Pixar releases Renderman 23

December 8, 2019 Abhishek

When everyone thought Renderman is dead as Disney has switched to its ray tracing rendering engine called Hyperion, here comes the update to Renderman by Pixar which was was released in 1993. The last stable update was released 6 months ago.

Important changes included in this release are as below:

USD Support– In production environments using multiple applications (such as Maya, Katana, and Houdini), USD can enable a new level of reliable, efficient, flexible collaboration, including sharing of animated geometry, materials, and lights.
Live Rendering– extends support for interactive “always on” rendering at more stages of the pipeline, improving on the groundwork set by version 22. New and enhanced interactive rendering features allow artists to make better choices without restarting renders, improving productivity in all stages of the pipeline
Improved Hudini 18 support
Sampling Improvements: New statistical adaptive sampling metrics take the guessing game out of convergence by making it more predictable with higher quality.
USD Hydra Rendering – Render directly to Hydra via hdPrman.
OpenVDB Updated – New support for OpenVDB 5.2.
VFX Reference Platform 2018 – All plugins are now updated to the new standard, including gcc6.3 and C++14.
Shading Call Access – Path Traced SSS is now available via the Rix interfaces, so that anyone writing their own BxDF can call it.
Artist Tools – Version 23 adds more artist-focused workflow improvements in RenderMan plugins for Autodesk Maya, Foundry Katana, and Sidefx Houdini – further extending the major upgrades to these tools in version 22.
Stability and Power – Under the covers, the version 23 has been focused on improvements to RenderMan core technology, compiler platforms, and extensions to components that affect user experience and APIs that external developers use to provide rich custom integrations.