you have a Commercial license for RenderMan

  • MaterialX Lama – Use RenderMan 24's new Layered Materials developed at Industrial Light and Magic.  It introduces a modular approach for building materials

  • 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.  Stylized Looks are only available if you have a Commercial license for RenderMan

  • OpenColorIO – Robust support for the industry standard ACES color management system and other color spaces

  • Live Statistics – Watch your rendering resource usage live, thanks to a completely redesigned statistics system that prioritizes interactivity and extensibility

  • OSL Patterns – We have converted the great majority of C++ patterns to OSL. This conversion allows the sharing of code between RIS and XPU, which provides confidence that the renders 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

  • And more!

Source Code

You can download the source code for RenderMan for Blender here: https://github.com/prman-pixar/RenderManForBlender


Known Issues

  • Canceling a render from "it" will crash Blender. One workaround is to cancel the render from Blender.
  • Translating Cycles shading networks is not supported.
  • Not all curve types are supported.
  • Grease Pencil is not fully supported.