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Welcome to RenderMan 22.4!

Welcome to RenderMan 22.4. This release introduces improvements to the previous RenderMan.

Please dive right into the release notes below for more detailed information on the latest version of your favorite renderer!

What's New

Further improvements to OSL performance — A new mode of "Batched" OSL shading is available as a User Option and when used with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512). This may become defaulted to "on" in future versions. Read about it here under Performance Notes.

Miscellaneous Changes

Improved optimizations for large OSL networks that share computations across scatter, opacity, and volume evaluation for bxdf's that correctly categorize their inputs using extended RixSCAccess modes
Updated PxrSurface to take advantage of extended RixSCAccess modes
Added a primvars python module to facilitate adding __Pref data to shape nodes, which is useful for people who need their __Pref data to be exported into an alembic cache. When rendering Maya geometry directly in RfM, the recommended workflow is still to use texture reference objects from the standard Maya workflow
Exposed default (Ri) error hanlders via RixInterface
Restore C compatibility of ndspy.h
Reduced overhead of accessing textures via OSL
The Image Tool, "It" has a new "Commands > Standard Color Chart" menu to create a standard color rendition chart
Added a new Heat Map command to "It". This is useful to colorize float AOVs like sampleCount or CPUTime
Iridescence now participates in the specularEnergyCompensation (its fresnel, ie EdgeGain vs EdgeFace, is accounted for in the substrates compensation, exactly in the same way and at the same level as specular and rough specular)
Checkpoint recovery is now more verbose by default. Set /prman/recover/verbosity to 1 in rendermn.ini to return the old level. The new default is 3
Added built-in "__faceindex" AOV
New feature: smooth normals on displaced coarse polygon meshes. This is implemented in the RixBump() utility function which is called by the PxrBump shader. This is basically just a new application of the classic trick of adjusting the post-displacement normal by the difference between the pre-displacement smooth interpolated vertex normal and the pre-displacement non-smooth (analytical) mesh face normal
PxrVolume now supports the user lobe "DiffuseAlbedo"

Fixes

Fix possible crash related to long transformation paths
Fixed the NP and Nl values provided to display plugins when using a worldorigin other than "world"
A bug causing artifacts in LPE AOV outputs when rendering with more than one indirect sample in PxrPathTracer, in the presence of volumes mixed with glass or subsurface has been fixed
The built-in variable dPdtime is now correctly computed for transform blurred volumes which do not have velocity wired into their shading network
Fixed an issue where many threads calling RiObjectBegin at the same time could lead to non-unique object handles being generated
Fixed a bug that could lead to failure of portions of a shading network when using mixed C++ and OSL patterns
Fixed a bug where deep images may have the negative values in the last channel in the channel list turned positive

API Changes

Interactive/Live Rendering Limitations

Crop window edits are restricted to fall inside the original crop window

RenderMan Pro Server Limitations

PxrUnified integrator does not yet support all the standard rendering features
Meshlights cannot be instanced
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 (mesh) 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

The Centos KDE style "Oxygen" installs a version of Qt and sets the user's environment variable QT_PLUGIN_PATH forcing "it" and LocalQueue to attempt to load an incompatible Qt library. Either avoid installing the Oxygen theme or unset QT_PLUGIN_PATH before running "it" or LocalQueue. Other KDE styles may also install this theme.