Pixar Animation Studios on Wednesday unveiled the feature list for its forthcoming RenderMan Pro Server 12 rendering software. New features include improvements to 3D “baking,” improved volume rendering, performance optimizations and memory reductions of to 30 percent for large scenes, improvements to geometry including a new loop subdivision scheme.
Improvements have also been made to the software’s shading language and its use of Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs), “rif” filter support, support for the OpenEXR image file format, greater fidelity for ray tracing bias, improved control over the camera and strategies for dicing.
The new version of RenderMan Pro Server, which is in beta, will be released sometime during the third calendar quarter of 2004.
Preview Mac OS X “Tiger” at WWDC