Point Richmond, California-based Pixar Animation Studios has announced that
it is releasing version 3.9 of PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its Academy
Award-winning visual effects software, and version 4.0 of the complete
RenderMan Artist Tools suite. The new software version, scheduled for
shipment in September, makes RenderMan easier and more powerful for
creative artists, and for the first time provides support for rendering on
render farms running the Windows NT operating system. Some other advanced
features of PhotoRealistic RenderMan 3.9 are implicit surface geometric
primitives (sometimes known as blobs or metaballs) that support advanced
features such as user control of blending, texturing and motion blur; and
memory and speed improvements that allow for faster curves, area shadows
and texture mapping, and better performance on complex scenes. The new
RenderMan Artist Tools 4.0 software suite includes: SLIM, the shader
development system, which enables artists to create RenderMan shaders; MTOR
2.0, the RenderMan Plugin to Maya 2.0, which associates RenderMan shaders,
lights and cameras with a Maya scene, as well as supporting all Maya
geometry types; ALFRED 4.0, a scriptable network job distribution system,
which is fully integrated into MTOR 2.0 and available for custom
applications; ALFSERVER, a new companion server bundled with Alfred, which
allows Alfred jobs to launch renderers and other applications remotely on
Windows NT, with no additional software required, and also monitors
site-defined performance and server health metrics.