Gearing up for the summer release of RenderMan Studio 4.0, Pixar bundled RenderMan for Maya in the base RenderMan Studio 3.0 package and cut the price to $1300, including an embedded renderer. Previously, RenderMan Studio 3.0 sold for $3000 with the renderer.
The consolidation move streamlines the RenderMan line-up before the big 4.0 release, which Pixar said will introduce new rendering technology developed for RenderMan Pro Server 17.0, which is also on the way. The company cited advancements in ray tracing for multi-bounce global illumination and subsurface scattering, including new shaders integrated into Maya and RenderMan's Slim shader editor. New lighting tools including re-rendering technology employed in the production of Cars 2 and Brave are included, as is a progressive ray-traced re-rendering system designed to speed look development.
RenderMan Studio 4.0 will be released for Windows, Linux, and OS X. The company said upgrades from v3.0 wil be available, and that upgrades from RenderMan for Maya to RenderMan Studio 4.0 will be the same price they were for previous versions — $300.
For many more details, check out Pixar's dedicated RenderMan website: renderman.pixar.com/view/renderman
