For example, with RenderMan 21 artists can now use the same shaders and lights that were used for “Finding Dory”, because with the latest version of the render engine all artists have access to Pixar’s lighting and look-development toolbox. In version 19, RIS (Rix Integration Subsystem, or preferably Renders Interesting Stuff) already replaced the REYES render architecture (Renders Everything You Ever Saw). According to Pixar, it has now reached full maturity in this major release and has already proven itself on feature films such as “The Jungle Book” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.
Shading
Pixar’s shaders are finely tuned for top-level performance and offer all the creative options for look development that are also available to shading artists at Pixar. Pixar Surface can be used to create materials such as glass or sophisticated skin surfaces—octopus Hank from “Finding Dory” owes his interesting look to it. The new Pixar Displacement was developed for the RIS framework and supports features such as 32-bit displacements. With the Marschner Hair feature, which was already introduced in version 20, even more realistic CG hair can now be styled, for example using luminous backscattering.
Lighting
RenderMan’s lighting system has been completely rewritten to achieve the best possible performance on modern hardware. It includes innovative techniques for suppressing artefacts and new methods for increasing efficiency. The new library of physically based lights contains standard features such as colour temperature, exposure and IES profiles, but special light filters are also available. Pixar lighting TDs developed these for various feature films; they quickly provide stylised lights in any quantity and offer a wide range of creative possibilities.
Pixar Surface Collection
The new library of physically based materials that come with Pixar Surface simplifies the creation of a wide variety of materials such as plastic, ceramics, metal, liquids and more. Materials can be created and shared through the Preset Browser in RenderMan for Maya, which is helpful for organising shaders, lights and textures.
Optimised Patterns
The expanded Pattern Suite makes it possible to design new looks quickly; for example, the Pixar Dirt Pattern can modify textures to give surfaces a dirt, dust or rust look. Pixar MultiTexture allows one shader to be assigned to several surfaces, while behaving individually on each surface. Users can now bake complex patterns into a 2D or 3D texture with Pixar BakeTexture & Bake PointCloud and reuse them later.
Further Features
The user interface has been redesigned and made clearer. The denoising function, which was already developed for “Big Hero 6” and was also used successfully on “Finding Dory”, has received an update too. For “Zoomania” in particular, the denoiser had to be improved for Disney’s many CG hairs and fur, while at Pixar it received more GPU acceleration, so that according to Pixar a feature-film frame can be denoised within seconds.
You can find an overview of all the new features on the RenderMan website.
Compatibility & Price
Pixar’s RenderMan is compatible with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux and can work with Autodesk Maya and The Foundry’s Katana. The commercial licence costs around 500 US dollars and is already available; anyone interested in working with it should contact rendermansales@pixar.com. The free, non-commercial version will be released shortly.
Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 22, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
