Welcome to RenderMan for Houdini 22!

This release of RenderMan for Houdini 22 (RfH), includes a number of new features to address feedback as well as many improvements to RenderMan for Houdini workflow and performance.

"The Unsullied" by Dylan Sisson, rendered in RenderMan for Houdini

What's New

Miscellaneous and Important Changes 

• Various UI changes and improvements

• Added camera projection sweep parameters

• Added holdout shelf and menu tool for creating holdout geometry and setting up shadow AOVs

• Render cameras now available in subnets
• Geo/xform motion sample parameter overrides on obj nodes are now interactive
• Move "enable depth of field" toggle behavior to ROP node
• Object paths now evaluate expressions
• Support added for custom versions of pxr nodes with name scope::namespace::pxr*::version
• We now support sparse RenderMan parameters
• RfH now drives fovEnd from standard camera parameters
• Users can set env variable searchpaths
• Users can override pixel filter for id, sampleCount, cpuTime, id, and z AOVs
• We now always emit defaults for unchanged parameters
• Added bake render menu tool, ROP button, and now prevent IPR renders from starting while baking
• The texture manager now rejects files with unknown extensions. A warning will be output with the file name
• Visibility SOP nodes are no longer respected by RenderMan, since they are intended to affect viewport visualization
• There is now a "Round Curves" setting in the spare RenderMan settings.  Curves with normals render as ribbons, and this setting has the effect of ignoring the normals
• Add Spare Parameters have been reorganized

Fixes

• Fixed forced matte and phantom to render regardless of candidate membership

• We now output AOVs with shelf render button

• A bug that prevented meshes with multiple shaders from rendering when deformation blur was on has been fixed

• We now respect pixel aspect ratio
• Ptex support (for quads only) fixed
• Fixed overwriting VDB files on disk
• Fixed a bug where Houdini scenes with hair would sometimes crash

• An issue where preview renders in the preset browser were not working has been addressed

• We now only write non-default shading parameters
• No longer update render when changing folders
• NURBS curves were being converted to linear, and now they're rendered directly, so should appear smooth

• A bug preventing exporting materials that had PxrSeExpr nodes inside has been addressed

• A bug that caused importing of RfM presets that contained ramps using the preset browser to break has been fixed

• Fixed a bug where the optional RMAN_RIXPLUGINPATH environment variable was not being looked at when loading args files during RfH startup
• Fixed a bug where osl structs used in conjuction with the special vstructmember tag "<paramname>.Struct" weren't establishing expected struct to struct connections when translated to RenderMan
• Fixed a batch rendering bug where first frame was missing motion blur
• We now correctly write float array instance attributes
• Fixed a bug where motion blur was not applied with SOP was not time dependent
• The Dicing Reference Camera now works as expected.  It's available under RenderMan/PrimVars/Dicing PrimVars that can be added to geometry nodes

• Selecting "point velocity attribute" for Point Motion Blur on point instances should now work

• Preset Browser

  • Fixed configuration-specific incorrect scaling of menu fonts in the preset browser
    

  • Fixed incorrect gamma correction of preset browser preview renders
    

  • The preset browser will now correctly generate a preview image when saving a light rig

Known Issues

• Phantom objects are removed from all rays, not just camera rays
• Applying undo of deleted nodes or collapsing to subnet may not work as expected
• Interactive Render Regions may require adjustment to start rendering
• Rewiring subnet indirect inputs
• Auto camera creation for IPR
• RenderMan clipping planes
• If a light instance's master is disabled, the first render/update will still show the master

Known Limitations

• Tractor Integration
• Rendering with Mantra lights not possible
• Bypassing shader nodes
• Rendering with Houdini VOPs