Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0 is not a mere update: For the first time since the RIS introduction in 2014, RenderMan’s rendering core has been fundamentally rebuilt. The headline act: XPU, Pixar’s hybrid CPU+GPU architecture, now capable of producing final-frame renders. With multi-GPU support, full compositing pipelines, and feature parity with RIS in most production cases, XPU has stepped from experimental preview to the new backbone of RenderMan’s future.

According to Pixar, version 27 marks the most significant performance and interactivity leap in over a decade. The new architecture combines compute scalability with physically based consistency, while also supporting new aesthetic flexibility through a fully integrated Stylized Looks framework.

XPU: From Preview to Production

RenderMan’s XPU engine now operates as a complete production renderer, supporting both CPU and GPU resources simultaneously. This dual utilisation allows artists to push hardware to its maximum throughput, whether on workstations or render farms. The new final-frame rendering mode eliminates the former division between lookdev and production rendering, streamlining pipelines previously dependent on RIS for the last mile. XPU now supports multi-GPU rendering, with the caveat that all GPUs in use must be identical and contain full scene memory. The engine’s minimum requirement has been raised to CUDA 12.8.1, reflecting its deeper reliance on modern GPU driver capabilities. Pixar confirms that this configuration is the foundation for all future RenderMan development.

Adaptive, Smarter, Faster

Under the hood, Pixar’s engineers have reworked adaptive sampling, aligning it with internal techniques used in Pixar Animation Studios’ own productions. Adaptive metrics such as “relativepixelvariance” and “mse” AOV-based control now run per object, delivering more accurate sampling without inflating render times. Checkpointing, a feature long requested by production supervisors, has been fully implemented. Artists can now save partial renders at defined intervals, resuming from checkpoints without rerendering full frames. This system, combined with interactive denoising, significantly tightens iteration loops in look development. The denoiser itself now outputs timing data, integrates directly with live renders, and can be toggled interactively. Pipeline engineers can expect improved configurability for modern, distributed render farms.

Deep Compositing and AOV Control

Version 27 brings complete deep data workflows to XPU. OpenEXR 3.0 Deep IDs are fully supported, allowing compressed ID manifests to be automatically generated for compositing. Artists can extract object-level data directly from deep renders using Pixar’s new deepidextract utility. Compositing teams gain matte and holdout workflows, expanded AOV handling, and support for the shadows and invshadows LPE prefixes. OpenEXR metadata is now written natively, ensuring compatibility with Nuke and other deep compositing tools. Cryptomatte, while not yet part of the initial 27.0 release, is scheduled to arrive in a dot update, according to Pixar’s release notes.

Geometry, Lighting, and Volume Precision

Geometry handling in XPU 27 has been heavily rewritten to achieve parity with RIS. Nested instancing, long a sticking point, now supports material inheritance and attribute propagation without breaking shading hierarchies. Displacement, motion blur, and volume interactions have been stabilised, with notable improvements in the handling of semi-sharp subdivision creases.

Lighting gains precision as well. Mesh lights are now fully supported, and light filters have been corrected for spline and falloff anomalies. The PxrPathTracer integrator adds new clamping controls (clampDepth and clampLuminance), aligning noise handling across both rendering architectures. Volumetric fidelity benefits from the new interior volume aggregates, enabling complex materials such as murky liquids or translucent crystals. Artists can now fine-tune deep shadow error parameters for exact compositing control.

MaterialX Lama: Early Access, Serious Potential

RenderMan 27 introduces MaterialX Lama, Industrial Light & Magic’s modular shading system, as Early Access inside XPU. The system allows layered material construction using physically accurate combiners. Pixar’s current implementation supports LamaDielectric, LamaConductor, and GeneralizedSchlick nodes with anisotropy, single scattering, and extinction behaviour now properly matching or exceeding RIS accuracy. Full support is scheduled during the 27.x release cycle. Pixar notes that look differences compared to RIS are expected in this early phase and requests feedback from studios integrating Lama in production.

Stylised Looks: Non-Photorealism, Physically Based

The Stylized Looks suite has matured from experiment to production toolset. It now ships as a unified subsystem under XPU, comprising PxrStylizedControl, PainterlyBrush, Lines, Hatching, Canvas, and Toon filters. Each operates as a display or sample filter, allowing NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) effects such as painterly brush strokes, toon shading, curvature-based outlines, and cross-hatching, all integrated directly with RenderMan’s physically based lighting.

The system supports AOV outputs, interactive denoising, and compositing passes. The new PainterlyBrushXPU filter enables procedural brush strokes with depth and lighting awareness. StylizedCanvasXPU and StylizedLinesXPU introduce compositing and in-filter distortion options with up to 96 preset line textures. Pixar’s stated goal: to let stylised rendering coexist with physically plausible shading without breaking pipeline compatibility.

Integration and Pipeline Alignment

RenderMan 27 strengthens its integration with major DCC applications and pipeline frameworks. Solaris, SideFX’s USD-based environment in Houdini, now features deeper RenderMan embedding, including improved UI, native support for OpenSubdiv 3.6.1, and GPU progress tracking in hdPrman. RenderMan LOP nodes have been refactored, and “RenderMan Render Vars” replace the older “Standard Render Vars” for more robust USD conformity.

RenderMan for Blender reintroduces Qt-based UIs via PySide6, restoring the texture manager and preset browser on Blender 4.x. Artists now benefit from native light linking, velocity blur control, and on-the-fly texture conversion.

In Maya, RenderMan’s Texture Manager has been modernised, adopting OpenImageIO for mipmapped texture conversion. Pixar’s proprietary texture format has been replaced by OpenEXR, aligning with the VFX Reference Platform 2024 standards. The legacy txmake utility remains available for backward compatibility but is now officially deprecated.

The Texture Manager now supports ACES-compliant defaults, HiDPI UIs, and multi-selection editing. Pixar warns that lowercase tokens will no longer be recognised; pipelines must adopt the uppercase convention for USD compliance.

Complying with the VFX Reference Platform 2024

RenderMan 27 aligns fully with VFX Reference Platform 2024, standardising on current builds of Python, OpenEXR, OpenImageIO, and USD. For production pipelines, this ensures compatibility with other industry-standard applications and reduces dependency conflicts across render nodes. The change affects texture formats, shader APIs, and compositing metadata. Pixar’s move to OpenEXR for both image outputs and texture caching is particularly significant, replacing proprietary workflows with interoperable standards.

Performance and Statistics

Performance instrumentation across XPU has been expanded, with scene ingestion, GPU allocation, and adaptive ray counters now visible in live statistics panels across DCCs. The stportal interface presents real-time timers, counters, and memory metrics, enabling TDs to diagnose bottlenecks without external profiling tools. RenderMan’s JSON reporting system has been refined for both RIS and XPU, offering standard and detailed modes for automated render diagnostics. Memory tracking now includes deduplication efficiency, critical for large USD scenes.

Future of RIS

While RIS remains functional in version 27, Pixar has confirmed its future deprecation. The renderer continues to support legacy pipelines, but new features including deep compositing, MaterialX Lama, and multi-GPU acceleration, are exclusive to XPU. Pixar recommends transitioning new projects to XPU immediately to ensure feature parity and forward compatibility. The company has maintained RIS only for existing productions requiring deterministic CPU-only rendering or legacy shader behaviour.

Non-Commercial Version – still free.

The free Non-Commercial RenderMan 27 is Pixar’s way of saying, “Go ahead, break it, just don’t charge for it.” The edition now includes full XPU support, right down to final-frame rendering, meaning anyone can experiment with the same hybrid CPU–GPU tech used on Pixar features. It’s designed for personal projects, research, and plugin tinkering, with no watermarks, only a polite request to credit RenderMan if your test project accidentally becomes an internet hit.

Naturally, there’s a catch or two. The licence is strictly non-commercial, locked to two machines, and politely expires every 120 days, because nothing keeps a pipeline sharp like forced renewals. The Stylized Looks suite, Pixar’s NPR playground of painterly brushes and toon shaders, is absent here, reminding users that true artistry still costs a studio licence. Still, for anyone wanting to explore the XPU ecosystem without opening the budget spreadsheet, it’s a generous, production-grade sandbox.

Compatibility, Stability, and What Comes Next

RenderMan 27’s release is a clear signal: Pixar’s renderer is now fully committed to hybrid GPU computing and open pipeline standards. With XPU stabilised for final-frame rendering, Solaris deeply embedded, and MaterialX Lama laying the foundation for unified shading, the software’s architecture is more extensible than at any point in its history. The move to industry formats and the inclusion of non-photorealistic rendering tools reflect Pixar’s recognition that creative flexibility and pipeline efficiency must coexist.

RenderMan 27.0 should be thoroughly tested before deployment in production, especially when adopting early access features such as MaterialX Lama. Pixar’s documentation explicitly requests user feedback to refine those systems during the 27.x cycle.

The post Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Laetoli Production, together with illustrator and animator Samba Soussoko, has launched a free anatomy-reference app focused entirely on the arthropod kingdom. The Arthropods Anatomy Reference App (sometimes called Arthropodes) offers 3D scans of real insects, spiders, crabs and other exoskeletal oddities collected from European museum archives. The idea is simple but delightfully unsettling: instead of staring at flat reference photos of beetles and centipedes, artists can rotate, measure and dissect these tiny nightmares directly in 3D.

Small zoo, big ambitions

At launch, the app features twelve scanned specimens, an admittedly modest start, but one that should already cover the basics for anyone designing mandibles, antennae or far too many legs. More scans are promised “in the coming months”. Each model can be freely explored in a browser or, for those who like their bugs a bit more permanent, via a free Windows-only desktop version.

The app lets users hide or isolate specific body parts, allowing a clean view of wings, carapaces or leg joints without the clutter. You can even measure distances or angles between parts, handy for anyone trying to make sure their digital spider isn’t accidentally violating the laws of insect biomechanics. For the detail-obsessed, two species can be displayed side by side for direct comparison, say, a crab next to a centipede, if you need inspiration for your next fantasy hybrid.

Why anyone sane would want this

Creature designers, modellers and riggers often need grounded anatomical data, even for fantasy work. Having museum-accurate arthropods at your fingertips saves endless time hunting for blurry reference photos online. It also ensures that even the most monstrous alien bug in your next VFX shot has credible proportions. Still, one look at some of the included specimens makes it clear why we chose the tamest beetle possible for the image. Some of these creatures are perfect for Halloween mood-boarding and possibly for testing one’s courage.

A tool to bug your pipeline (gently)

Currently, the app runs in a web browser or via a Windows executable, with no macOS or Linux versions announced. There’s no detailed data on scan resolution, polygon counts or export options, so artists should test it carefully before integrating it into a professional workflow. Despite its early-release limitations, it’s a solid niche reference tool for designers who prefer to measure a millipede rather than invent one from scratch.

For now, the Arthropods app feels like a digital cabinet of curiosities: part science, part art, and part “please keep that thing away from me”. It’s free, it’s surprisingly informative, and it might even help your creature rigs look a little more biologically plausible. If your next project involves creepy-crawlies, carapaces or too many eyes, this app is worth a spin, literally. Just maybe don’t open it right before bed.

The post Creepy-Crawlies in 3D: Free “Arthropods” Anatomy App for Creature Designers first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Katana 8.0: Enhanced USD Integration

Katana 8.0 introduces complete USD roundtripping, enabling a seamless back-and-forth between Katana and USD-based systems. Artists can now export changes made in Katana to USD, encompassing lighting, materials, cameras, and geometry, for integration with other departments. This new export functionality improves cross-department collaboration and allows for greater reuse of assets.

Another significant addition is Pattern-based Collections, which provide templates for managing multiple shots and sequences, offering more flexibility in organizing assets. Additionally, a new “KatanaToUsd” node facilitates the conversion of Katana data to USD data, expanding Katana’s role within USD-based workflows.

Katana 8.0 also introduces a Python Profiler in the Performance tab, enhancing the ability to monitor Python code performance. The update includes a major performance boost, with scenes loading up to 2.5 times faster, thanks to optimizations in the node graph traversal process, which has been ported from Python to C++. Other improvements include USD debugging tools, such as the new USD Text View tab for better visibility into USD data on the stage.

For those using the VFX Reference Platform 2024, Katana 8.0 delivers updated compatibility, ensuring a smooth integration with other VFX tools.

Mari 7.1: New 2D Painting Mode and More

Mari 7.1 brings a powerful 2D Painting Mode that allows artists to easily switch between 2D and 3D painting environments. This new feature is designed to enhance texture painting workflows by enabling artists to create 2D images and link them live to their 3D node graphs. It also supports the creation of custom patterns and decals, offering greater flexibility for generating editable materials.

The Smart Mask Shelf in Mari has been expanded with over 50 Smart Masks and utility nodes, developed by industry professionals like Stuart Ansley. These additions provide more out-of-the-box tools for artists, improving efficiency during the texturing process.

Other new features include the Grunge Shelf, which now includes even more textures designed by Johnny Fehr, and new presets for Paint Node creation, allowing quick access to commonly used swatches. Mari 7.1 also introduces the ability to export materials with different variations using the Switch Node and includes a new Node Package feature for saving entire Node Graphs, improving the portability of textures and setups between artists.

Nuke 16.0 Open Beta

The Nuke 16.0 open beta brings several updates to improve compositing, review, 3D, and custom effect workflows. For one, there are overhauled compositing workflows: Nuke 16.0 introduces Variables, Link nodes, an updated Group Node internal view, and performance improvements in Roto for large scripts. A new ML Planar Tracker has also been added for more efficient tracking.

Also, there are enhanced review workflows – Timeline improvements include multichannel soft effects, Quick Export. These updates streamline the review process and speed up feedback cycles. In terms of 3D workflows, Nuke 16.0 enhances the beta 3D system with updates to core nodes and introduces the new GeoConstrain and GeoXformPrim nodes, along with UI improvements for better usability. Finally, the BlinkScript node has been updated to make custom effect creation more intuitive, improving the ease of reading, writing, and troubleshooting code.

Check First: These updates are currently available for testing in beta (Nuke 16.0) or fully implemented in the respective software versions. As with any new technology, artists should thoroughly test these features in their pipelines before using them in current production projects.

For more details about these updates, visit the official Katana 8.0 page and Mari 7.1 page. Access the Nuke 16.0 open beta here.

The post Foundry Releases Katana 8.0, Mari 7.1, and Nuke 16.0 Open Beta first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In recent years, Foundry has not only tightened up the release schedule considerably, but also made it much more regular. Nevertheless, version 14 is not a maintenance update, quite the opposite. Not only are new features being added, but in some areas the existing ones are being shaken up. The biggest and most important area is probably the 3D system, which has been completely overhauled.

Cutting off old habits

Sometimes the time has come to make a clear cut. Even as a software developer, it becomes increasingly difficult over the years to work on the same old architecture. With version 14, Foundry therefore decided to rewrite the 3D system, which has always been one of the core elements of the software, from scratch. In order to be well equipped for the coming years, USD (Universal Scene Description) was chosen as the basis. USD not only offers massive leaps in performance, but is also being supported by more and more other manufacturers.

To accommodate larger pipelines, it will be possible to select your own version of USD to use, regardless of the version of Nuke you are using. However, those who do not use USD in their pipeline should not have any disadvantages compared to the previous system, as everything that the new 3D system requires is already fully integrated in Nuke. As such a changeover is of course a big step, the old 3D system is not being retired just yet. It is still available in Nuke for now and, perhaps more importantly, the new system is currently in beta.

Why USD?

Better performance alone is a nice effect, but there were more reasons for switching to the USD-based system. A major Achilles heel of the old system was the handling of large imported geometries, where there was no way to isolate individual parts and edit them individually. The new Scene Graph and Path and Mask Knobs form the basis for this.

The Scene Graph

To organise everything from objects and materials to cameras and lights effectively and uniformly, there is a new panel in Nuke 14 called “Scene Graph”. Here you can find all the objects in a scene in a hierarchical structure and can name them (with a new token system if desired), switch them on and off and create dependencies. The Scene Graph and Viewer are closely linked and objects selected in the Viewer are also selected in the Scene Graph and vice versa. A search function is also integrated.

Path and Masks Knobs

All nodes in the new 3D system that generate or import geometry now have a path as an entry, which simply refers to the name of the node by default. However, it is linked directly to the scene graph and can also access the token system. This means that more complex scenes can be named more quickly and cleanly and dependencies can also be created via the path without having to play connection limbo in the node tree.

The name “Mask Knob” is somewhat misleading, as it is actually a way of defining which objects in a scene should be influenced by a modifier node such as a GeoTransfom. The new default behaviour now looks like this: If you insert a node below another node, the result of the last node is affected – no longer the entire stream. However, if you want the new node to influence several objects, you can assign it to the mask knob from the scene graph or via an expression.

USD Lights and Materials

If USD-based geometries are imported into the new system, lights and materials are now displayed correctly and thus provide a better preview of the actual asset. The new Preview Surface Node is a new way to create more complex materials within Nuke and is seen by developers as the first step in a development that is progressing through beta. There are also new USD Lights. Unlike the old system, lights are no longer converted into Nuke’s own format, but are displayed exactly as they looked in the USD-based DCC software they came from.

Old and new

As already mentioned, the old and the new system will both populate the Node Graph for the time being. However, they are not compatible with each other. The old nodes retain both their name and their colour, while the new ones stand out with a new nomenclature (TransformGeo is now called GeoTransform) and a green that complements the old red. They also appear with a small “Beta” notice. Speaking of beta: Foundry wants to use this beta to actively incorporate feedback from the community, which is why there is now also a forum on the Foundry site for the new 3D system.

Unreal

The Unreal Reader Node for Nuke X and Nuke Indie is completely out of beta. It can be used to transfer maps and sequences directly from an Unreal Editor session to Nuke. To do this, a “Nuke Server” plugin must be installed in Unreal, which then provides the session for Nuke. From here, the artist can have exactly the channels and passes that he needs made available, as everything is provided “on-demand” by Unreal. Various types of crypto matte can also be requested. The current OCIO colour transforms are also supported.

Cameras can be synchronised with the Unreal session as well as replaced by Nuke. The whole thing works non-destructively for the Unreal session, so that you now have the freedom to position the camera slightly differently in Nuke than in Unreal. If you are happy with your result and want to make sure that further changes to the Unreal session are not passed on to Nuke, you can generate an EXR sequence of all requested channels and passes from the Unreal Reader Node.

A particularly nice feature is the stencil mode, which allows you to split individual objects in the Unreal scene into separate layers. Even shadows and occluding objects can be removed. You also have the option of rendering the Nuke scene as a CubeMap, which allows you to transform your scene into a Lat:Long image or an Environment Sphere in Nuke.

The cat gets a new home

The machine learning tool “Copycat” is getting a major performance boost. Ten to twenty per cent faster learning should be possible on current Nvidia cards. The automated rotoscoping of human bodies has been accelerated even further. New setting options should dramatically speed up training here. Finally, users now have the option of displaying only the thumbnails relevant to them in the LayerContactSheet view for training.
Outside of Nuke, Foundry has created the “Cattery”, a free repository where copycat files contributed by the community can be downloaded. The whole thing is sorted by category and will hopefully continue to grow over the coming months.

Bokeh

Foundry acquired the rights to PG Bokeh from Perigrine Labs. This popular depth of field tool is natively available in all Nuke versions from version 14.02 onwards. PG Bokeh has already been used in many major productions and is the only depth-of-field tool that can be combined with deep compositing.

Login-Based Licence

Nuke 14 offers Foundry customers a further option for managing their own licence or licences. In addition to the classic node-locked licence or an RLM-based server licence, you can now also opt for a login-based licence. Artists can log in with their email address and a password to activate their licence. This makes it much easier to take a licence to the home office.

The online platform also offers numerous options for managing multiple licences for teams. Foundry emphasises that this licence model is purely optional and anyone who doesn’t want to switch doesn’t have to. This is also important for anyone who still has to work in parallel with older versions of Nuke, as the login is only available with Nuke 14.

Subscription

Subscription is always a double-edged sword. Some see greater flexibility, more predictable costs and the opportunity to get started without a major investment, while others simply see subscriptions as a “money grab”. The Foundry is now also offering the Nuke Family as an annual subscription. The prices are as follows: Nuke costs customers 2,699 Eur per annum, Nuke X 4,099 EUR and Nuke Studio a whopping 4,999 EUR.

As with all Foundry products, there is no monthly subscription model and unfortunately – unlike other products – no monthly payment option. Although there is still the option of quarterly rental, the prices here are not really attractive – they are over fifty per cent of the annual subscription. Existing customers still have the option of purchasing the previous “perpetual licences” until the end of the calendar year and then continue to receive maintenance for them. However, Foundry has also tightened the price screw here: Nuke now costs EUR 5,118, Nuke X EUR 9,758 and Nuke Studio EUR 11,358.

Conclusion

With the new 3D system, Nuke 14 lays the foundation for the coming years and sets a future-proof standard with USD. The system of making a feature available to the user base as a beta for one release and then bringing it out as a final in the next release or the one after that has already worked well in the past with the Unreal Reader or with the sync sessions in Nuke Studio and Hiero(Player). The Unreal Reader may only be of interest to a certain target group at the moment, but the more popular virtual production becomes, the more comp artists will have to deal with Unreal. They have the basis now.

Copycat gets a nice, comprehensive product maintenance – important, because Nuke’s approach to machine learning only works as long as it is regularly updated. The fact that all Nuke users now have PG Bokeh on board is really pleasing – especially because of the support for deep compositing. The login-based licence system will certainly provide more flexibility in the medium term.

One criticism is that, once again, the small Nuke – without X – has hardly any features – of course the new 3D system is also being introduced here. But apart from the bokeh, all the new features are limited to Nuke X and Studio. Copycat is still a feature that is reserved for Windows and Linux users due to its close integration with NVIDIA.

It remains to be seen whether the announced port to Apple Silicone will also let the cats jump over the Mac. And last but not least, the switch to subscription will not be greeted favourably everywhere in the community. For larger VFX studios in the feature sector, an annual subscription may actually offer more flexibility in scaling the pipeline. Customers in the advertising sector and freelancers, on the other hand, will not find an attractive offer here to be able to react appropriately in an ever faster changing market.

The post What’s New in Nuke 14? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Christoph Zapletal.

In nuce: The Foundry, the developer of software for the creative industries, has released Katana 6.0. Katana is a software for look development and lighting. Paul Denhard, Senior Product Manager at The Foundry, is pleased to announce that Katana 6.0 has further streamlined workflows – even in the case of “large volumes of work and tight timeframes.” According to the press release, Katana 6.0 is aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2022 and USD 22.05.

In toto: New features include the Performance and Material Solo tabs, which are designed to speed up manual tasks and workflows for artists. These and other new features follow below.

Katana 6.0 | Feature Overview

Debug and Optimise Projects With The Performance Tab | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

Katana 6.0 | Optimise Your Scenes and Projects with The Performance Tab

• Performance tab: Thanks to this, artists should have an easier overview of the size of their 3D scenes and be able to correct errors more effectively. A colour-coded heatmap should allow artists to identify the proverbial bottleneck in the node graph more quickly.

Solo Materials to Preview Parts of Your LookDev | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

Katana 6.0 | Preview Your Work With Material Soloing

• Material Solo tab (Material Solo tab): This provides a preview of the look development, allowing artists to better understand how set nodes will affect the final result. An immediate insight into the components of the material setup is provided. In other words, material networks – even complex ones – can be quickly isolated and debugged. Each individual section can be viewed as a preview.

Share and Reuse Work with LiveShadingGroups | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

• So-called LiveShadingGroups are intended to further enhance look development. LiveShadingGroups give artists the opportunity to share projects and assets with each other. This works in that LiveShadingGroups, once set across scenes, automatically update scenes linked to them – as soon as participating artists make changes.

Katana 6.0 | Quality of Life Improvements for LookDev Artists

• The NetworkMaterialEdit material interface allows artists to customise the material interface within the NetworkMaterialEdit node – thus “breaking away from linear workflows”, as the press release states.

Click further: Full details of the new functions can be found at campaigns.foundry.com/products/katana/whats-new . Digital Production reported on the release of the previous version, Katana 5.0 , on 27 December 2021 – at the time, we highlighted compatibility with Nuke, various rendering upgrades and the Universal Scene Description as the most impressive features.

The post The Foundry releases Katana 6.0! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.