Welcome to RenderMan for Houdini 23.6!

This release of RenderMan for Houdini (RfH) 23, includes a number of new features and bug fixes that address feedback.

New Features in 23.6

Fixes

• Fixed a bug that was setting the wrong icon path during args parsing.

• Fixed file dependency path for RenderMan TOP nodes.

• Fixed a bug where RenderMan parameters were being ignored inside locked HDAs.

• Removed single quotes in conditional visibility string.

• Fixed velocity transform blur scale.

• Fixed channel references for domelight with relative paths on the first frame rendering via hbatch. 

• Fixed incorrect screen window calculation when pixelaspect=2

• Fixed incorrect types for bokeh settings. 

• Fixed transform calculations for blend and bone obj nodes and added support for subnet's outputobj parameter.
• Fixed bug that did not read time correctly to expand $F in string paths.
• Fixed bug where curves with certain bases would look wrong when motion blur was enabled and "width" was defined. 
• In Solaris - 
  • Fixed a bug where hdPrman would always specify the first field of a vdb file as the density field.
  • Fixed a backdoor workflow where display and sample filters are allowed to come through Hydra as shading nodes.
  • Fixed the "Render to MPlay" and "Render to Disk in Background" buttons on the RenderMan LOP.
  • Light groups now work in light path expressions (no light selects).
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when running in the usdview that ships with Houdini if the camera was not created with Solaris and lacked certain attributes that we support for Solaris cameras.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some incorrect sample times when using more than 3 samples for deforming motion blur.

Miscellaneous

• Added support for pre- and post- render hooks via RFHhooks.

• Brought back PxrDebugShadingContext VOP/
• Improved motion blur support for in Solaris:

  • Motion blur for meshes, curves, and point particles is now supported.

  • There is now a Motion Blur tab under the RenderMan Master Attributes on Render Geometry Settings node.

  • Velocity blur and enabling/disabling motion blur for objects is now supported through the Render Geometry Settings node.

  • Enabling/disabling motion blur works for transforms and geometry.

• Other changes in Solaris:

  • The camera now tumbles around the mouse cursor when rendering in Solaris.
  • Added baking options to the RenderMan LOP under the Rendering/Render tab.
  • The RenderMan render is now paused when the user switches to the GL renderer.
  • RenderMan's Xcpt messages now go to stderr.  They were sometimes getting lost in Solaris.

• Removed xform_motionsamples and geo_motionsamples from the RenderMan tab because these are not RenderMan-only parameters and were affecting Mantra renders. Now you must manually add if you want to set these parameters on the object.

• Added support for shop_materialpath in alembic attributes, but the material must be included in the RenderMan scene for the procedural to apply the material. Added a bundle parameter on the RenderMan ROP to force material export.

• Improved viewport lighting.
• Read abcvelocityscale attribute to scale alembic velocity.
• Added acceleration blur support.