Thursday, December 26th, 2024Posted by Jim ThackerDreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 1.7html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"DreamWorks Animation has updated MoonRay, its in-house production renderer, now available open-source.MoonRay 1.7 adds a new portal light type, and support for the Cryptomatte ID matte generation system within hdMoonRay, the MoonRay Hydra render delegate.The previous update, MoonRay 1.6, added a Fisheye camera and introduced native support for Apple Silicon processors.A high-performance Monte Carlo ray tracer, used on all recent DreamWorks moviesOpen-sourced last year, along with Arras, DreamWorks in-house cloud rendering framework, MoonRay is a high-performance Monte Carlo ray tracer.It was designed with the aim of keeping all the cores of all the machines busy all the time, and has an hybrid GPU/CPU mode with that matches the output of CPU rendering.MoonRay is capable of both stylized and photorealistic output, and has the key features you would expect of a VFX renderer, including AOVs/LPEs and deep output.It comes with a Hydra delegate, hdMoonRay, making it possible to integrate MoonRay as a viewport renderer in DCC apps that support Hydra delegates, like Houdini and Katana.The renderer is still in active development at DreamWorks Animation, and was used on the studios recent movies, including Kung-Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot.MoonRay 1.7: portal lights and Cryptomatte support in hdMoonRayNew features in MoonRay 1.7 include a new PortalLight light type.The online documentation only lists its control attributes, but in other renderers, portal lights are rectangular area lights used to improve Global Illumination in indoor scenes.In addition, hdMoonRay now supports the Cryptomatte ID matte-generation system.XPU mode, MoonRays hybrid CPU/GPU render mode, now accelerates both regular rays and occlusion rays for NVIDIA GPUsMoonRay 1.6: initial support for Apple Silicon MacsOther new features since we last wrote about MoonRay include initial support for macOS as well as Linux.MoonRay 1.6, released in July, made it possible to build and run the software on current M-Series Macs with Apple Silicon processors, running macOS 14+.Mac builds support XPU mode, denoising via Open Image Denoise, and hdMoonRay.The update also added a new fisheye camera, and usd_mipmap_images, a command-line tool to prepare USD scenes with non-tiled, non-mipmapped textures for rendering.Licensing, system requirements and release datesMoonRay is available under an open-source Apache 2.0 licence.The software can be compiled from source on Linux and macOS: it is tested on Rocky Linux 9 and macOS 14.3. You can find build information in the online documentation.XPU mode requires a NVIDIA GPU that supports CUDA and OptiX on Linux, and an Apple Silicon processor on macOS.Read a full list of new features in MoonRay 1.7 in the online release notes(Includes download links for the source code)Read more about MoonRay on the product websiteHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Latest NewsDreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 1.7Check out the latest features in the open-source release of DreamWorks' renderer, used on movies like The Wild Robot.Thursday, December 26th, 2024Sparseal releases Uniform 1.3Check out the new features in the modeling and texturing iPad app, including support for procedural objects and projection painting.Thursday, December 26th, 2024Happy holidays to all CG Channel readers!Updates to the site may be less frequent than usual over the next two weeks, but normal service resumes on 6 January.Wednesday, December 25th, 2024Tutorial: Introduction to Marvelous DesignerGet started with the industry-standard tool for creating clothing for 3D characters with The Gnomon Workshop's beginners' guide.Tuesday, December 24th, 2024Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday 2024 deals for CG artistsUpdated 24 December: Find discounts on CG hardware and software available until New Year, including 3DCoat, FumeFX and Yeti.Tuesday, December 24th, 2024RandomControl releases Maverick Indie and Maverick Studio 2024Check out the new features in the GPU renderers, including initial USD support and a complete new animation system.Monday, December 23rd, 2024More NewsPilgway releases 3DCoat 2024.30Terragen Sky now lets you paint clouds into the sky directlyPlanetside Software releases Terragen 4.8Photoshop users can now create filters in Substance 3D DesignerPixar releases RenderMan 26.3Create game characters with CC Auto Setup for 3ds Max and V-RayLeopoly releases Shapelab 2025 and Shapelab LiteAdobe releases Photoshop 26.2Check out Blender's experimental anime rendering buildsCell Fluids 2.0 for Blender is outUnigine 2.19.1 can now import and export USD filesBoris FX releases Mocha Pro 2025Older Posts