MoonRay for Modo 0.5.4

0.5.4 is a pre-production release of rendering across machines and Modo's Processing textures: Rhizome renders a frame or a range on every machine running a node, Modo's Processing textures render in all three engines, and MoonLightIPR gathers AOVs for motion graphics and renders with the Render button. It comes with a new runtime: install the kit and the runtime, then Compile XPU2 Shaders once more (System > Preferences > MoonRay > XPU2 > Device Management).

Rhizome: rendering across machines

• MoonRay > Rhizome: Decentralized Rendering: XPU2 renders this frame, or a range of frames, on every machine running a Rhizome node, and the picture comes out as one machine renders it. There is no render server: any machine can lead a render, and if it stops, another takes over.
• Each machine fetches only the scene data its share of the picture reads. Every machine's work is checked, and traffic between machines is encrypted.
• The same window makes this machine a node, shows the machines at work, approves new ones and adds the Windows Firewall rule. A machine behind a router or VPN is found by its address and remembered.
• Windows only, and every machine needs the same kit version. Tested so far with several nodes on one machine; a test across two real machines is still to come.

Rhizome and XPU2 are designed by Raphael Tobar. Not affiliated with or endorsed by DreamWorks Animation.

Modo's Processing textures

• The Gradient's inputs: Incidence Angle, Locator Incidence, Slope, Camera Distance, Distance (and X, Y, Z), Screen X, Y and R, Back Facing, Texture U and V, Texture Value, Surface ID, Bump and Displacement Height, within 0.01 of Modo's render in MoonRay, XPU2 and MoonLightIPR.
• Occlusion, Variation and Tension: how open each point is; a random number for each item, Part or Replicator particle; a deformed mesh's stretch or fold. Within 0.02 to 0.03 of Modo's render.
• Process: Hue, Saturation, Value and Hue Shift on the layers beneath it, within 0.0004 of Modo's render. Its Bias and Gain are not followed yet, and say so.

MoonLightIPR

• Render with MoonLightIPR: with RT off, the Render button renders to Render Settings > MoonLightIPR > Render Samples (saved with the scene), and Render Animation can use MoonLightIPR as its engine, with the denoised beauty saved beside each frame.
• AOVs for motion graphics: Diffuse, Glossy, Emission and Environment light passes that add up to the beauty, a shadow matte, Albedo, Depth, Normal, Position, Alpha and motion vectors, gathered with the beauty at no extra cost, and Export AOVs from the preview's right-click menu.
• Its own firefly clamps: Clamp From Bounce and Sample Clamp in its own Render Settings group, and Roughness Clamp as in MoonRay.
• A camera's bokeh image, maps on diffuse transmission colour, sharp textures at full size in a Render, and an opt-in to render at the camera's resolution.

Rendering and the scene

• Headless renders: scripts/export_moonray.py writes a Modo scene as a MoonRay scene from modo_cl.exe, with no window, and moonray.exe or moonray_xpu2.exe render renders it from the command line. The steps are in INSTALLATION.md.
• 16K textures stay on XPU2: a texture file larger than 1 GB no longer sends the scene to MoonRay XPU.
• Render missing frames continues a sequence as it is, after the scene or its settings changed.
• Convert to MoonRay Rect Light: right-click an area light in the Item List to make it a MoonRay RectLight in its place.
• VDB shapes show their size in the viewport as a box and a cloud of points; a numbered VDB file plays as a sequence; Select Volume Here and Select Mesh Here in the preview's right-click menu.
• Environment images flipped with a wrap of -1 light the scene as they should, and a MoonRay graph's images are found when a scene has moved.

Known issues

• Modo may crash as it quits with a Scene Proxy scene still open: Modo's own; your work and settings are kept.
• A light with a cookie filter, or a glowing VDB, renders in MoonRay's slower scalar mode outside XPU2.
• Several graphics cards and NUMA nodes are tested in simulation only, and Rhizome on one machine only.

The full list is in What's new in 0.5 and the issue tracker.

Install

Download the kit and the Windows runtime (and, for MoonRay's ten example scenes, the content ZIP), unpack them into one folder, and follow INSTALLATION.md. Windows and Modo 16.1v9; XPU and MoonLightIPR need an NVIDIA graphics card, and so does XPU2 unless set to the processor only. SHA256SUMS.txt lists each file's checksum.

Or drop MoonRayForModo-0.5.4.lpk onto a Modo viewport: the kit and the runtime in one file. Restart Modo when it asks, then Compile XPU2 Shaders. It leaves out the example scenes, which are in the content ZIP.