It was used as the primary renderer in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies enabling high quality images to be rendered very quickly, which was invaluable when creating the complex scenes in Smaug’s fiery annihilation of Lake-town and the vastly detailed, large scale battle scenes.
THE REALITY IS YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE OUR SHOTS CAN RENDER AND BE THERE FOR THE MORNING - NO MATTER HOW COMPLEX - OTHERWISE YOU CAN’T MAKE A MOVIE.
Luca Fascione
The vast amounts of apes in this scene– each with complex hair that would have taxed any renderer– were rendered in Manuka. For these scenes, the Dawn crew tested Manuka and found it significantly improved rendering allowing for all the complex apes to be primarily rendered in the same pass, something that could easily produce major memory problems with most other renderers.