Pixar makes RenderMan free for non-commercial use
Use for tools development is fine too. Ships with Maya and Katana plugins; Houdini and C4D to come.
Tuesday, March 24th, 2015
RenderMan
Basefount Technology releases Miarmy 3.6
Control armies via natural language with the crowd simulation tool's new human language logic system.
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015
Pixar ships RenderMan 19
Featuring the new RIS raytracing architecture and costing just $495. Free version now due early 2015.
Friday, November 21st, 2014
Pixar to make RenderMan free for non-commercial use
Unrestricted free version due this summer. Price of commercial version cut to just $495, effective now.
Friday, May 30th, 2014
Basefount Technology releases Miarmy 3.0
Maya crowd simulation system gets better support for deforming terrain - and option to render out in 3ds Max.
Monday, March 24th, 2014
Basefount releases Miarmy 2.7
Maya crowd simulator adds support for compound bone systems, more advanced actor interactions.
Friday, December 13th, 2013
Pixar releases RenderMan Studio 18
Maya version of the renderer gets improved relighting workflow, geometric area lights, better SSS.
Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
Navié releases Effex 2.0 for Cinema 4D
Plugin expands into full 'modular VFX framework', including particles, fluids and volumetric modelling.
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
Foundry and Pixar announce 'strategic collaboration'
Immediate result: copies of Katana now come with a free licence of RenderMan Pro Server.
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013
Pixar releases RenderMan Pro Server 18
New features include path tracing for faster re-rendering, geometric area lights, Beam Diffusion SSS.
Friday, June 28th, 2013
Ezequiel Mastrasso releases eze Shader Suite
Free collection of 3Delight and RenderMan shaders simplifies the process of lighting hair and fur.
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
One to bookmark: The Mari Channel
Peter Aversten's texturing and look dev training blog includes videos on Maya, RenderMan... and yep, Mari.
Thursday, April 25th, 2013
Pixar ships RenderMan Pro Server 17.0 and Studio 4.0
Both feature improved instancing, photon mapping and volumetrics; price of Studio edition cut by $700.
Monday, October 8th, 2012