Pixar RenderMan for Blender!

mats_b_tegner · August 13, 2019, 10:23pm

There’s another fork here:

The add-on seems to load with Blender 2.80 using NCR RenderMan Pro Server 22.6 but I haven’t tested it thoroughly yet.

Rixtr · August 13, 2019, 11:08pm

Hey thanks alot for that info!i really miss using it.
i will do some testing as well.cycles works fine for me,but there is just something about render-man i like.
wanted to buy a license till development on the add on stopped.
Again many thanks.

ChristianVFX · August 14, 2019, 2:21am

It doesn’t work with Blender. I just tried it.

mats_b_tegner · August 14, 2019, 2:54am

Okay thanks for the update. That sucks. I have sent an email to haikalle on Github.

numen22 · August 14, 2019, 7:57am

Don’t hold your breath. The RenderMan 22 API has not yet been made public, so there is no working implementation for Blender. All ports to Blender 2.80, once you get them to load, will probably only work with the older RenderMan 21.

mats_b_tegner · August 14, 2019, 8:13am

Is this the latest RenderMan API?:

Looks public to me.

The older v21.x RenderMan for Blender add-on needs to be updated for Blender 2.80. I do have RenderMan 21.8 as well but I’m not skilled enough in Python to rewrite the add-on myself.

Metin_Seven · August 14, 2019, 8:20am

In the mean time, here are some free alternative renderers for Blender.

numen22 · August 14, 2019, 9:22am

Thanks for the link to the C++ API.
Seems though not all of the API is available and Blender developers would probably want Python bindings to the C++ classes for easy integration:
Please note the new interactive API introduced in RenderMan 22 is *not yet* public.
https://rmanwiki.pixar.com/display/REN22/Developers%27+Guide

mats_b_tegner · August 14, 2019, 9:41am

Okay, thanks for the correction.
Update:
There’s a work in progress RenderMan 22.x add-on for Blender 2.79 here:

Unfortunately Blender 2.79b segfaults every time for me when I try to render an example scene using RenderMan Pro Server 22.6 NC.

burnin · December 3, 2019, 11:34pm

just to note, v23 is on…

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

and maybe now things will shift a bit

Metin_Seven · December 4, 2019, 10:06am

Yes, I’m curious to see if Blender support will be revived soon or not.

pafurijaz · December 4, 2019, 5:19pm

Nope! for what I think

Metin_Seven · December 4, 2019, 6:08pm

I’m also sceptical.

Strangely, Pixar was one of the first parties to acknowledge Blender as a platform for Renderman, years before the big rise of Blender. But I guess they lost their interest somewhere along the way, while the 2.8+ revolution would be the perfect moment to resupport Blender.

pitiwazou · December 4, 2019, 6:37pm

because thé dev who made the blender part works for AMD now

Jan_Vollgod · December 24, 2019, 10:22pm

i saw it on a Houdini Workstation and it is very fast. Many new options to play around with it. So sad that there is now way to integrate it in Blender. It would be a great free bundle. But maybe some developers get some attention as RM23 is out.

wondrs · December 24, 2019, 10:41pm

Since the renderman hydra delegate is officially out, and it is the direction that other apps seem to be going. I would guess that the only way Blender can get Renderman now is through some kind of usd export or hydra viewport integration. With that integrating any renderer which has hydra render delegate should be easy.
I doubt pixar will now invest into developing some blender plugin done the “old” way.

bsavery · September 2, 2020, 7:00pm

Everyone interested in renderman for blender should check out the webinar tomorrow!

https://app.livestorm.co/pixar-animation-studios/new-bridge-tool?utm_source=Livestorm+company+page

Indy_logic · September 3, 2020, 7:42pm

I finished watching the new presentation. Well, it’s pretty much what I was expecting. Another outstanding achievement integrating RenderMan into Blender. Highlights include:

Full screen, interactive, in viewport rendering. Just like Cycles. That means you don’t need to have the IT window hovering above your Blender window while rendering.
Light mixer look interesting. It’s nice to see that they added their own little floating windows for us to use in the viewport.
They added a bunch of little icons with menus for controlling different aspects of the rendering right up alongside the overlays menu.
ILM’s LAMA “Layered” shading integrated alongside older shading networks.
The level of interactivity is far beyond what we had before and matches Blender better. He showed adding and removing objects without a recompile of the scene right in the viewport. That’s a huge step forward for them and shows what can be done in Blender as far as render integration.

There are a bunch of new features in RenderMan 24 but I haven’t watched that video yet. All in all, I was very impressed and it’s great to see Pixar’s RM team getting excited about Blender. One thing I thought was really interesting was how the developer basically said that he really enjoyed working in Blender. He said It was a labor of love and a really great place to learn the RenderMan API better. He also said that Blender’s Python API was one of the best out there and made it a lot easier to integrate. So, good news all around.

regis3d · September 3, 2020, 9:52pm

Thanks for sharing

ianhsieh · September 3, 2020, 10:44pm

Hi Indy_logic,

Thanks for the kind words. Can’t wait for folks like you other Blender users to try it out!

Ian