# OpenMoonRay/openmoonray

MoonRay is an open-source, award-winning, state-of-the-art production path tracing renderer, initially developed at DreamWorks and an active member project of the Academy Software Foundation.

Repository: https://github.com/OpenMoonRay/openmoonray
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/openmoonray
Homepage: https://openmoonray.org/
Language: CMake
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-25T22:42:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 91/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 81, longevity 90
- inputs: {"age_days": 1268, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 47, "gap_med": 82.5, "n_releases_24m": 7}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4721, forks 311 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:57.516896+00:00)

## What it is
MoonRay is an open-source, production path-tracing renderer originally developed at DreamWorks Animation and now an Academy Software Foundation project. It provides physically based materials, a USD Hydra render delegate, and local, multi-machine, and cloud rendering on CPU and hybrid GPU (XPU) hardware.

## Use cases
- render feature-film-quality animation frames
- path trace visual effects shots
- render USD scenes in Houdini or Maya via Hydra
- distribute rendering across multiple machines or the cloud
- run regression tests on rendered images
- profile renderer performance

## When to choose
- you need a production-grade, physically based path tracer for animation or VFX
- you work in a USD/Hydra pipeline and want a render delegate
- you need distributed or cloud rendering of complex scenes
- you want a proven renderer used in real film production

## When to avoid
- you need a real-time game engine renderer
- you want a lightweight renderer that runs on Windows natively
- you need a simple turnkey tool without a build or pipeline setup
- your project depends on GPU-only rendering without CPU support

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: graphics, simulation, developer-tools
- domain: graphics, media, developer-tools
- platform: cpp
- tags: path-tracing, renderer, vfx, animation, usd, hydra, monte-carlo-rendering, film-production, distributed-rendering, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- OpenMoonRay/openmoonray (main) score 91

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:57.516896+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:19:05.421610+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/OpenMoonRay/openmoonray (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:57.516896+00:00, sha bf9f67416eec)
  - homepage: https://openmoonray.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:02:47.274878+00:00, sha bc106123bb58)
  - site_page: https://docs.openmoonray.org (fetched 2026-08-29T09:02:47.284319+00:00, sha e7c2aca87be3)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.