Pixar releases RenderMan 21 Non-Commercial
Pixar has released the free Non-Commercial edition of RenderMan 21, its heavyweight production renderer, intended for learning, personal work and tools development.
Aside from being a node-locked licence, the edition has identical features to the commercial version of the software, and is not watermarked or time-limited.
New lights and shaders, GPU support for Denoise
Released commercially in July, RenderMan 21 was described by Pixar as a “game-changer and the biggest RenderMan release in years”.
The update makes the same shaders and lights used in production at Pixar available to RenderMan users out of the box, and adds a new library of PBR materials.
The update also adds GPU support for the software’s Denoise system; and removes the venerable old Reyes rendering system in favour of Pixar’s newer RIS architecture.
You can read about the new features in more detail in our original story on RenderMan 21.
Pricing and availability
RenderMan 21 is is available now for 64-bit Windows 7+, Mac OS X 10.9+ and Linux glibc 2.12+ and gcc 4.4.5+. Plugins are available for Maya 2015+, Katana 2.0+, Houdini 15.5 and Blender.
The Non-Commercial edition is free for personal and research work, including the development of commercial plugins. You can read Pixar’s FAQs here.
You need to be registered on Pixar’s forum to download it. Registration provides two node-locked licences.
Read a full list of new features in RenderMan 21 on Pixar’s website