Cycles is always well-known as a great realism tool and EEVEE (the newer-time renderer) with amazingly fast speeds for Blender. However, you might not know that there is another powerful render engine – RenderMan, which has accompanied many famous animated films such as Souls, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, … Even Disney-affiliated studios such as ILM, Bluesky also use this plugin for rendering.

June 29th, 2021 – Pixar released RenderMan® version 24, the biggest release in its long history, introducing a next-generation rendering architecture for animation and visual effects, RenderMan XPU and supports Blender Blender 2.83 or higher. This major release brings major advancements to look development and interactivity for feature film VFX and animation. With the launch of XPU™, Pixar introduces a completely new renderer capable of utilizing both CPU and GPU to the VFX industry.

In this article today, iRender will explore for you oveview RenderMan and the best cloud render service for RenderMan

RENDERMAN:

• Pros: Renderman is overall the nicest looking render of the lot. The lighting is soft, and the noise feels cinematic and natural, rather than more aggressive like Cycles. A state-of-the-art Layered Material system developed and battle tested at Industrial Light & Magic.
• Cons: A node-locked or floating licence cost $595. The free non-commercial edition doesn’t include XPU.

CYCLES:

• Pros: GPU acceleration is a major plus, the ability to preview the viewport in rendered mode is a major plus, the highly customizable material nodes are both a plus. Cycles is built into Blender. It works natively, it gets consistent support and updates from the Blender community.
• Cons: It will still struggle in areas such as scenes with massive numbers of large textures

In the chart above, the first thing to notice is that with over 28 years of experience with the Pixar movies, RenderMan outperforms Cycles in popularity for 3D, Game Development, 3D Rendering and Simulation.

Conclusion: Renderman is made for very complex and large scenes while Cycles is good for average scenes though. Its power shines when you have massive scenes with hundreds of lights and trees and real shadows and such.

RenderMan XPU is a new CPU + GPU hybrid renderer that lives alongside RenderMan RIS. It uses both the CPU and GPU together to give artists faster renders. RenderMan XPU brings greater interactivity to artists. Artists will be able to more quickly iterate and see their results with RenderMan XPU, resulting in both increased creativity as they explore possibilities, as well as greater productivity because they won’t be waiting as long for renders to complete. While RenderMan XPU is not the same as RenderMan RIS, the pictures that you can render with XPU are representative of what you can render with RIS.

Make creative choices faster than ever by using all your computing resources during your look development. XPU has been developed to handle the scale and complexity of Pixar’s feature animation projects. CPU or GPU, RenderMan XPU can use both.

RenderMan and XPU require a processor with AVX capabilities. Let’s refer to some processor families that are compatible with XPU below:

(1) INTEL:

• Whiskey Lake processors, Q3 2018
• Cascade Lake processors, Q4 2018
• Ice Lake processors, Q3 2019
• Comet Lake processors (only Core and Xeon branded), Q3 2019
• Tiger Lake (Core, Pentium and Celeron branded) processors, Q3 2020
• Rocket Lake processors, Q1 2021
• Alder Lake processors, 2021
• Gracemont processors, 2021

I recommend a max-core-clock CPU because the CPU does help speed up some parts of the rendering process, such as scene preparation (load files) but not many 3D artists know this fact. For example, the Xeon W-2245 that clocks at 3.9 GHz (4.7 Ghz Turbo) – The processor is designed for workstation-computers and based on Cascade Lake microarchitecture processors, Q4 2018 which is compatible with AVX capabilities.

(2) AMD:

• Jaguar-based processors and newer
• Puma-based processors and newer
• Zen-based processors, Q1 2017
• Zen+-based processors, Q2 2018
• Zen 2-based processors, Q3 2019
• Zen 3 processors, Q4 2020

For example, AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3955WX is Zen 2 architecture. This is one of the most ultimate professional workstation processors to handle diverse computing requirements. This processor can deliver high-frequency cores for threaded 3D design tasks, up to 16 cores and 32 threads for multi-threaded rendering, and 8 channels of RAM to help power the most complex projects.

The GPU side of XPU and the Optix denoiser only supports Nvidia graphics cards on Linux and Windows. Sadly, AMD Radeon GPUs – no matter how good and how capable they might be – are not supported by the RenderMan.

You must have a Maxwell architecture card or above and be using a recent driver. Because GPUs are more memory-constrained than CPUs, we recommend that given the option, to put your money into a card with as much memory as possible. If you need to render a scene that goes beyond the memory capabilities of your graphics card, you can always fall back to using the CPU side of XPU.

Renderman needs a minimum of 4GB of RAM and XPU needs a minimum of 11GB of VRAM. As we can see, the amount of memory on the card is the driving factor for performance in RenderMan. This is one of the few plugins that require such a high amount of video memory. But it’s also understandable because we all know that it is developed to handle the scale and complexity of Pixar’s feature animation projects.

Below is a list of NVIDIA GPU Ranking we updated with VRAM greater than 11GB. 

In the table above, NVIDIA’s RTX 3090 is about 20–30% faster than the RTX Titan, which was the top consumer video card from the last generation, while costing $1000 less and maintaining the same amount of VRAM. Moreover, the RTX Titan was only available from NVIDIA with their dual-fan cooling solution, meaning it could not be used effectively in multi-GPU configurations. 

Conclusion: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 takes top honors for raw performance, with a composite score of 152.7 fps across all 54 tests. That’s the 100% mark, though it’s worth noting that it also scored 98.7 fps at 4K ultra. To be honest, RTX 3090 is considered a beast at gaming and creative tasks (rendering,  3D visualization, visual effects, etc). It’s nominally a $1,500 graphics card, which is out of reach of most artists or small studios, but current shortages have rocketed pricing up to the $3,000 range in Amazon now.

But do not worry. Stay tuned for this article because I’ll bring you a great but low-cost solution in the next part.

Besides improving your computer system, you can choose another way to speed up your workflow use Cloud render service for RenderMan & Blender. It is the best way to save your time and money.

iRender is a Professional GPU-Acceleration Cloud Render Service for RenderMan & Blender provider in HPC optimization for rendering tasks, CGI, VFX with over 20.000 customers and being appreciated in many global rankings (e.g. CGDirector, Lumion Official, Radarrender, InspirationTuts CAD, All3DP). Based on the above analysis, we provide a specific server for this high-end render engine: The powerful processor AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3955WX @3.9 Ghz and 1 TB SSD to load your scene fast. This server comes with 6 GPU x  NVIDIA RTX 3090 and a VRAM capacity up to 24GB. 

Incredibly, iRender supports NVLink (Request) which helps you increase the amount of VRAM to 48GB. This is a technology co-developed by Nvidia and IBM with the aim of expanding the data bandwidth between the GPU and CPU 5 to 12 times faster than the PCI Express interface. This server is sure to satisfy Renderman with its very complex and large scenes.

Why more and more Blender artists/studios choose iRender?

A multi-GPU workstation, especially the RTX 30 Series, draws more power under load than its predecessors. They do require a larger chassis, a strong power supply, and plenty of airflow from the case fans.

Your local computers can overheat or shut down during the rendering process. However, this will never happen if you choose iRender render farm as we officially upgrade the Data Center to Tier III international standard. (a globally recognized standard for data center reliability and overall performance)

Investing 3000 USD for a graphics card, over 10.000 USD for using Multi-GPU, not to mention the costs of compatible factors to build a computer, is also very expensive. This is such a big investment for single individuals or freelancers or even small studios. 

At iRender, you can start at 3.8 USD to use the beast RTX 3090. You can rest assured that our pricing schemes are the cheapest you have ever found, with rates three times lower than that of other solutions. Besides our hard-to-beat prices, we also offer generous volume discounts, which provide you with credit bonuses depending on how much you top up. Moreover, you can always save up to 30% with our daily/ weekly/monthly rental. 

Unlike other render farms , iRender provides you a powerful machine with up-to-date NVIDIA GPUs, then users will remotely connect and take full control of it. Using our remote PC is no different from your local PC. You can install any software, use Blender with any render engine you like: Cycles, Eevee, Luxcore, Octane, Redshift, Cycles-X, RenderMan, E-Cycles, etc

iRender not only provide the high cloud render service for RenderMan, but also has a great number of enthusiastic staff that are always ready to support you 24/7. Whenever you have trouble using our server, or even with your software, we – iRender Support Team are always there to help you solve your problem.

We often have attractive promotions to thank our beloved customers. SPECIAL OFFER for this October: Get 50% BONUS for all newly registered users. Let’s CHECK IT OUT!

If you have any questions or want to try the powerful cloud render service for RenderMan & Blender or other software, please do not hesitate to reach us via Whatsapp: +(84) 981-868-890. We will be ready to help you in any way!  Enjoy a trial now to stop wasting pointless hours of rendering. We do the rendering, the creativity is yours!

iRender – Happy Rendring!

Source: renderman.pixar.com