5.5.0.7 - Date: 17 Nov 2022

-Automatic generation of TX files:The "Auto-convert Textures tox TX" option is now ON by default. Tx textures are now generated on demand, when the texture is first accessed during rendering, instead of generating all Tx files of the scene before the render starts.
-Log files can be written separately per-frame:It is now possible to write separate log files per frame, when using a token in the filename (MAXTOA-422)
-MAXtoA now supports the standard Object Properties:Visibility spinner (MAXTOA-252) and the various visibility flags (MAXTOA-1013)
-Arnold Render View by default :Arnold Render View is now the default viewer for rendering (MAXTOA-1492)
-Optimized translation of Physical Material :Physical Material is now translated to Arnold with less shaders than before. It will therefore consume less memory and render more efficiently.
-Viewport representation for Standard Surface:The Arnold Standard Surface now has a viewport representation. Note that this only applies to the material itself, and connected textures will only show up in the viewport if they are 3ds Max Bitmap or 3ds Max OSL shaders (MAXX-1493)
-Hair melanin and redness:The standard_hair shader's melanin and melanin_redness parameters as well as the AidEonBSDF() function's absorption parameter are now being referenced in a linear sRGB color space so that the direct lighting results match when switching to other rendering color spaces such as ACEScg. The melanin_redness parameter will also now produce a more correct-looking red tint in ACEScg. (ARNOLD-7585).




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-Sharp textures through reflections and refractions:Textures seen through specular reflections and refractions, particularly when there is low roughness, such as with clear windows and mirrors should now look correctly sharper. This can result in higher resolution texture mipmap levels being loaded in memory, so scenes that were affected by this can see an increase in texture cache usage. (ARNOLD-5632)





-MaterialX 1.38.5:Arnold now ships with an updated MaterialX version, see the full release notes.(ARNOLD-12448)
-Autodesk Analytics Program:A newer version of the Autodesk Analytics Program (ADP) has been integrated into Arnold. This brings stability and performance improvements, including in situations where Arnold is used without internet access. If Arnold can identify the user with their Autodesk account, opt-in settings will automatically download from the internet, simplifying usage across multiple machines. Otherwise a one-time dialog window will appear if the computer does not have preexisting Analytics opt-in information. No dialog window will appear when running kick -dw, making it safe to use on headless render nodes. (ARNOLD-10787)
-Warn when adaptive sampling is enabled and there is no RGBA AOV:Adaptive sampling will only run on the RGBA (beauty) AOV. If there is no AOV with the name RGBA, then adaptive sampling is disabled. This can be particularly confusing when IPR has a display window and so adaptive sampling is used, but the batch render is done without display (kick -dw for instance) and adaptive sampling stopped working. We now emit a warning when this occurs so this issue can be easily detected. (ARNOLD-12521)

USD Enhancements

-USD 22.08The arnold USD procedural now use USD 22.08.
-MaterialX support:MaterialX shaders are now supported, both in Hydra and in the usd procedural. usd#1181





-Alembic support:Alembic references and payloads are now supported by the usd procedural. (ARNOLD-12593)
-Imager support:Imagers can now be rendered in Hydra and the procedural through an imager node graph connected to the RenderSettings "imager" attribute. usd#1305
-Skinning improvements:UsdSkel Skinning can now support instances and was made more efficient. Motion blur is now correct in both hydra and the procedural. usd#1291 usd#1078
-Support shader connections to mesh lights:It is now possible to connect shading graphs to a mesh light color. This can be done by connecting an ArnoldNodeGraph primitive to the mesh attribute primvars:arnold:light:shaders. usd#1294
-Skinning improvements:UsdSkel Skinning can now support instances and was made more efficient. Motion blur is now correct in both Hydra and the procedural. usd#1291 usd#1078
-Camera improvements:dataWindowNDC support has been improved for batch rendering. It now adds more pixels to the output image instead of simply adjusting the frustum, when using husk or kick. usd#1271 The horizontal and vertical aperture offset attributes in the cameras are now supported, both in Hydra and in the procedural. This enables features such as render regions. usd#1225
-Cylinder lights:Cylinder lights are now supported in the usd procedural. usd#1231
-Render settings improvements:We can now set in the usd file which RenderSetting primitive will control the render by pointing the layer metadata attribute renderSettingsPrimPath to the RenderSetting primitive. usd#1235 The aov_shader attribute of a RenderSettings primitive can now point to multiple ArnoldNodeGraph. They have to be separated by a space. usd#1321 "Abort on error" is now declared as a Hydra render setting, and can be controlled in usd_view or mayaUSD. usd#1259
-RenderVar improvements:The attribute "arnold:filter" of the RenderVar primitive now defaults to box instead of closest_filter. usd#1313 RenderVar aov name can be called "color" for the beauty, it was supported in the render delegate and is now supported in the procedural. usd#1311
-Improved default sampling values in Hydra:The default sample values were inconsistent between interactive Hydra versus batch rendering (e.g. with husk). This was improved, and now matches the other Arnold plugins. This is an incompatible change for scenes where sampling values were left to default. usd#1006
-Shader outputs registered in Sdr:The output attributes for Arnold shaders are now registered, along with their type, in the Sdr registry. This allows for applications / plugins to expose shading trees with Arnold shaders with the correct types. usd#1211
-Environment variable to debug Hydra:In order to help debugging Hydra renders, an environment variable HDARNOLD_DEBUG_SCENE can now be set to a .ass scene filename, allowing the Arnold scene data to be saved out as the render starts. usd#1266

Incompatible changes

-Hair melanin and redness in ACEScg:The changes to standard_hair shader's melanin and melanin_redness in ACEScg are potentially look-breaking. The absorption parameter for the AidEonBSDF() is now expected to be in a linear sRGB color space. Those changes can be reverted through the enable_deprecated_hair_absorption render option. (ARNOLD-7585)
-Autodesk Analytics Program:The following API should no longer be used as Arnold will now create the opt-in dialog window. In many cases they have been marked deprecated and will be removed in a major Arnold release. All these functions can be replaced by AiADPDisplayDialogWindow() and AiADPDisableDialogWindow() (ARNOLD-10787):
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED bool AiADPIntroWasShown();
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED void AiADPSetIntroShown();
AI_API AI_DEPRECATED void AiADPDialogStrings(AtParamValueMap&, const char*);
AI_API void AiADPSetOptedIn(bool wants_optin);
AI_API bool AiADPIsOptedIn();
-Autodesk network licensing:Autodesk Network License Manager (NLM) servers have to be updated to version 11.18, otherwise checking out a network license throws a Generic license checkout error (22).

Bug Fixes
- MAXTOA-1494 - Physical Materials exported incorrectly to .ass due to blank helper shader names
- MAXTOA-1523 - IPR crash when exporting .ASS file from the Archive render setup
- MAXTOA-1480 - Crash When Rendering Arnold USD Geometry
- ARNOLD-12660 - Volume rendering performance regression in Arnold 7.1.3
- ARNOLD-11448 - Crash stacktrace is not always printed
- ARNOLD-12590 - [GPU] Single channel 8-bit textures are too bright
- ARNOLD-12675 - [Maketx] maketx tool doesn't recognize the -ignore-unassoc parameter
- ARNOLD-12619 - [MaterialX] Channel connections not exported when exporting MaterialX shading networks
- ARNOLD-12667 - [OCIO] Slow call to the OCIO color manager when reading raw textures in OSL
- usd#1278 Support visibility overrides on instances in the render delegate
- usd#1336 Fix empty ProductName rendering as .exr
- usd#1331 Fix motion blur sampling on skinned instances
- usd#1329 Fix inverted motion blur in the render delegate when using velocities
- usd#1315 Fix interpretation of primvars arrays with constant interpolation
- usd#1309 Fix RenderVar's filter width not translated properly in the procedural
- usd#1306 Allow to render deepexr RenderProduct with kick
- usd#1282 Don't set UsdUvTexture uvset when st coordinates are used
- usd#1281 Fix crash when a volume prim density field is invalid
- usd#1232 Set output to half precision for RenderVars with half types
- usd#1214 Make Sdr node discovery results consistent across renderers

Arnoldis an advanced cross-platform rendering library, or API, used by a number of prominent organizations in film, television, and animation, including Sony Pictures Imageworks. It was developed as a photo-realistic, physically-based ray tracing alternative to traditional scanline based rendering software for CG animation. Arnold uses cutting-edge algorithms that make the most effective use of your computer's hardware resources: memory, disk space, multiple processor cores, and SIMD/SSE units. The Arnold architecture was designed to easily adapt to existing pipelines. It is built on top of a pluggable node system; users can extend and customize the system by writing new shaders, cameras, filters, and output driver nodes, as well as procedural geometry, custom ray types and user-defined geometric data. The primary goal of the Arnold architecture is to provide a complete solution as a primary renderer for animation and visual effects.
Arnold for 3ds Maxis an unbiased, physically based, ray tracing 3D rendering engine. It is the default complex rendering engine that comes along with 3ds Max, and it is one of the most used engines in major productions like Gravity, Elysium, Pacific Rim, Alice in Wonderland, and many others. It excels itself in achieving reliable, good looking, realistic results rather quickly, which can give the user time to spend improving the actual scene, rather than tweaking its settings.

In this tutorial which is a part of " Comprehensive introduction to Arnold for 3ds Max" course , we learn how to approach interior lighting in Arnold for 3ds Max.

Solid Angle SLis the technology company behind the Arnold rendering software, with offices in Madrid and London and customers throughout the world including Framestore, DreamWorks, ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks, MPC, The Mill, Mikros Image and Rising Sun Pictures. Arnold was designed from the ground up to efficiently raytrace the complex geometric datasets required for feature-length CGI animation and big budget visual effects, while at the same time simplifying the pipeline, reducing the number of passes, minimizing storage requirements and greatly enhancing interactivity for lighting artists.