Friday, October 15th, 2010 Posted by Jim Thacker

Pixar releases RenderMan Studio 3.0

Pixar has released a new version of RenderMan Studio, its tool bundle based around RenderMan for Maya Pro.

New features in version 3.0 include relighting, support for Maya Fluid Effects, MTOR-style scripting from within RenderMan for Maya for the SLIM shader-authoring toolset, included in the bundle; and improvements to render layers and the RIB inspector.

SLIM itself has also been updated – including new node types for the Ptex texture mapping system – and a licence of Tractor, Pixar’s work-dispatching system, is now included in the bundle.

In addition to Ptex support, the core render engine gains unlimited threading, and “accelerated raytracing” – although no figures are provided for the speed boost.

RenderMan Studio 3.0 costs $2,000 in RIB-only format, or $3,500 with embedded renderer.

No press release yet, but you can check out the new features here

Update: the official news release can now be viewed here