{"id":214689,"date":"2026-01-01T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/214689\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T10:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T10:00:11","slug":"dreamworks-animation-releases-moonray-2-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/214689\/","title":{"rendered":"DreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 2.34"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DreamWorks Animation<\/a> has updated MoonRay<\/a>, its in-house production renderer, now available open-source.<\/p>\n

Key changes in MoonRay 2.34<\/a> include a light path visualizer for debugging renders, and support for VFX Reference Platform 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

A high-performance Monte Carlo ray tracer, used on all recent DreamWorks movies
Open-sourced in 2023<\/a>, along with Arras, DreamWorks\u2019 in-house cloud rendering framework, MoonRay is a high-performance Monte Carlo ray tracer.<\/p>\n

It was designed with the aim of keeping \u201call the cores of all the machines busy all the time\u201d, and has an hybrid GPU\/CPU mode with that matches the output of CPU rendering.<\/p>\n

MoonRay is capable of both stylized and photorealistic output, and has the key features<\/a> you would expect of a VFX renderer, including AOVs\/LPEs and deep output.<\/p>\n

It comes with a Hydra delegate, hdMoonRay, making it possible to integrate MoonRay as a viewport renderer in DCC apps that support Hydra delegates, like Houdini<\/a> and Katana<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The renderer is still in active development at DreamWorks Animation, and was used on the studio\u2019s recent movies<\/a>, including The Wild Robot and The Bad Guys 2.<\/p>\n

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MoonRay 2.34: new light path visualizer to help debug renders
The main new feature in MoonRay 2.34 is the light path visualizer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It shows the light path tree for the pixel selected in a rendered image: the paths taken through the 3D scene by the rays contributing to the appearance of that pixel.<\/p>\n

Rays are color-coded by type, including diffuse rays, specular rays, rays created by sampling a light or material BSDF, and camera rays.<\/p>\n

DreamWorks describes the visualizer as a tool to help users understand the path of rays through the scene, and to debug issues with the way lights and materials appear in renders.<\/p>\n

The simulation method it uses isn\u2019t guaranteed to match the full render, but is fast enough to update in real time when parameters are changed.<\/p>\n

Compatible with the latest VFX Reference Platform spec
MoonRay 2.34 also makes the software compatible with the CY2024 and CY2025 specs for VFX Reference Platform<\/a>, and introduces support for building it on macOS 26 (Tahoe).<\/p>\n

There are also a number of smaller changes: you can find a full list in the release notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Licensing, system requirements and release dates
MoonRay is available under an open-source Apache 2.0<\/a> licence.<\/p>\n

The software can be compiled from source on Linux and macOS: it is tested on Rocky Linux 9 and 11 and macOS 14+. You can find build information<\/a> in the online documentation.<\/p>\n

XPU mode requires a NVIDIA GPU that supports CUDA and OptiX on Linux, and an Apple Silicon processor on macOS.<\/p>\n

Read a full list of new features in MoonRay 2.34 in the online release notes<\/a>
(Includes download links for the source code)<\/p>\n

Read more about MoonRay on the product website<\/a><\/p>\n

Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a> and X (formerly Twitter)<\/a>. As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don\u2019t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.<\/p>\n

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