View Source

Welcome to RenderMan 23.2!

Welcome to RenderMan 23.2. This release introduces improvements to the previous RenderMan in very significant ways.

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

New Features in 23.2

BxDFs have a new parameter to improve shadowing when using a bump or normal map, the new behavior is off by default to preserve the old look. The improvement results in smoother, more natural shadowing

Left is the improved method, Right is the old behavior (default in 23)

Fixes

Fixed a bug where displacement and volume shaders initialization would happen too late (i.e. after displacement and/or dicing)
Added PxrSurface "glassRefractionRoughness" parameter also to PxrLayerMixer OSL shader
Prman would crash with the PxrProjector node if a coordinate system was not provided
Avoid deadlock when user plug-ins throw exceptions. Please note that all user plug-ins are expected to catch their own exceptions
Fix intermittent baking crash with subdivision meshes
Fixed a bug where uniform primvars of Subdiv and Poly meshes could return uninitialzed derivatives
Fix memory leak of framebuffer data when baking
Fixed a bug that could cause unrelated lights across a scene to randomly flicker when using a GOBO on any light
Fixed artefacts in PxrTangentField. The is a new "int backwardCompatible" parameter should you prefer the old behavior
Fix color array, matrix, and matrix array parameters with the python bindings
Fixed a bug where scenes with very high light counts could sometimes get stuck for a long period of time during initial scene processing
Fix incorrect varying quadric privmar length in scene graph API
PxrNormalMap, PxrBump: Fixed a rare crash when a misconfigured connected pattern fails to deliver the surface normal for bump layering
We now invalidate curves clusters (if needed) after group flattening, before building the reference instances to avoid a crash in curve procedurals

Miscellaneous Changes

Robustified replacing Pixar formatted textures on disk during live renders
The precision of OSL transforms from current to arbitrary spaces has been improved
Threading performance for the tessellation of dense displaced poly and subdiv meshes has been improved

Known Limitations

Interactive/Live Rendering Limitations

Bucket order or size cannot be changed during live rendering
Changes to Presence do not update when using the opacity cache option
Motion Blur will disappear during interactive rendering with scene changes
Objects are not re-diced during interactive camera edits
Mesh lights cannot be interchanged as geometry without restart.

RenderMan Pro Server

PxrUnified integrator is currently experimental as it does not yet support all the standard rendering features.
Meshlights cannot be instanced
Load on demand procedurals are not supported anymore, all procedurals are now loaded immediately
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 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.