Contents
Inside Out 2 © Disney/Pixar
Welcome to the RenderMan 26 Documentation!
Here you can find information on how to install, license, and use RenderMan and its various bridge products for Maya, Houdini, Blender, and Katana.
Pixar's RenderMan
Version 26 of RenderMan is the latest version of Pixar's flagship renderer, widely used in animation and visual effects for over 30 years.
This release features major updates to interactivity and scalability, thanks to significant advancements to Pixar’s state-of-the-art renderer, RenderMan XPU. RenderMan 26 also features an interactive version of the advanced Denoiser from Disney Research which uses machine learning to significantly accelerate the rendering process.
Improvements to the features and UX of Stylized Looks, significant speedups for instancing workflows, and support for the latest 3D applications, including an update to VFX Reference Platform 2023, round off this new release.
RenderMan 26 - Main Features
XPU Advancements — Pixar’s GPU + CPU hybrid renderer receives major updates. Highlights include improvements in sampling, an expanded lighting and camera toolset, as well as light selection, significantly speeding up rendering in a wider range of production use cases.
Interactive Denoising — Featuring an interactive version of the state-of-the-art Denoiser from Disney Research which uses machine learning to resolve partially converged images while maintaining image detail and temporal coherence, making the interactive results predictive of the full offline denoiser.
Core Improvements — RenderMan XPU and RIS receive a series of core updates which dramatically speed up time to first pixel, advance support for USD pipelines, and RIS receives improved subsurface scattering.
Better Stylization — Continued improvements to the Stylized Looks toolset give artists new ways to express line work, hatching, and toon effects, as well as a new Canvas layer, which simplifies an important step in the process.
Read all about the new features in version 26 in the Release Notes.
Previous documentation versions (prior to 22) can be found through the RenderMan Support Forums for download. View your archive downloads and find the version you need, the documentation bundle is available on the page after selecting "Next" from your version choice.
The Doxygen package for software developers is available under the Developer's Guide.