Autodesk Arnold Renderer

Autodesk Arnold Renderer is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer built for the demands of feature-length animation and visual effects. Originally co-developed with Sony Pictures Imageworks and now their main renderer, the app is used at over 300 studios worldwide including ILM, Framestore, MPC, The Mill, and Digic Pictures.

• Navigate through the software with simple and intuitive controls.
• Produce professional-grade renders with full artistic control.
• Get immediate results with interactive rendering.

It was the primary renderer on dozens of films from Monster House and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to Pacific Rim and Gravity. It is available as a standalone renderer on Linux, Windows, and macOS, with supported plug-ins for Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D, and Katana.



It is the built-in interactive renderer for Maya and 3ds Max. The Arnold plug-in for Softimage is now available under an Apache2.0 open source license. It has been used in dozens of films, commercials, shorts, and video game cinematics.

Overview

Autodesk Arnold Renderer for PC is a high-end rendering software widely used in the visual effects, animation, and design industries.

Originally developed by Solid Angle and later acquired by Autodesk, Arnold has become the go-to renderer for major studios and professionals due to its physically-based approach, scalability, and integration with various 3D applications.

It is known for producing photorealistic images and handling complex scenes with high efficiency.

This trial will enable you to download and install the latest version:

• Production-proven tools with simple and intuitive controls
• The stability you can count on to handle your most complex work
• Easily integrates with all top 3D DCC tools
• Highly customizable for pipeline integration
• A passionate and supportive community
• Explore the GPU beta for interactive look development and lighting
• The use of the watermarked or unwatermarked output for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
• Upon completing this process you will be able to render without a watermark for 30 days.
• This trial version is functionally identical to the commercial version.

All of the plug-ins are free to use when you buy licenses. This means you can easily switch 3D software packages without having to spend money on additional licenses.

Arnold for Maya
Provides a beautiful interface to photorealistic renderer within Autodesk’s Maya.

Arnold for Cinema 4D
Arnold for Cinema 4D (or C4DtoA) provides a bridge to the renderer from within the standard Cinema 4D interface.

Arnold for Houdini
Arnold for Houdini (or HtoA) provides a bridge to the renderer from within the standard Houdini interface.

Arnold for Katana
Arnold for Katana (or KtoA) provides a bridge to the renderer from within the standard Katana interface.

Arnold for 3ds Max
Provides a beautiful interface to photorealistic renderer within Autodesk’s 3ds Max.

Arnold for Softimage
The plug-in for Softimage (SItoA) is no longer in active development. SItoA is now available to the community under an Apache2.0 open source license.

The renderer app is a fast, memory-efficient, and scalable physically-based raytracer. Its aim is to simplify the pipeline of VFX and animation companies with a reduced set of user interface elements, and by promoting a single pass approach removing all the associated storage and management costs.

What`s New

Fur & Hair
An efficient raytraced curve primitive makes Autodesk Arnold Renderer for PC the perfect choice for rendering fur and hair using very little memory. Its hair shader has double offset speculators, transmission and is specifically designed to reduce the flickering of thin hairs.

Motion blur
Accurate 3D motion blur correctly interacts with shadows, volumes, indirect lighting, reflection, or refraction. Deformation motion blur is extremely efficient and works for polygons, hairs, and particles. The rotational motion describes precise circular arcs.

Sub-surface scattering
Raytracing-based sub-surface scattering approach makes tuning point clouds a thing of the past. It's easy to use, requires no additional memory, supports motion-blurred lighting, interactive lighting, and its performance scales optimally as more CPU threads are used.

Volumes
The volumetric rendering system is based on proprietary importance sampling algorithms and can render effects such as smoke, clouds, fog, pyroclastic flow, or fire. Volumes interact with direct and indirect lighting from arbitrary area light sources. Supports OpenVDB and MayaFluids.

Flexibility and extensibility
Thanks to an easy to use C++ API with Python bindings, TDs and programmers can integrate the app in external applications, and create custom shaders, cameras, light filters, and output drivers. It has been integrated into many apps, both commercial and proprietary.

Scalability
The program is carefully multi-threaded and makes optimal use of all available CPU threads. Even for traditionally single-threaded operations such as loading of procedural geometry, displacement, or ray accel construction. Hyper-threading provides a solid 20% speedup.

Instances
It can efficiently ray trace instances of any scene object with transformation and material overrides. It is easy to create thousands or even millions of instances resulting in trillions of renderable primitives, which is great for vegetation, large environments, and FX.

Memory efficient
Thanks to Arnold's compact and highly optimized data structures, you can render scenes with hundreds of millions of unique primitives quickly and with a much lower memory footprint than is possible with other renderers.

Deferred geometry loading
Geometry can be created on-demand through "procedural" nodes (or stand-ins) rather than upfront. This allows the modular assembly of scenes. Procedural nodes can point to ASS, OBJ, PLY, and DLL/DSO files, opening the door to programmatic scene creation and compositing.

Subdivision and displacement
It supports Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. Subdivided vertices are then vector-displaced through arbitrary shader networks. High frequencies can be automatically captured as a bump map, reducing the need for excessive subdivision.

Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs)
It can render any number of AOVs or passes for compositing purposes, including normal, Z-depth, position, and ID masks. It also supports deep image data. Shaders can create their own custom outputs (such as direct and indirect diffuse, specular, SSS, etc).

Standalone command-line renderer
It has a native scene description format stored in human-readable text files (Scene Source, or .ass). These files are easily edited, can be read and written with the C/Python API, can be lazily loaded at render time, or can be fed to the command-line renderer, kick.

Main Features

Physically-Based Rendering (PBR): It employs a physically-based rendering approach, which simulates the interaction of light with surfaces and materials, resulting in photorealistic images. This approach ensures accuracy in light behavior, making it ideal for creating high-quality visual effects.

Advanced Shading System: It features an advanced shading system with a wide range of built-in shaders. It supports OSL (Open Shading Language), allowing artists to create custom shaders that can be fine-tuned to meet specific project needs.

Ray Tracing: The app excels at ray tracing, enabling accurate light simulations such as reflections, refractions, and global illumination. This capability is essential for achieving realistic lighting effects.

Scalability: Designed to handle complex scenes with large amounts of geometry and textures, it can scale efficiently across multiple CPUs, making it suitable for production environments where rendering time is critical.

Interactivity: It provides an interactive rendering experience, allowing artists to see the effects of changes in real time. This feature significantly speeds up the workflow, as adjustments to lighting, materials, or camera angles can be evaluated instantly.

Support for Volumes: It supports rendering of volumes such as smoke, fire, and clouds. This makes it ideal for visual effects work that requires realistic simulations of atmospheric phenomena.

Integration: Autodesk Arnold Renderer is tightly integrated with leading 3D applications, providing seamless workflows for artists. It also supports major industry standards like Alembic, OpenVDB, and USD, ensuring compatibility with various pipelines.

User Interface

Arnold’s user interface is designed with artists in mind, offering an intuitive layout that emphasizes ease of use. In applications like Maya and 3ds Max, it integrates directly into the rendering settings, providing access to all its features without needing to switch between software.

The interface includes customizable panels, node-based material editors, and comprehensive settings for controlling render quality, sampling, and more.

The standalone version of the program features a command-line interface, which is often used for batch rendering in large-scale production environments. This interface is scriptable and can be automated to handle complex rendering tasks across render farms.

Installation and Setup

Installing this software is straightforward, especially when using it with Autodesk products like Maya or 3ds Max, where it comes bundled. For standalone use or integration with other 3D software, it can be downloaded from the Autodesk website. The installation process involves running the installer, selecting the desired plugins, and configuring the license.

Licensing is managed through Autodesk’s licensing system, which offers both subscription and perpetual license options. It supports floating licenses, making it easy to share resources across a team or studio.

How to Use

Using this program typically begins with selecting it as the render engine within your 3D application. Artists then set up their scene, applying materials, lighting, and camera settings as needed. Arnold’s interactive rendering allows users to preview the scene in real time, making adjustments to achieve the desired look.

For more advanced use, artists can dive into the shader network to create complex materials or use the command-line tools for batch rendering. Arnold’s documentation and community resources provide ample support for learning its features and optimizing render settings.

FAQ

What are the system requirements for Arnold?
It requires a 64-bit CPU with SSE4 support, and at least 8 GB of RAM, though 16 GB or more is recommended for handling complex scenes. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

What is Autodesk Arnold used for?
Autodesk Arnold is a high-end Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer designed for creating realistic 3D characters, photorealistic imagery, and intricate scenes. It is widely employed in film, television, gaming, and design visualization projects to achieve stunning visual effects and detailed renderings.

Who uses Autodesk Arnold?
Autodesk Arnold is utilized by professionals such as 3D modelers, animators, lighting artists, and FX artists in industries like film, TV, gaming, and design visualization. These experts rely on Arnold to produce high-quality visual content and realistic effects.

Does Autodesk Arnold Renderer support GPU rendering?
Yes, it supports GPU rendering using NVIDIA GPUs, which can significantly speed up the rendering process for scenes that fit into the GPU’s memory.

Can Arnold render volumetric effects?
Yes, it supports rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke, fire, and fog, which are essential for creating realistic visual effects.

Is Arnold suitable for real-time rendering?
While Arnold excels at producing high-quality images, it is not designed for real-time rendering like game engines. However, its interactive rendering feature allows for real-time previews during the creation process.

How does Arnold compare to other renderers like V-Ray or Redshift?
Arnold is known for its photorealism and ease of use, particularly in animation and VFX production. V-Ray is also a high-quality renderer with a strong architectural visualization following, while Redshift is favored for its speed due to GPU acceleration. The choice often depends on the specific needs of the project.

Alternatives

V-Ray: A powerful renderer known for its versatility and strong support in architectural visualization, V-Ray offers both CPU and GPU rendering capabilities.

Octane Render: Another GPU-based renderer, Octane is known for its real-time rendering capabilities and support for a wide range of 3D applications.

Pricing

This program is available as a subscription service through Autodesk. The cost is approximately $50 per month or $400 per year for a single-user license.

Enterprise pricing options are available for studios requiring multiple licenses or floating licenses.

System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows 10 or later, with the Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.
• Processor: 64-bit Intel or AMD multi-core processor with SSE4.2 instruction set. x86-64 CPUs need to support the SSE4.1 instruction set. Apple Mac models with M series chips are natively supported.
• Memory: Minimum 8 GB RAM, recommended 16 GB or more.
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GPU with CUDA Compute Capability 5.0 or higher for GPU rendering.
• Storage: 5 GB of free disk space for installation.

PROS

• High-quality, photorealistic rendering.
• Tight integration with leading 3D software.
• Scalability for handling complex scenes.
• Advanced shading and lighting capabilities.
• Interactive rendering for real-time feedback.

CONS

• Subscription-based pricing may be costly for some users.
• Requires significant hardware resources, especially for GPU rendering.
• Not designed for real-time or game engine use.

Note: 30 days trial version.