What's New

RenderMan^® version 25 delivers a state-of-the-art denoiser and XPU advancements for feature film animation and VFX

Denoiser

The RenderMan Denoiser is a completely new denoising technology developed by Disney Research using state-of-the-art machine learning.

Lightyear © Disney/Pixar

Game Changer

The denoiser is capable of removing noise on images with significantly lower average sample counts and excels with animation and motion blur.

Lightyear © Disney/ Pixar

Almost Magic

Thanks to machine learning powered by production data, the AI Denoiser stands out in preserving complex, intricate details that could otherwise be lost, even with very low average samples, making it ideal for demanding applications like feature animation and VFX.

The Denoiser is so accurate, it significantly reduces rendering times while maintaining high fidelity, and has been occasionally called “magic” by industry veterans.

“Super impressed with the quality of the deep-learning denoiser from Disney Research, its multi-frame denoising is fantastic for animation and VFX work - really helps in reducing our render times."

- Will Earl, Head of Optimization at MPC

XPU Advancements

Pixar’s next generation rendering engine receives significant updates to interactivity and exciting new features such as volume support.

RenderMan Supercharged

Pixar's XPU technology reaches significant milestones in version 25, including support for volumes, secondary passes, trace groups, thin shadows, progressive pixels, and many enhancements for look development, lighting, and interactivity. These milestones represent a major evolution of Pixar’s next generation renderer, XPU.

XPU, Better and Faster!

XPU convergence and interactivity have been greatly improved, marking another great step towards full production rendering.

XPU Outputs

Full support for LPEs and arbitrary AOVs gives artists the control they need to produce high-quality output for compositing and a variety of production scenarios.

Improved Stylization

The Stylized Looks toolset offers more creative controls for artists to create non-photorealistic images.

Updates include improved Toon shading, hatching, line distortion, and UX.

More Features

Progressive Pixels – Fractional first iteration display for improved image feedback with XPU, especially with very heavy models or volumes.
New Texture Cache – Improved performance on GPUs if the texture cache needs to do out-of-core texture lookups or is memory constrained.
Camera Controls – XPU now supports many controls of Pixar Camera, including depth of field and lens aberration.
USD Improvements – Houdini Solaris support has been improved with advancements in MaterialX, camera controls, motion blur, and more.
New Patterns – Extend your look development with new color and bump nodes.
Better Convergence - XPU support for Russian Roulette, Ray Depth, and more.
Bridge Updates – Houdini 19.5 and Katana 6 are now supported.
Deformation Motion Blur – XPU now supports full deformation motion blur, enabling studios to use XPU to generate fast quality control renders.
MaterialX Lama Improvements – ILM's material layering system gets a new iridescence material response and improved physical accuracy.
Preset Browser – Native QT support in Blender.
New Presets – New collections for fur, hair, stylization, diverse skin, and more.
Light Baking – Improved global illumination baking by up to 2x, as well as additional controls for controlling resolution.
VFX Reference Platform – Updated to the 2021 standard.
For more see the Release Notes

What's New?

Innovation in production denoising, interactivity, and stylization highlight this major release