This is the Arnold 4 user guide. Click to go to the Arnold 5 user guide. For Arnold 4 This manual introduces MtoA, a plug-in for Autodesk Maya which allows you to use the Arnold renderer directly in Maya. Before beginning, you should read the sections on and. There is also a short taking new users through the steps necessary to get their first Arnold render using MtoA.
The free version has no batch rendering, so you can only render on one machine, and you must have Maya open and render with the “Render Sequence” functionality. Arnold is still a CPU renderer and does not use GPU (video cards), Autodesk has let us know they are working hard to make the renderer GPU compatible possibly in Arnold 6. Arnold is an unbiased, physically based, ray tracing 3D rendering application created by the company Solid Angle. Notable films that have used Arnold include.
Also, don't forget to look at the section. The Arnold for Maya User Guide consists of the following sections:.
Description Are you interested in learning how to use Arnold, the production quality render engine included with Maya 2017 and later? If so, this course is for you. In this course, Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya, you'll learn the fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. First, you'll start off with learning some of the basics like how ray depth works. Next, you'll dive into linear workflows and learn how the implementation of Arnold changes your process. Then, you'll learn all about lighting with Arnold as well as shading and texturing.
Finally, you'll wrap up things with learning how to setup Arnold to get your final rendered images out so they can be used. By the end of this course, you'll have a good foundation of knowledge, regarding Arnold, on which to build moving forward.
Software Required: Maya 2017, Arnold 1.4.1.1. Course Overview Hello, everyone, my name is Eddie Russell and welcome to my course, Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. I'm a curriculum manager and author for Pluralsight, and I've been creating courses for both Digital Tutors and Pluralsight for over seven years now. With Maya 2017 Arnold has replaced mental ray as the production rendering solution that ships with Maya.
Now, this change may be a bit of an adjustment for some people, but as we'll see in this course Arnold is powerful, fast, and easy to use. This course will serve as your foundation as you learn Arnold, so we'll start out with some basics like how Arnold samples, and how ray depth works. From here we'll dive into linear workflow and learn how the implementation of Arnold changes our process in this regard. Moving forward we'll move steadily through lighting with Arnold, as well as shading and texturing with Arnold so you get a good grasp over learning these new tools and techniques. Next we'll even learn how Arnold can be used to render out some basic effects, like depth of field, bokeh, and volumetric scattering.
To wrap things up we'll learn how to set up Arnold to get our final rendered images out so they can be used. By the time you finish this course you should have a good foundation of knowledge regarding Arnold on which to build moving forward. Before beginning it is important that you have some experience in lighting a scene and building shading networks here in Maya.
I hope you'll join me on this journey to learn Arnold with this Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya course here at Pluralsight. Arnold Basics Hi, my name is Eddie Russell and welcome to module one of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. This module will serve as an introduction to the Arnold plugin, as we explore some of its core functionality related to rendering out our 3D scenes. Just to give you an idea of some of the topics we'll be covering in this module, first we're going to learn about Arnold's implementation inside of Maya and where we can find Arnold.
Next, we'll dive into the topic of sampling and learn how Arnold uses sampling to generate our final rendered image. Next, we'll learn how we can begin to calculate and control the way Arnold samples our specific scenes. After that, we'll go ahead and move into the clamping and filtering of these samples. And finally, we're going to dive into the topic of ray depth which controls the limits on how far Arnold's rays can fire into our 3D scene. With that said, let's go ahead and move onto our next video and get started. Using a Linear Workflow with Arnold Hi, my name is Eddie Russell, and welcome to module two of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya.
This module will serve as a reference for all things linear workflow related, as you begin your journey with Arnold. If you're not familiar with this terminology, relax. We'll go slow. And these are some of the topics we'll discuss. First, we'll learn what it means to use a linear workflow. We'll learn the role of color spaces and gamma.
We'll learn how to use Maya's Color Management System and its place in linear workflow. Next we'll learn how to gamma correct our color swatches when using Maya in Arnold.
And finally, we'll wrap up by learning how gamma correction for images works. At this point, let's go ahead and move on to our next clip, where we learn what linear workflow is. Lighting Basics in Arnold Hello, my name is Eddie Russell, and welcome to module 3 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. In this module, we'll focus on the most common lights you'll be using when working with both Arnold and Maya. Now understanding the usage of these basic light types is an important foundational step, so we'll be covering things like light color and light intensity, understanding the look and the quality of the shadows that we get from lights. We'll talk about Arnold light filters, and how we can use those. And then we'll also be discussing both Maya and Arnold area lights, along with other basic types of lights.
So with that said, let's go ahead and move on to our next video, and we'll learn about controlling light color, and light intensity. Using Specialized Lights in Arnold Hi my name is Eddie Russell and welcome to module 4 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. In this module we'll continue learning about lighting with Maya and Arnold. This time focusing on some Arnold specific lights that can be used when the circumstance calls for it.
We'll be covering things like photometric lights mesh lights image based lighting as well as Arnolds physical sky system. So let's go ahead and move on to the next clip and we'll kick things off learning what photometric lights are and how we can use them with Arnold. Using Arnold Materials Hi, my name is Eddie Russell, and welcome to Module 5 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. This module will focus entirely on the materials you'll use when working in Arnold to shade and texture your scenes. While Arnold will render most of these standard Maya surfaces, you'll find that the rendered results of these Arnold specific shaders far exceed those of basic Maya materials.
So, we're going to go ahead and start this module off with a very large topic in the aiStandard shader. Now, because this is such a large and comprehensive shader, we're going to break this into three videos.
So, first we'll learn about diffuse and matte attributes of this shader. We'll then move on to specular and reflection attributes. And, finally, we'll cover the refraction attributes for the aiStandard shader. Now, from here we're going to move on and cover the aiHair shader, which is a shader designed for shading hair. We'll finally wrap up this module covering the aiSkin shader, which is a subsurface scattering material designed for realistic skin surfaces. Okay, so let's go ahead and move on and begin with the aiStandard shader. Texturing with Arnold Hi, my name is Eddie Russell, and welcome to module 6 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya.
This module will focus entirely on textures you'll be using and creating when working with Arnold in Maya. Approaching this from the standpoint that you've used Maya and other rendering solutions, we'll focus on what's different when rendering in Arnold. This means we'll be covering things like the nodes that you'll actually be using in conjunction with your texture maps, more specialized maps like bump maps, normal maps, displacement maps, and transparency maps.
You'll learn how to bake texture detail into geometry using a really cool feature called Bake Selected Geometry, and, finally, how we can bake lighting information into our textures from our Maya scenes. Let's go ahead at this point and get started with our next clip. Rendering Effects with Arnold Hi, my name is Eddie Russell and welcome to module 7 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. This module will focus some on common effects you'll encounter when working in Maya with Arnold and teach you how to properly render each one. We'll spend some time learning about things like depth of field, bokeh, ambient occlusion, and volume atmospheric effects.
So let's go ahead and move on to our next clip and we'll first start with depth of field. Arnold Render Output Hi, my name is Eddie Russell, and welcome to module 8 of Fundamentals of Arnold for Maya. This module will focus entirely on render output and things that can make your life easier when you're trying to get that final render out of Arnold. So we'll some time learning about things like Arnold AOVs. We'll learn what they are, and how we can configure them for our own scenes. We'll learn how we can speed up scene calculation with Arnold Stand-ins.
We'll also learn how we can use Arnold's Shadow Catcher feature. Lastly, we'll learn how we can setup and render multi-frame scenes with Arnold. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the next clip and get started.