Welcome
MoonRay is DreamWorks’ open-source, multi-award-winning, state-of-the-art production MCRT renderer, which has been used on feature films such as How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, The Bad Guys, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the newest release, Kung Fu Panda 4, as well as future titles. MoonRay was developed at DreamWorks and is in continuous active development and includes an extensive library of production-tested, physically based materials, a USD Hydra render delegate, multi-machine and cloud rendering via the Arras distributed computation framework.
MoonRay is developed in-house and is maintained by DreamWorks Animation for all of their feature film production. Many thanks go to all of the engineers for building and delivering this state of the art MCRT renderer since the very beginning, and to DreamWorks Animation for continuing a long tradition of contributing back to the wider computer graphics community.
We invite you to watch our Sizzle Reel!
News & Releases
29-July-2024
MoonRay 1.6.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- New native MoonRay build for Apple silicon with Metal XPU support
- Improved adaptive light sampling
- New Fisheye camera
- New usd_mipmap_images tool for handling USD scenes with non-mipped/non-tiled textures
- Added inside-out projection for SphericalCamera
- Various other documentation updates, bug fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
22-February-2024
We presented an overview of Arras, MoonRay's distributed computational framework at this year's Open Source Forum, hosted by the Academy Software Foundation. We invite you to check it out!
20-February-2024
MoonRay 1.5.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- Upgraded to Embree 4.1
- Upgraded to Optix 7.6
- Added initial implementation of a new adaptive light sampling scheme
- Added automatic CPU-affinity control
- Implemented an improved acos() function
- Several improvements to DwaToonMaterial for non-photorealistic looks
- Various other documentation updates, bug fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
1-December-2023
We added support for PresenZ VR rendering to OpenMoonRay, and look forward to see what VR projects people can make with it!
3-November-2023
We presented the journey of open-sourcing MoonRay at this year's Ubuntu Summit, hosted by Canonical. We invite you to see our path to open-source.
02-November-2023
MoonRay 1.4.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- Added telemetry overlay functionality
- Upgraded to Embree 4.1
- Added GPU mode for denoising via OpenImageDenoise
- XPU mode becomes the auto and default rendering modes
- Further improvements to rdl2_print
- Various other documentation updates, bug fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
1-September-2023
We had a great Birds of a Feather session hosted by the Academy Software Foundation at this year's SIGGRAPH and we posted this recap of what we shared.
28-July-2023
MoonRay 1.3.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- Added support for Rocky Linux 9
- Enable building with GCC 11
- Upgraded to Embree 3.13.5
- Upgraded to ISPC 1.20.0
- Upgraded to CUDA 12.1
- Several more package upgrades and build improvements
- Added new extensions to Cryptomatte support
- Various other documentation updates, bug fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
22-June-2023
MoonRay 1.2.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- Added ramp controls to BaseVolume
- Added support for custom explicit shading attributes
- Added support for image synchronization feedback for multi-machine rendering
- Various other updates, fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
18-May-2023
We're excited and honored that MoonRay was recognized with a 2023 Monolith Award from the Infinity Festival Hollywood!1-May-2023
MoonRay 1.1.0.0 is now available for download.This is a minor release:
- Added new extensions to Cryptomatte support
- Added support for normal-oriented curves
- Various other updates, fixes and improvements
See the release notes for a complete list of changes.
16-February-2023
At the Academy Software Foundation's Open Source Forum we mentioned that we are very close to our full launch. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy diving into our MoonRay Documentation site, which we've released today.
We invite you to watch our new Sizzle Reel of MoonRay rendering Intel's newly released 4004 Moore Lane USD Scene, with CPU denoising using Intel's Open Image Denoiser, contributed and integrated into MoonRay.
01-February-2023
We'll be presenting an update on open sourcing MoonRay at the Academy Software Foundation's Open Source Forum on February 16th. Exciting stuff to talk about! You can register here and also watch this space for updates.
03-January-2023
We sent out a mailer before the holiday break with the update that we're pushing the release to Q1 of 2023. While we've made great strides, trying to rush it out just before the holidays did not seem prudent.
We look forward to sharing and collaborating on the technology with everyone very soon!
