In Redshift 3.6, a full-fledged non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) system has been introduced, built on the MatCap shader node presented last year in Redshift 3.5.17. Its components include a new Toon Material node for shading vertical lines, a Contour shader for drawing contours, and a Tonemap Pattern shader for creating halftone shading and similar effects. You can explore its capabilities at 00:30 in the video at the top of the article.

In the release, the volume sampling and shading system in Redshift has also been enhanced. The Standard Volume shader can now be controlled via shader nodes, simplifying the addition of fine details, and it now works in global environmental fog. Additionally, the new Jendersie-d'Eon method for approximating light scattering by atmospheric particles is expected to lead to more realistic rendering of clouds and fog.
The update also adds support for volume displacement, allowing volumes to be displaced by manipulating input grid position data. Other changes include alpha masking for large area lights, enabling the creation of gobos with textures. Mesh lights have been reworked and adhere to visibility and light linking rules, bringing them in line with other light sources. Sampling and AOV processing have also been improved.

Other changes include support for additive particle rendering and ray level output for the State shader. And last but not least: OSL (Open Shading Language) is now supported in HIP, meaning that Redshift is now officially supported on AMD GPUs after two years of public preview. Previously, the renderer was officially supported only on NVIDIA and Apple Silicon hardware. A list of supported GPUs can be found here.

Redshift 3.6 is available for Windows 10 and above, glibc 2.17 and above Linux, and macOS 12.6 and above. Renderer integration plugins are compatible with 3ds Max 2018, Blender 2.83, Cinema 4D R21, Houdini 17.5 (18.0 on macOS), Katana 4.0v1, Maya 2018, and all listed products version above. The software is available by subscription only, with a subscription cost of $45 per month or $264 per year.