RenderMan FAQ

The most significant updates include final-frame rendering in XPU, interactive denoising, deep OpenEXR workflows, improved stylized rendering, and expanded MaterialX Lama support. Additionally, multi-GPU rendering is now available, offering major performance improvements.

Yes, RIS is still available but is transitioning to maintenance mode. Pixar encourages studios to start migrating to XPU, as future updates will focus on enhancing XPU performance and features.

We encourage adoption of XPU for most productions. XPU is now capable of final-frame rendering and supports nearly all key production features previously exclusive to RIS. Some advanced shading workflows in RIS may still require adaptation for XPU. RIS will be supported for now, but will be deprecated in a future release.

RenderMan 27 runs on Windows 11+, Linux EL9, and macOS (only supports RIS … XPU is in progress).

XPU is RenderMan’s hybrid CPU-GPU rendering engine, designed to maximize performance by utilizing both CPU and GPU resources. It is faster, more interactive, and optimized for modern hardware.

XPU significantly accelerates rendering times, particularly in interactive and final-frame workflows. Benchmarks show 2-10x faster render times in most cases. These performance improvements are scene dependent and vary based on scene complexity and hardware configurations.

Yes! RenderMan 27 introduces multi-GPU support, allowing users to leverage multiple GPUs simultaneously for increased performance. The scene must fit into the memory of each GPU.

XPU was designed for NVIDIA GPUs and CUDA. GPU support for other vendors is under active evaluation with industry collaborators.

No. While XPU benefits from powerful GPUs, it is designed to scale across different hardware configurations, including CPU-only rendering.

The answer is in the X of XPU. If your GPU doesn’t have enough memory to render your scene, you can always render your scene with your CPU and get the exact same pixels as the GPU.

There is no need. Because XPU creates the same pixels on the CPU and GPU, you can use machines with GPUs for interactive lighting, but then use your CPU based farm for batch renders. You’ll get the same result.

In version 27, RenderMan XPU expands compositing capabilities holdouts, mattes, deep OpenEXR ID support, and extended workflows for AOVs and LPEs. Cryptomatte support will arrive in a dot release.

Yes! Stylized Looks™ is now supported in XPU, allowing for painterly, toon-shaded, and artistic effects directly within the renderer. A host of new features like Painterly Brushes and Normal extend the range of creative looks as well.

MaterialX Lama is supported in XPU, enabling industry-standardized shading workflows and developed at Industrial Light and Magic.

General MaterialX support is under active development.

RenderMan 27 is compatible with Autodesk Maya, Foundry Katana, Blender, and SideFX Houdini, including support for Houdini’s OpenUSD tool, Solaris.

Yes, RenderMan 27 is fully aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2024, ensuring compatibility across major industry tools.

Yes, RenderMan 27 RIS will include Apple Silicon support in a R27 dot release, allowing you to use native ARM processors in macOS. RenderMan XPU will be supported in a future release.

Pixar recommends starting the transition to XPU, as future updates will focus primarily on XPU development. However, RIS is still available for legacy projects.

While XPU now supports most major production workflows, some niche RIS features may not yet have direct equivalents, such as baking workflows and bi-directional pathtracing. Support for hundreds, thousands, and millions of lights will be coming in a future major release. Features that will be coming in a dot release include Cryptomatte, Resume, and fixes for look differences between XPU and RIS in MaterialX Lama. See the documentation for the complete list of XPU’s differences to RIS.

RIS will continue to receive bug fixes and maintenance support, but all new development will focus on XPU.

RenderMan 27 is available at $595 per license with $250 annual maintenance.

Yes! Non-Commercial RenderMan (NCR) is available for students, independent artists, and researchers, and version 27 is available now for download.

RenderMan 27 is available at renderman.pixar.com/store.

For support, visit renderman.pixar.com/support or contact rendermansales@pixar.com for licensing inquiries.