Pixar Releases New RenderMan Software

Emeryville, CA – Pixar Animation Studios simultaneously released RenderMan Pro Server 17.0 and RenderMan Studio 4.0, extensively upgrading its Academy-Award-winning rendering software renowned as the industry standard for the highest quality animation and photorealistic visual effects.

Amongst many powerful feature highlights, RenderMan Pro Server 17.0 includes significant performance gains including object instancing, photon mapping enhancements, and volume-rendering optimizations, all developed for the escalating visual demands of today’s feature films. RenderMan Studio 4.0 features include a new physically plausible shader library allowing Maya users to intuitively focus on the creation of photorealistic imagery, with an emphasis on artist-friendly out-of-the-box workflows. Both new releases are the result of an enormous collaborative effort combining the insight of the world’s premier visual effects studios with Pixar’s unparalleled rendering development expertise. Extensive beta testing has been unanimously positive:

“With its revamped photon mapping and volume rendering, RenderMan Pro Server 17.0 extends our shading framework across the board including awesome volumetrics. Coupled with true instancing, this release seriously extends our arsenal in its ability to handle incredibly complex scenes.” Said Philippe LePrince, Head of Lighting & Rendering at Double Negative, London.

“The new ray-tracing workflow in RenderMan Studio 4.0 helps us achieve photo-realistic results while decreasing setup time dramatically. The new physically plausible shading system makes RenderMan more artist friendly while maintaining the same deep level of customization we all love.” Said Leif Pedersen, Senior Computer Graphics Artist, Telefutura Network. “There are so many positive things to say about this release. I could go on for a while.”

“We learned that object instancing was a key feature of RenderMan Pro Server 17.0 when we were starting a new project that we thought would be an excellent fit for this technique. We’ve worked closely with the responsive development team to achieve a level of visual quality and complexity that would have otherwise been impossible.” Said Daniel Heckenberg, Lead R&D Developer, Animal Logic. “Pixar’s RenderMan is an extraordinary (and growing) toolbox of rendering techniques that we can customize and extend at almost any point. We’re constantly advancing the limits of what we can realize.”

“The new physically plausible shaders are great! They’re easy to use and the results are incredible.” said Tom Painter, Director, Bigman. “For beginners it’s so much easier, but the coolest thing is RenderMan’s hybrid architecture that offers so many advanced workflows such as baking shadows into the static background, and allowing us to reuse expensive FX whenever we want. Pixar has really delivered with RenderMan Studio 4.0.”