Pixar releases RenderMan 27.3
Renders of Buzz Lightyear used by Pixar as a marketing image for RenderMan 27.3. The latest update to the renderer adds native MaterialX and Cryptomatte support to RenderMan XPU.
Pixar has released RenderMan 27.3, the latest version of its heavyweight production renderer for VFX and animation.
The update adds a number of new features to RenderMan XPU, the software’s hybrid CPU/GPU render engine, including initial native support for both MaterialX and Cryptomatte.
There are also further updates to the Stylized Looks toolset, and to hair shading.
RenderMan XPU: native MaterialX support in Solaris pipelines
RenderMan 27.3 features further improvements to RenderMan XPU, the hybrid CPU/GPU render engine, which became officially ready for final-frame rendering in RenderMan 27.
One of the biggest is native MaterialX support, with support for the MaterialX BSDF and combiner nodes making it possible to render arbitrary MaterialX shading networks.
The new MaterialX BSDF and combiner evaluation path – which supports both MaterialX Standard Surface and OpenPBR shaders – is currently available via RenderMan’s Hydra integration, and is supported only in Solaris-based pipelines in Houdini.
There are also a number of other current limitations, the biggest probably being the lack of support for MaterialX VDF nodes for volumetric shading.
Ingestion of MaterialX materials via hdPrman, RenderMan’s Hydra delegate, is now faster, which also improves the responsiveness of renders using the CPU-only RIS render architecture.
RenderMan XPU: initial Cryptomatte support
Another important change to XPU is initial support for VFX industry-standard ID matte generation system Cryptomatte.
It’s supported in all of the host DCC applications, but currently only name, path, and material layers are supported in the new Cryptomatte display driver, not arbitrary attribute layers.
RenderMan XPU: better support for MaterialX Lama and thin volumes
In addition, XPU now supports all of the LamaLayer layering modes in MaterialX Lama, RenderMan’s layered material system, bringing it to parity with RIS.
A new Oversample Volumes mode in PxrPathTracer cuts convergence times when rendering thin volumes with XPU, and overall startup times have been reduced when rendering on GPU.
Updates to Stylized Looks and hair shading
Outside XPU, RenderMan 27.3 adds new features to the Stylized Looks non-photorealistic rendering toolset, including a new Stylized Toon Control node, new light modes in Stylized Light Control, and a new Flow Map option for brush rotation in Stylized Painterly Brush Control.
For hair shading, the PxrMarschner material gets a new hairNormal lobe, with the option to mimic the behavior in the newer LamaHairChiang material.
Price and system requirements
RenderMan 27.3 is compatible with Windows 10+, macOS 15.x+ and glibc 2.34+ Linux. Integration plugins are available for Blender 3.6+, Houdini 20+, Katana 7+ and Maya 2024+.
RenderMan XPU is supported on Windows and Linux. It requires a NVIDIA Pascal GPU or newer.
New perpetual and node-locked floating licenses cost $845, including 12 months’ maintenance. There is also a free non-commercial edition.
Read a full list of new features in RenderMan 27.3 in the online release notes
Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.