Blender to get official RenderMan plugin

Blender users will soon get their own official RenderMan plugin, Pixar has announced.

The integration, which will be released alongside RenderMan 24, will support all of the heavyweight VFX and animation renderer’s latest features, including new CPU/GPU rendering system RenderMan XPU.

New official Pixar plugin supersedes previous community-developed tools

Blender has had RenderMan integrations in the past: not least PRMan for Blender, a semi-official add-on developed by a group of Pixar engineers, and released alongside RenderMan 20.

It’s still available on GitHub, but it hasn’t been updated for some time, and doesn’t support the newer features of either RenderMan or Blender itself.

Supports all of RenderMan’s latest features, including RIS and RenderMan XPU

The new add-on puts the open-source software on the same footing as the other DCC tools with official Pixar-developed integration plugins: Maya, Houdini, Katana and Mari.

It will support the latest version of Blender –Pixar says that it will be supporting Blender 2.90 and other 2.9 series releases

The official RenderMan for Blender plugin will also fully support RenderMan’s current RIS architecture, as well as RenderMan XPU, its upcoming hybrid CPU/GPU rendering system.

Blender artists will also be able to use all of the other new features in version 24, including Stylized Looks, the ILM-developed Lama layered material system, and new OSL pattern nodes.

The plugin will support both viewport rendering and final-quality output.

Availability and system requirements

RenderMan 24 is due for release in “Q1 2021” for Windows 10, CentOS/RHEL 7.x Linux and macOS 10.14+. RenderMan XPU and the RenderMan for Blender plugin will ship with version 24.

The current release, RenderMan 23.4, is is available for 64-bit Windows 8.1+, CentOS/RHEL 7.2 Linux and macOS 10.13+, with integrations for Maya 2018.3+, Houdini 17.0+, Katana 3.0+ and Mari 4.5+.

There is also a free non-commercial edition of RenderMan, which can be used for tools development. New commercial node-locked or floating licences cost $595.

Visit the RenderMan product website

https://renderman.pixar.com/whats-new

Source: CG Channel