RIS and Interactive Rendering

Interactive rendering in the RIS mode of PRMan is the next step in the evolution of progressive refinement path-traced rendering via the raytrace hider, introduced in PRMan 18. It is in many ways similar to "final" rendering, but all manner of interactive edits are possible while the process is running.

About Interactive, Progressive Rendering

Interactive progressive rendering supports for interactive camera, lighting, and surface shader edits with final render-quality results. RenderMan for Maya supports both ray-traced modes interactive rendering: path-traced in RenderMan/RIS mode and distribution ray-traced in RenderMan/Reyes mode. Each mode has its particular benefits. Users should consider their needs and choose accordingly.

Both modes support all manner of edits to lights and surface shaders. Lights (and light blockers) can be moved, added or removed, any parameters of lights and surface shaders can be tweaked and adjusted (including edits to coordinate systems), ray-traced shadows update continuously in either mode, and you can even edit the shadow bias for pre-computed shadow maps in the REYES mode.

All light and shader types are supported, including environment lights, as are volumes, hair, gobs and gobs of geometry, implicit surfaces, and so on. Edits can be made to Maya nodes in the Maya UI or to Slim shaders in Slim (in Renderman/Reyes mode only), including co-shaders.

Note that, currently, interactive rendering with the bi-directional path tracer (i.e. the PxrVCM integrator) is not as robust as with the uni-directional path tracer.

More Info

• "Re-rendering" Developers Note - A developer-level view of the technical whatnot going on behind the interface.