Autodesk has announced the release of Arnold 6, bringing GPU production rendering out of beta. Arnold 6 allows the user to switch between CPU and GPU rendering while maintaining the same settings. The new GPU mode is based on NVIDIA’s OptiX framework and optimized to take advantage of NVIDIA RTX technology. Headline features include:
- A unified Renderer that allows you to change easily between CPU and GPU rendering.
- Arnold GPU now supports OSL, OpenVDB volumes, on-demand texture loading, most LPEs, lights, shaders, and all cameras. GPU noise is now also on par with CPU noise when using adaptive sampling, which has been improved for faster, more predictable results regardless of the renderer used.
- Optimised for NVIDIA RTX hardware.
- New USD Components including the new Hydra render delegate, Arnold USD procedural, and USD schemas for Arnold nodes and properties are now available on GitHub.
- Performance improvements to increase efficiency and performance, including faster creased subdivisons, an improved Physical Sky shader, and dielectric microfacet multiple scattering.
Arnold GPU is available in all supported plug-ins for Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3DS Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D, and Katana. For more information, visit the Arnold Renderer website.
FYI; the new Arnold 6 AOV and Light Group editing tools in Max are very cool, as this video from Eloi shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4MNhEXBE4Y
The Wizard is really nice. Finally even someone incompetent like me can setup AOV`s.
Haven’t used Maya and Arnold for a while.. has the update/upload to gpu time improved? Last I checked, it was oddly slow.
GPU rendering is out out of beta now. I think the speed is directly related to your card. I have a M1200 Quadro in mine for example, and I think it’s slower than my CPU. I have seen it on a RTX 5000 and it was screaming. It does take a bit of time to transfer to the GPU memory, but after that, it’s fast.