Arnold 5.1 Available

Solid Angle has revealed Arnold 5.1 with a set of powerful new tools for better rendering experience.

Solid Angle has revealed Arnold 5.1 with a set of powerful new tools for better rendering experience. First, major advancements in sampling and denoising let artists have more control over image quality. Also, the new version brings a new Toon shader and enhancements to built-in shaders, a fully native Alembic procedural, material assignments, and more. Let’s study the newest version.  

Optimizing for quality and speed

  • Adaptive sampling offers a streamlined way to easily tune image fidelity, so users can reduce render times without jeopardizing final image quality. 
  • Two new denoising solutions give you the option to use much lower quality sampling settings to optimize your rendering process:
    • The OptiX Denoiser based on NVIDIA AI technology is now integrated into Arnold.
    • The Arnold Denoiser is a standalone tool that offers the temporal stability needed for final frame denoising.
 

Raw render vs. denoised render

Toon Shader

A new Toon shader has been integrated as part of a non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) solution, provided in combination with the Contour Filter, making it easier to achieve incredible new styles and effects. While Arnold is long known for producing beautiful photorealistic imagery, many users have asked for functionality allowing toon or stylized non-photoreal looks, and this new shader will open up a tremendous range of options. 

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Images courtesy of Lee Griggs 

Managing complexity and scale

For technical users, Arnold continues to offer the stability needed to scale performance without sacrificing image quality. 

  • A native Alembic procedural will help studios working with Alembic pipelines to better integrate Arnold, optimize their Alembic workflow, and eliminate production bottlenecks.
  • A new Profiling API plus structured statistics, including the ability to output data in JSON format, offer a set of powerful debugging tools so users can more easily identify performance issues and fine-tune rendering processes.

Interoperability for open pipelines

Arnold 5.1 lays the groundwork for major developments in supporting open industry standards, helping to dismantle technical roadblocks that might be limiting your choice of tools.

  • Material assignments and overrides: Fully interactive inside of Arnold, a new set of operators makes it possible to override any part of an Arnold scene and modify the Arnold universe at render time. Support for open standard frameworks including MaterialX will make it easier than ever to transfer rich material and look-development content between applications and renderers.

Solid Angle

You can learn more about the latest version here

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