MoonRay 2.15 Adds Automatic Tests and Production Rendering Improvements
DreamWorks Animation has released MoonRay 2.15, the new version of its open-source rendering engine. Although the numerical jump is large (from 1.7 to 2.15), it is only due to an update in its versioning scheme. The real improvements are under the hood: automatic tests, dual materials, NUMA support, and more.
A Movie Renderer, Now More Accessible
MoonRay is not an experiment: it has been used in Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot, demonstrating its ability to handle everything from photorealistic to artistic styles. It works with CPU and GPU architectures simultaneously, ensuring maximum efficiency in render farms. It also features a Hydra delegate (hdMoonRay), making it compatible with viewport rendering in Houdini and Katana.
Automatic Tests for Developers: RATS
The main technical novelty is RATS (Render Acceptance Test Suite), a set of 400 small scenes that are rendered and compared automatically to detect visual errors between versions. It's like a visual QA system, useful for both avoiding regressions and validating new builds before releasing them.
Improvements for Artists: Dual Textures, UDIM Rotation, and More
For those using MoonRay as part of the creative pipeline, version 2.15 includes several improvements:
- TwoSidedMap: different textures on each side of a surface
- Support for UDIM texture rotation
- Expanded controls on fisheye cameras
- Performance improvements thanks to NUMA compatibility, which optimizes the use of multiple CPUs per node
MoonRay continues to stand out for being free and open-source, with flexible licenses for small studios or large productions. You can find its code on GitHub.
Irony? A renderer used in robot movies now includes automatic visual tests as if it came from a paranoid AI. Skynet approves this 🤖🧪
Summary of Main New Features:
- RATS system with 400 automatic tests
- NUMA compatibility for better CPU usage
- Support for rotated UDIM textures
- TwoSidedMap material for internal and external views
- Extended controls on fisheye cameras
- Viewport support with
hdMoonRay(Hydra)
MoonRay 2.15 not only maintains its cinematic standard, it now also wants to ensure that your render never fails without you knowing. And that, for free software, is worthy of a technical Oscar.