Wednesday, August 4th, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Get the free RenderMan for Substance Painter 24.1 plugin


Pixar has released RenderMan 24.1, the latest version of the production renderer.

The free RenderMan for Substance Painter plugin has also been updated, and can now export Substance materials for use in other DCC apps in a format compatible with RenderMan’s Lama layered material system.

Updates to XPU, Stylized Looks and the Blender and Houdini plugins
Since it comes just a month after RenderMan 24.0, the 24.1 update itself doesn’t add major new features.

Most of the changes are bugfixes, or performance and workflow improvements to the big features added in 24.0, particularly NPR shading system Stylized Looks and heterogeneous render engine RenderMan XPU.

The update moves XPU – which is currently only recommended for interactive previews – a bit further towards features parity with the existing RIS render architecture.

Key changes include the option to write albedo AOVs, and support for PxrOcclusion for ambient occlusion.

In addition, new Blender plugin RenderMan for Blender has been updated to support Blender 2.93, the current version of the software. Both the Blender and Houdini plugins also now support Python 3.



A material exported from Substance Painter to Maya via the updated RenderMan for Substance Painter plugin, showing the RenderMan Lama material network towards the foot of the screen.


RenderMan for Substance Painter now exports materials in LamaSurface format
For many users, the most important change will be to an unofficial plugin: RenderMan for Substance Painter.

Pixar engineer Philippe LePrince’s open-source add-on makes it possible to export Substance 3D Painter projects – or readymade .sbsar files imported into Painter – to RenderMan’s preset browser.

Users can now choose to export in a format compatible with Lama, the new layered material format added in RenderMan 24.0, as well as the existing PxrSurface and PxrDisney materials.

There are also new colour-management options, with presets for OpenColorIO, ACES 1.2 and Blender’s default Filmic colour transform when exporting materials.

Once exported to the preset browser, materials can be imported into Maya, Houdini, Katana or Blender via RenderMan’s integration plugins, which exposes the Lama material network inside the host app.

System requirements
RenderMan 24.1 is available for Windows 10, CentOS/RHEL 7.2+ Linux and macOS 10.13-10.15. Integration plugins are available for Blender 2.83+, Houdini 17.5+, Katana 3.1 and Maya 2019+.

New node-locked or floating licences cost $595. There is also a free non-commercial edition.

RenderMan for Substance Painter 24.1 requires RenderMan Pro Server 24.1 and Substance Painter 2021.1 or Substance 3D Painter. It is available free under a MIT licence.


Read a full list of new features in RenderMan 24.1 in the online release notes

Download RenderMan for Substance Painter 24.1 from the plugin’s GitHub repository