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For those who don’t know the tool: RenderMan is Pixar’s production renderer for lighting, look development and final-frame rendering. Pixar supplies bridge integrations for Autodesk Maya, Foundry Katana, SideFX Houdini and Solaris, and Blender, while studios can extend it through renderer, shading, procedural and pipeline APIs. Its ecosystem increasingly centres on OpenUSD, Hydra and MaterialX, with RIS retained for established pipelines and XPU positioned as the main path for future development.
A point release with pipeline weight
RenderMan 27.3 release notes. Although the version number suggests routine maintenance, the update closes several practical gaps in XPU, Pixar’s hybrid CPU and GPU renderer. The headline changes are native MaterialX evaluation through RenderMan’s Hydra integration, initial Cryptomatte output, expanded MaterialX Lama support, a new sampling option for thin volumes, and additional Stylized Looks and hair-shading controls. Pixar also lists performance, startup and stability work across XPU and its DCC bridges.
The release does not replace RIS or introduce a new light-transport architecture. XPU was already positioned for final-frame production in RenderMan 27, while RIS remains available for legacy scenes and features that have not yet reached parity. Version 27.3 is therefore best read as a production-enablement update: fewer reasons to leave an XPU workflow when a material, matte, volume or non-photorealistic requirement appears late in a shot.
MaterialX moves into XPU
The largest architectural change is native evaluation of MaterialX BSDF, EDF and combiner nodes in XPU. This is more than a new import button or a reorganised interface. It adds an evaluation path capable of executing arbitrary supported MaterialX surface networks, including networks based on MaterialX Standard Surface and the OpenPBR Surface model. MaterialX itself remains the interchange and representation standard; Pixar has implemented another renderer-side execution path for that standard.
Solaris is the first route
The native MaterialX path is initially exposed through RenderMan’s Hydra integration and is currently limited to Solaris-based workflows in Houdini. In practical terms, the supported route passes a USD stage through hdPrman, RenderMan’s Hydra render delegate, rather than adding the same artist-facing MaterialX controls simultaneously to Maya, Katana, Blender and Houdini’s older contexts. Solaris uses Hydra to connect a USD scene graph to installed render delegates, which is why this implementation can arrive through one integration before appearing uniformly in every bridge product.
This is API and renderer support, not universal host-interface parity. A studio can now evaluate supported MaterialX surface networks natively in the defined Solaris path, but artists should not assume that an equivalent graph will expose the same controls, diagnostics or editing behaviour in every RenderMan bridge. Facilities standardising on USD and Solaris gain the clearest immediate benefit. Mixed pipelines still need explicit fallback rules for assets that travel through other hosts.
Volumetric MaterialX remains outside
MaterialX VDF nodes are not supported in the new XPU path. Pixar states that volumetric shading-node support is planned for a future release. That limitation is significant because a surface material can pass validation while a related fog, smoke, cloud or participating-media component still requires a RenderMan-native setup or another pipeline branch.
The limitation also illustrates why “native MaterialX support” needs qualification. RenderMan 27.3 adds native execution for an important class of MaterialX nodes, but not every material-domain feature. Studios should validate both the renderer’s supported-node list and any custom node definitions before treating MaterialX assets as renderer-independent deliverables. A green tick beside Standard Surface is not permission to retire the shader TD.
Cryptomatte reaches XPU
RenderMan 27.3 introduces initial Cryptomatte output for XPU. Cryptomatte encodes hashed identifiers and metadata into image channels so compositors can derive mattes from scene identities without requesting a separate binary mask for every object or material. In RenderMan, the XPU implementation uses a new d_cryptomatte display driver rather than the PxrCryptomatte sample filter used by RIS. The documented setup requires the display driver to receive the a,id,id2 channel set.
Initial means limited
The XPU driver supports name, path and material Cryptomatte layers. It does not yet support arbitrary attribute layers. Object and material selections therefore cover many routine compositing requests, but productions that generate mattes from custom asset, department, collection, variant or shot attributes cannot assume parity with their existing RIS configuration.
Thin volumes get dedicated sampling
The PxrPathTracer integrator gains an Oversample Volumes mode for XPU. Pixar recommends enabling it when volumes are rendered on their own layer and states that it can substantially improve convergence for thin volumes. This is a sampling change, not a new volumetric scattering model.
Stylized controls become more modular
The Stylized Looks toolset gains a new PxrStylizedToonControl node, extracted from the broader PxrStylizedControl system to provide a more modular control surface and extended toon features. PxrStylizedLightControl receives new light modes, while PxrStylizedPainterlyBrushControl gains a Flow Map option for rotating procedural brush marks. These are artist-facing controls layered onto the existing stylized-rendering framework, not a replacement renderer or a new general-purpose integrator.
The modular toon node should make it easier to isolate and version toon-specific decisions instead of routing every look through one larger control node. The new light modes extend how artistic lighting and shadowing can be generated inside the shading network, before standard RenderMan lights complete their usual contribution. Flow-map-driven brush rotation gives look-development artists a directed input for painterly orientation, which is more controllable than relying solely on procedural or screen-space behaviour.
Hair shading gains a normal lobe
PxrMarschner now exposes a HairNormal user-lobe output. Pixar also provides an option intended to reproduce the related normal behaviour available in the newer LamaHairChiang material. The new output gives pipelines another way to route or inspect hair-normal information through shading and AOV setups.
This is a new output and compatibility control around established hair models, not a newly invented hair-scattering algorithm. It can help facilities maintain closer behaviour between older Marschner-based assets and newer Lama hair networks, or expose normal-related information for downstream image assembly and diagnostics. Existing grooms should still be compared under representative lighting because normal interpretation, tangent data, width, opacity and multiple scattering all contribute to the final result.
Licensing and maintenance
Pixar sells RenderMan as a permanent licence that can be floating or node-locked. A licence can serve either an interactive artist session or a batch-render process, so render-farm capacity and workstation allocation draw from the same licence pool. Pixar also offers a free Non-Commercial RenderMan edition, while commercial customers with current maintenance receive upgrades, support and beta access during the maintenance term.
The current checkout storefront lists RenderMan at US$845 including 12 months of maintenance. Pixar’s pricing page itemises the package as US$595 for the permanent licence plus US$250 annual maintenance, which reaches the same US$845 first-year total. Annual maintenance renewal is US$250 per licence. Temporary rentals are listed at US$5 per licence per day, with a minimum of ten licences for seven days.
https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/REN27/857702405/RenderMan+27.3
https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/REN27/542236818/XPU+Features+and+Limitations
| Product | RenderMan |
| Developer | Pixar Animation Studios |
| Version | 27.3 |
| Release status | Production release; official release notes dated 15 July 2026. (rmanwiki-27.pixar.com) |
| Availability | Available through Pixar’s commercial download system and as the current Non-Commercial RenderMan release. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Editions | Commercial RenderMan and free Non-Commercial RenderMan |
| Host compatibility | Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini and Solaris, Foundry Katana, and Blender. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Operating systems | Windows 10 and 11; macOS 15; EL9 Linux, including RHEL 9, AlmaLinux 9 and Rocky Linux 9. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Hardware | AVX-capable CPU; Nvidia Pascal-generation GPU or newer for XPU and the OptiX denoiser; minimum 8 GB RAM and 12 GB VRAM for XPU. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Processing backend | RIS CPU rendering and XPU hybrid CPU/GPU rendering; XPU supports final-frame and multi-GPU workflows. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Formats and standards | Alembic, OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, OpenSubdiv, OpenVDB, OSL, Ptex, SeExpr, UDIM and USD; XPU 27.3 adds initial Cryptomatte output. (renderman.pixar.com) |
| Documentation | RenderMan 27.3 release notes |
| Download | RenderMan installer |
| Website | RenderMan |
