Monday, September 21st, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Solid Angle releases Arnold 4.2.9


The most recent Arnold showreel. Solid Angle has just released version 4.2.9 of the renderer, adding support for refractive dispersion and improving support for volumetrics. See newer projects Arnold has been used on.

Solid Angle has released Arnold Core 4.2.9, the latest update to its industry-standard production renderer, adding support for refractive dispersion, improving support for volumetrics, and boosting render speed.

Support for refractive dispersion, plus faster, more controllable rendering of volumetrics
New features in the core engine include support for chromatic dispersion through refraction, including a parameter for a material’s Abbe number.

There is also now the option to render direct and indirect scattering in volumetrics as separate AOVs, while performance while rendering volumetrics in OpenVDB format has been improved 4-6x, according to Solid Angle.

Performance has also been improved when rendering curves, subdivision surfaces, deep EXRs or shaders with partial opacity. You can find figures for each via the link at the foot of the story.

Updates to the plugins for Maya, Cinema 4D, Softimage and Houdini
The plugins that link Arnold to common DCC tools have also been updated. The Softimage and Houdini plugins essentially just get support for the 4.2.9 core, but the Cinema 4D and Maya plugins get new features.

Arnold for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA) gets new camera controls and object selection inside the IPR window; while Arnold for Maya (MtoA) gets initial support for Bifrost, Maya’s new fluid simulation framework.

Pricing and availability
Arnold 4.2.9 is out now for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. A node-locked licence costs $790, while a floating licence costs $1,220, both including one year’s maintenance. All of the integration plugins are free downloads.

Read a full list of new features in Arnold 4.2.9 on Solid Angle’s website