AMD ships Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Blender and Maya
AMD has released Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Blender and Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Maya, the latest update to the two editions of its free, physically accurate GPU renderer.
Both updates add support for Cryptomatte AOVs, a new 16-bit render denoiser, and support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on AMD’s new Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU.
In addition, the Blender edition gets support for the Principled Hair BSDF and box mapping in the Image Texture node; while the Maya edition gets support for more AOVs.
AMD has also released an update to the Radeon ProRender USD Hydra render delegate, adding support for the renderer’s material library in Houdini, and for Colorized Object ID and Material ID AOVs.
Both Blender and Maya: Cryptomatte AOVs and a new 16-bit Machine Learning Denoiser
Changes common to both the Blender and Maya editions include support for Cryptomatte AOVs.
The functionality will enable artists to filter objects by name or material in compositing apps that support the open-source ID matte generation system, including Blender’s built-in compositor.
In addition, support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs, added in the previous release, has been extended to the newest card in the familiy, the Radeon RX 6700 XT.
The update also adds a new 16-bit machine-learning-trained render denoiser, described as providing “less memory usage and greater speed” than its predecessor, which was also AI-accelerated.
Blender only: viewport updates, and support for the Principled Hair BSDF and box mapping
In the Blender edition, the new denoiser also forms part of a number of changes intended to improve viewport rendering performance using the new Radeon ProRender 2.0 core.
Users can now choose to render at half resolution then upscale the viewport render using the denoiser’s Machine Learning Upscaler, providing better interactivity than when rendering at full resolution.
Radeon ProRender also now supports Blender’s Principled Hair BSDF and support for box mapping in the Image Texture node, desribed as a “much-requested feature”.
Maya edition: expanded AOV support
The Maya edition also gets updates to AOV and compositing workflow.
As well as Cryptomatte AOVs, the renderer now supports the Camera Normal AOV, and users can set a Material ID on shader nodes for use with the MaterialID AOV.
USD Hydra delegate: expanded AOV support and support for the RPR Material Library in Houdini
AMD has also released version 2.0.27 of the Radeon ProRender USD Hydra delegate, which makes it possible to use Radeon ProRender as a viewport renderer within Houdini.
The update adds support for Colorized Object ID and Material ID AOVs for “human viewing”, and makes it possible to use Radeon ProRender’s native material library in Houdini.
As with the Maya and Blender editions, the Hydra delegate also now supports the Radeon RX 6700 XT.
The other major plugin editions of the software for DCC applications, Radeon ProRender for 3ds Max and Radeon ProRender for Unreal Engine haven’t been updated this year.
Availability and system requirements
All the editions of Radeon ProRender are free downloads. The source code of the plugins is available under the Apache Licence 2.0.
Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Blender is compatible with Blender 2.80+ on Windows 10, Ubuntu 16.04.3 and 18.04.0 Linux, and macOS 10.13.3+.
Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Maya is compatible with Maya 2018+ on Windows and macOS. Version 2.0.27 of the Radeon ProRender USD Hydra delegate is compatible with Houdini 18.5 on Windows, Linux and macOS.
Read a full list of new features in Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Blender in the release notes
Read a full list of new features in Radeon ProRender 3.1 for Maya in the release notes
Read a full list of new features in the Radeon ProRender USD Hydra delegate in the release notes