Arnold features
Memory-efficient, scalable raytracer rendering software helps artists render complex scenes quickly and easily.
See what's new (video: 2:31 min.)
Get feature details in the Arnold for Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, or Katana user guides
Subsurface scatter Hair and fur High-performance ray-traced subsurface Memory-efficient ray-traced curve primitives help scattering eliminates the need to tune point you create complex fur and hair renders. clouds.
Motion blur Volumes 3D motion blur interacts with shadows, volumes, The volumetric rendering system in Arnold can indirect lighting, reflection, or refraction. render effects such as smoke, clouds, fog, Deformation motion blur and rotational motion are pyroclastic flow, and fire. also supported.
Instances Subdivision and displacement Arnold can more efficiently ray trace instances of Arnold supports Catmull-Clark subdivision many scene objects with transformation and surfaces. material overrides.
OSL support Light Path Expressions Arnold now features support for Open Shading LPEs give you power and flexibility to create Language (OSL), an advanced shading language Arbitrary Output Variables to help meet the needs for Global Illumination renderers. of production.
NEW | Adaptive sampling NEW | Toon shader Adaptive sampling gives users another means of An advanced Toon shader is part of a non- tuning images, allowing them to reduce render photorealistic solution provided in combination times without jeopardizing final image quality. with the Contour Filter.
NEW | Denoising NEW | Material assignments and overrides Two denoising solutions in Arnold offer flexibility Operators make it possible to override any part of by allowing users to use much lower-quality a scene at render time and enable support for sampling settings. open standard framework such as MaterialX.
NEW | Alembic procedural NEW | Profiling API and structured statistics
A native Alembic procedural allows users to An extensive set of tools allow users to more render Alembic files directly without any easily identify performance issues and optimize translation. rendering processes.
Standard Surface shader Standard Hair shader This energy-saving, physically based uber shader This physically based shader is built to render hair helps produce a wide range of materials and and fur, based on the d'Eon and Zinke models for looks. specular and diffuse shading.
Flexible and extensible API Stand-alone command-line renderer Integrate Arnold in external applications and Arnold has a native scene description format create custom shaders, cameras, light filters, and stored in human-readable text files. Easily edit, output drivers. read, and write these files via the C/Python API.
See Arnold 5.1 release notes
Integrate Arnold into your pipeline
• Free plug-ins provide a bridge to the Arnold renderer from within many popular 3D applications. • Arnold has supported plug-ins available for Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, and Katana. • Arnold is fully customizable, with a powerful API to create custom rendering solutions.
See Arnold plug-ins