Modern Physically-Based Rendering
RenderMan offers a combination of unbiased and biased rendering techniques which provide both accuracy and technical efficiency
State of the Art
RenderMan® 27 marks a historic leap forward with XPU production rendering, ushering a new era of GPU accelerated rendering at Pixar Animation Studios.
RenderMan 27 also features an interactive version of the advanced machine learning Denoiser from Disney Research, now available in XPU. This release also sees enhancements in the features and user experience of Stylized Looks, including painterly effects, notable improvements to memory management, and expanded compatibility with the newest 3D applications, making it a comprehensive update for professionals in the industry.
Artistic
Today there are many options for integrating RenderMan into VFX pipelines, including solutions from Pixar for Autodesk Maya®, The Foundry KATANA®, SideFX Houdini®/Solaris, as well as Blender®. For lighting and look development, RenderMan offers a state-of-the-art system for interactive rendering that is capable of dramatically increasing the throughput of production scenes while allowing artists to focus on their art.
This intuitive system for creating photoreal and stylized looks, allows artists to create the most versatile and unique imagery conceivable.
Production-Ready Light Transport
Uni-Directional Path Tracer
The most used integrator, ideal for outdoor lighting and large direct light sources, this industry standard unidirectional path tracer combines samples from materials at hit points with light samples to estimate direct lighting, then spawns additional rays to handle indirect lighting.
The path tracer ships with source code for further customization.
Bi-Directional Path Tracer
For scenes problematic for unidirectional path tracing, the bi-directional Path Tracer, also called VCM integrator, can save the day. In addition to tracing paths from the camera, bi-directional path tracing also sends rays from light sources and then connects them. VCM can resolve complicated indirect paths and caustic effects that may be prohibitively slow to converge with unidirectional path tracing. Ideal for rendering interiors.
Pixar Unified
Pixar Unified offers both unidirectional and bidirectional path tracing which can be controlled on a per-light basis, so you get the best of both. It also delivers state-of-the-art light path guiding based on work from Disney Research for computer learning. The Pixar Unified integrator also contains functionality for quickly resolving caustic paths, a technique called Manifold Next Event Estimation, allowing caustic paths to resolve much quicker.
“The AI Denoiser has transformed our studio pipeline allowing shots to be rendered which would otherwise be impossible"
- Steve may, Pixar CTO
Custom Development
RenderMan's robust APIs provide all the necessary tools for studios to write their own integrators and materials, allowing development teams creative and non-destructive freedom to experiment with cutting-edge technology.
Mufasa: The Lion King © Disney.
Multi-Threaded and GPU Ready
To maximize interactivity, RenderMan has great scalability on machines with many cores and provides fast look-development workflows with XPU™.
Additional Features
- GPU + CPU hybrid rendering for look development
- Layerable Materials from Industrial Light & Magic
- Non-Photorealistic rendering
- Live statistics and instrumentation
- Pixar Unified Integrator
- Unique Unbiased Path Traced Subsurface Scattering
- Physical and Artistic Hair Shading
- True Opacity
- Dispersion
- Importance, Blue Noise, and Adaptive Sampling
- OSL Patterns
- Programmable AOV and LPE passes
- DeepEXR Data Support
- Cryptomatte Support
- Watertight Displacement
- Interactive Displacement Edits
- Daylight Simulator
- Analytic Area Lights
- Gobos, Blockers, Filters, Portals
- Emissive Geometry
- Global Light Sampling
- Interactive Lighting and Look Development
- Maya Fluids, OpenVDB
- Multi-lobe Bump and Normal mapping
- GGX and Beckman specular
- Tilt-shift, chromatic aberration, rolling shutter
- Texture and Light Baking
- Occlusion integrator and pattern
- Light temperature
- IES profiles
- For more see the Release Notes
Out of This World Innovation
Developed specifically for animation and VFX, this release is continuing to raise the bar for look development and industry collaborations.
The Future is Here!
RenderMan 27 is Pixar’s newest release, featuring XPU final-frame rendering, multi-GPU support, interactive denoising, deep compositing workflows, and expanded shading capabilities. This release moves towards XPU as the future rendering engine while keeping RIS in maintenance mode.
Dream Productions © Disney/Pixar
Cross Platform
RenderMan and all its plug-ins are made for the three main operating systems: Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
RenderMan Components
RenderMan DCC Plugin
The Interface
RenderMan is built specifically for every plugin to take advantage of the application's maximum potential
RenderMan Pro Server
The Engine
RenderMan Pro Server crunches the data generated by your application plugin and renders the image.
Deadpool & Wolverine © 20th Century Studios and Marvel.
Operating System Compatibility
64-bit Linux
EL9 (RHEL 9.x, AlmaLinux 9.x, Rocky Linux 9.x)
64-bit macOS
macOS Sequoia (15.x)
64-bit Windows
Windows 10 and 11
DCC Compatibility
Maya
Houdini
Katana
Blender
Hardware Requirements
CPU
RenderMan and XPU require a processor with AVX capabilities.
GPU
RenderMan XPU and the Optix denoiser require an Nvidia graphics card of Pascal architecture or above.
Memory
RenderMan needs a minimum of 8GB of RAM and XPU needs a minimum of 12GB of VRAM.
Plugins
VFX Reference Platform: CY2024. Custom plugins must be compiled with gcc 11
Robust and Modern UX
Derived from years of experience, Tractor is a modern and robust solution for network rendering, capable of scaling up to the largest render farms.
Cross-Platform and Web Based
Tractor is packaged for each operating system, containing all of the Tractor components you will need, though each machine may only use a subset
Tractor Highlights
- Powerful scripting interfaces
- Native Maya Integration
- Flexible resource-sharing controls
- Python module extensions
- Minimal computational footprint
- Streamlined installation
- Major user interface enhancements
- Open web standards
- HTML5 support
- VFX Reference Platform 2023
- For more see the Tractor Overview
Tractor System Requirements
Tractor-Engine
Central job queue, installed on one host only. C++, Python, Postgresql (bundled). Linux 64-bit (gcc4.4), MacOS (12.x+).
Tractor-Blade
Task execution server for render farm hosts. Pure Python (2.7 / 3.x). Linux-64, MacOS 12.x+, and Windows.
Tractor-Dashboard
Web-based user interface, job browsing, and control. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge. No platform-specific plug-ins required.
Job Author/Query
Job submission, advanced scripting API, and command line tools. Pure Python (2.7 / 3.x). Linux-64, MacOS 12.x+, and Windows.
