Autodesk ships Arnold 7.2.4

Autodesk has released Arnold 7.2.4, the latest version of the production renderer.

The update improves internal edge detection in the toon shader and rendering performance in scenes with multiple mesh lights, and extends OpenColorIO and MaterialX support.

Improvements to non-photorealistic rendering and sampling of mesh lights
Compared to other recent versions of Arnold, Arnold 7.2.4 is a smaller update, and is described in the documentation as a minor feature release.

The toon shader gets better detection of internal edges, resulting in previously missed outlines being rendered correctly, as shown in the image above.

Performance improvements include better sampling of mesh lights, with render times on scenes with multiple mesh lights reduced by “up to 5%”.

Interactive rendering has also been improved, although the release notes don’t put a figure on the performance boost.

Pipeline changes include support for OCIO color space aliases in the OCIO color manager, and the removal of restrictions on node naming conventions in custom MaterialX node definitions.

Support in the integration plugins
All of Arnold’s integration plugins have been updated to support the new features:

3ds Max: MAXtoA 5.6.5
Cinema 4D: C4DtoA 4.6.6
Houdini: HtoA 6.2.4.0
Katana: KtoA 4.2.4.0
Maya: MtoA 5.3.4

System requirements and availability
Arnold 7.2.4 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL/CentOS 7+ Linux and macOS 10.13+. Integrations are available for 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Katana and Maya.

GPU rendering is supported on Windows and Linux only, and requires a compatible Nvidia GPU.

The software is rental-only, with single-user subscriptions costing $50/month or $400/year.

Read a full list of new features in Arnold 7.2.4 in the online documentation