Autodesk Media & Entertainment
In this update, Arnold continues to provide you with the latest rendering support and capabilities. This update brings new and improved rendering controls and support for more features in Hydra and USD. Arnold also provides an updated scene converted for 3ds Max as well as optimization and bug fixes, giving you a more seamless experience when rendering your projects.
Improved Volume Rendering
This update contains multiple volume rendering improvements, providing you with more control. The new dual lobe phase function parameters in the volume shader make it easier for you to render realistic clouds. As well, new modes for controlling the scaling of the emission can improve the look of emissive volumes, for example, more realistic explosions.
USD Improvements
This update brings many USD improvements and bugfixes in the USD procedural and the Hydra Render Delegate. The Render Delegate now supports features such as Cryptomatte, mesh lights, color management, light filters, light shaders, and nested instances as well as pinned curves and overscan. Velocity motion blur, nurbs curves, and UsdPreviewSurface displacement are now supported in both the Render Delegate and the procedural. Additionally, it is now possible to export Arnold shaders directly through Maya USD. Arnold USD is available both as part of the Arnold plugins and as an open source project.
Arnold 3ds Max Scene Converter
Arnold for 3ds Max now contains a much-improved scene converter making it easier for you to render scenes with 3rd party shaders and lights in Arnold. The scene converter will automatically translate many incompatible shaders and lights to Arnold supported equivalents and aims at preserving the look of the original assets.
Other
This update also contains a new curve wrapping mode, improvements making nested instance procedural practical in production, new API functions to improve dealing with multiple universe and log messages, and an updated Cryptomatte 1.2. Furthermore, Arnold for Maya benefits from an improved Arnold Viewport experience and Arnold for Cinema4D exposes a new and improved C++ API.
Check out the Arnold Release Notes for further information.
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