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Welcome to RenderMan for Houdini 24!
RenderMan for Houdini (RfH) continues full support of the latest RenderMan 24.0. See the RenderMan Release Notes for more details.
This current release offers support for:
- Houdini 17.5
- Houdini 18.0 (including Solaris)
- Houdini 18.5 (including Solaris)
Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues
- Rendering with RenderMan will not operate on Houdini Apprentice editions, see SideFX's website for options that allow Third Party Rendering
"The Unsullied" by Dylan Sisson, rendered in RenderMan for Houdini
What's New
RenderMan for Houdini has been extended to support all of the features of RenderMan 24, including:
- 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 of RenderMan
- 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 of 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!
Changes
- All RenderMan node versions have changed to ::3.0. please convert your nodes with provided script.
- RenderMan errors are now warnings in Houdini
- Automatic conversion of PxrHSL, PxrVary, PxrSurface, PxrMix from old scenes to the new parameter names in RenderMan 24 rely on the 456.py script on houdini scene load rather than Houdini's opalias. This is to allow us to change parameter names and keep the old values. If you already have a 456 in your pipeline, you will need to add the update methods in order to convert those shaders.
- Improved user friendliness of Cryptomatte in RfH
- Apply materials to instance points via instancer
- args2hda now supports Unicode characters in parameter/shader help
- Added flush texture cache menu tool
- PxrDisney has been hidden in favor of the new PxrDisneyBsdf
- improvements to Ramp Light Filter
- Batch renders now obey soho_autoheadlight
- Velocity motion blur improvements
Fix bug for colliding parameter names on pxrmaterialbuilder
Known Issues
- Display edits cannot changed from the image tool to mplay
- Cross-frame denoising PDG support.
- Applying undo of deleted nodes or collapsing to subnet may not work as expected
- Rewiring subnet indirect inputs
Known Limitations
Live Statistics
- The initial integration is available, but live statistics are turned off by default. Artists can turn on the statistics through the buttons in the UI.
General
- Can only apply materials to packed instances
- Rendering with Mantra lights or VOPs is not possible
- Bypassing shader nodes
- Auto camera creation for IPR
- RenderMan clipping planes
- Soloing of Lama nodes