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Welcome to RenderMan for Maya (RfM) 21.1!

Welcome to RfM 21.1 This release introduces improvements and some fixes to the previous release.

Added support for Maya 2017

New Features

Maya's projection node workflow is now supported.

Miscellaneous changes

Parameters that use a gradient control now appear correctly in the Attribute Editor. eg. The falloff parameter of PxrRodLightFilter now has a gradient control.
The Maya help menu now contains a link to the new RenderMan documentation site.
The "bake" hider is now available in the option menu for the Hider attribute.
RenderMan lights show correct icons in Maya's Light Editor.
The Create Pass menu under the passes tab in the Render Settings window now only includes pass types that are listed in the pref in RenderMan_for_Maya.ini called CreateMenuPassClasses.
Explicit Final passes now get denoised when denoise is enabled in the Render Settings, under the Features tab.
Preset Browser now defaults to $RMANTREE/lib/RenderManAssetLibrary

Bug Fixes

Fixed imagePlane sample filter translation with complex rotation, scale, and offset. Coverage is no longer supported.

The above change may require you to remake some textures using txmake if you are referencing a .tex file. Or you can delete the /renderman/textures/ folder to force txmake to run again on your older scenes if referencing a non .tex file. (There will be a delay for the next render as txmake runs again in the background.)

Preset Browser: Fixed issues with PxrRamp and missing displacement patterns.
The Alpha Channel checkbox in the Render Settings has been fixed.
Fixed a bug where "Open Last RIB" command would show binary rib on windows. Now you should always see ascii even if rendering with binary rib.
Fixed a bug where animated attrs on RenderMan light or material nodes wouldn't update in Maya's parallel evaluation mode.
The option box for the batch render item in Maya's Render menu now works when RenderMan is the current renderer.
Shading no longer gets lost for the particle instancer when the original geometry is invisible.
Denoise now works properly for AOVs that go into subdirs based on the AOV name.
Fixed a bug where XGen was not working for non-spooled preview renders starting in maya 2016.5.
Fixed where LocalQueue was not loading envkey files from the locations listed in the RMS_SCRIPT_PATHS environment variable.
Hardware texturing for RenderMan bxdfs with connections to maya textures now works in viewport 2.0 in Core Profile mode.
When "auto crop" renders were on, clicking anywhere in the 'it' window would restart a render.

Known Limitations

RenderMan for Maya

You MUST set Maya->Preferences->Settings->Animation->Evaluation Mode to "DG" not "Serial" or "Parallel"

- Modifying light visibility while in IPR mode does not change light visibility
- Maya fluids will currently only render if you add RenderMan volume controls. Select the fluid shape and in the AE, do Attributes->RenderMan->Add Volume Controls
- Creating a mesh light during IPR will retain the old geometry (non-mesh light). A refreshed IPR session will remove the old geometry.
- Prior versions of RenderMan for Maya are not compatible with RenderMan 21.0. Trying to load the version 20.0 plugin with RenderMan Pro Server 21 installed will cause the following warnings: "rfm Warning: skipping unknown Slim keyword: requires" when loaded. The 20.X plugin will not function correctly.
- Deselecting "Receive Shadows" does not work.