DreamWorks Animation has released version 1.7 of MoonRay, its internal production rendering engine. Now available as open source, this new version brings significant improvements for the visual effects industry.
New Features in MoonRay 1.7
The update includes several standout new features that improve both rendering quality and engine flexibility:
- PortalLight: a new light mode to enhance Global Illumination in interior scenes. Although the documentation only mentions control attributes, in other rendering engines, portal lights are rectangular area lights very useful in this type of scenario.
- Cryptomatte ID Support: now hdMoonRay, MoonRay's Hydra rendering delegate, supports generating precise masks using Cryptomatte, a very important tool for compositing.
Performance Improvements in XPU
In XPU mode, which is MoonRay's hybrid CPU/GPU mode, acceleration has been improved for both regular rays and occlusion rays on NVIDIA graphics cards.
MoonRay 1.6: Apple Silicon Support
The previous update, MoonRay 1.6, brought several new features, highlighting the initial support for Macs with Apple Silicon. This version allows building and running MoonRay on Macs with M-series processors, running on macOS 14 and later versions. Additionally, support was added for:
- XPU Mode: which allows using both the CPU and GPU to render efficiently.
- Denoising: through the Open Image Denoise tool.
- Fisheye Camera: a new camera for rendering panoramic scenes.
- usd_mipmap_images tool: to prepare USD scenes with textures that do not use mipmaps or tiling.
MoonRay: A High-Performance Rendering Engine
MoonRay is a high-performance Monte Carlo ray tracing engine used in all recent DreamWorks films. It has been designed to maximize the use of all machine cores, keeping them active at all times. The engine also offers a hybrid CPU/GPU mode that matches CPU-only rendering results, making it even more flexible.
"MoonRay is capable of generating both stylized and photorealistic outputs, making it a key tool for visual effects production at DreamWorks Animation."
Some of its key features include:
- AOVs/LPEs: Standard tools for rendering different image passes.
- Deep Output: For complex visual effects and compositing.
- Hydra Integration: Through hdMoonRay, facilitating its use as a preview renderer in DCC applications like Houdini and Katana.
MoonRay in Production: Recent Films
MoonRay has been used in several recent DreamWorks films, such as Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot, demonstrating its ability to handle large-scale projects in the animation industry.
MoonRay 1.7, with its new features and performance improvements, promises to continue driving quality and efficiency in DreamWorks Animation's visual effects work and the open-source community.