Arnold for 3DS Max released
Jul 26, 2016 by CGPress Staff
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Image by Solid Angle, model by Daniel M. Lara
The Arnold renderer goes back to its roots: Solid Angle has announced the release of MAXtoA, a new plugin that provides a bridge to Arnold renderer using the standard 3DS Max interface. Arnold was originally developed for 3DS Max by Marcos Fajardo in the late 1990s (check out some archaeological references on Martínez Lara’s website and Marcos Fajardo’s pages). The integration plugin is a preview release compatible with Max 2017 and includes the following features:
- Integration with 3DS Max shapes, cameras, lights and shaders.
- Image Based Lighting support, including a state of the art physical sky.
- 3DS Max ActiveShade interactive rendering allows parameter changes to be rapidly previewed without interrupting your work.
- Support for AOVs & Deep EXR files.
- Defer the creation of geometry at render time with the Procedural placeholder nodes.
- Texturable Mesh lights.
- 3rd Party Arnold shader support. * MAXtoA Cloud Rendering for stills and animations. Users can join the optional Autodesk ‘Render Pilot’ program, which now supports MAXtoA.
At present MAXtoA is only available free for owners of the Arnold core renderer. More information and full release notes on Solid Angle’s website.
Welcome!
Awesome! 🙂
It’ll probably come free for users in Max 2018,just like Maya 2017 has it for free. Except for render nodes.
It only took about 16 years for Arnold to reach 3ds max 🙂 I remember in the late 1990’s (or a few years after that) when a plugin for max was being developed and I was really interested in trying it. But then it just disappeared which I think was after some merger or the creator sold it or something like that (can’t really remember the whole story). Today though I don’t see myself switching from VRay as long as I continue using max unless AD makes it the default renderer like they just did with Maya 2017 (even though it seems to be a very limited version).
It is not free, i have no idea where this urban legend comes from.
Arnold costs $800 (per node), extra node $ 750,- (or so).
You get in Maya 2017 the “Demo” Version of Arnold, with Watermark and limitations.
In Maya 7 is MentalRay off. I mean completely out – erased. You can buy it as extra renderer (all this specs are on the Autodesk Homepage under Maya 2017 News)
I assume the same rule will be for Max too. You Need to buy Arnold Core this or that way.
It would be interesting to know if i buy Arnold Core for Maya, if i can attact MaxtoA to it 🙂
>>>>>You get in Maya 2017 the “Demo” Version of Arnold, with Watermark and limitations.
AFAIK it’s not a demo: Interactive rendering ( = blocking the Maya GUI ) is still unlimited and watermark free. Everything batch rendering and from commandline + several advanced options like .ass file loading/
i quote Maurice Patel/Autodesk here:
——————————————————————–
Interactive use means ( license comes free we Maya 2017 ):
• Maya Renderview
• IPR
• Arnold Renderview
• The new Maya 2017 “render sequence” menu item which will render multiple frames but freezes the interface while it does
What a license gives you:
• Batch render from Maya
• Rendering of an .ass file generated by Maya (or anything)
• Any rendering (interactive or not) from any other DCC (Max, C4D, Katana, Houdini, Softimage
——————————————————————–
Not to forget that at the same time, Maya 2017 lost Mental Ray which came with some free satellite rendernodes. Nvidia posted that the’ll release A BETA VERSION of Mental Ray for Maya 2017 soon for free usage. But it still does’nt seem to be defined how the costs of licensing MR for Maya will be in the future …
Sorry – cut a part in my post…Missing part should read
“…. like .ass file loading etc.. costs money.”
BTW:
I played with the MaxToA Beta some time and it’s indeed a great renderer. Some concept might feel uncommon for Max users, but i quickly got the hang of it. And you simply can copy&paste the Maya Arnold shaders into the plugin folder, and Arnold will pick them up. This is true for other 3rd Party shaders too of course …
Maya customers will be able to use Arnold out-of-the-box. However, it can only be used for foreground processing on your workstation.
It is free as long as you don’t submit to renderfarm.
Too late and its not released as FREE or a real replacement for mental ray. What a shame…
I’m sticking with Vray.
This seems like another bone head move by adsk. They want to put Arnold in all of it’s products but with a “Pay” for it attitude. So really no incentive.
IF they are removing the licensing to use it and IF they are removing network rendering what they are doing is something similar to STEAL.
I paid for a product wich gives me several network rendering licenses and a full fledge render engine, they may change it, but they should not take back any rights we had when we acquired the product…
… this is all a big IF… will see what happends…
Houdini Indie: for 199$/year: you can render on mantra AND simulate on 4 computers. for 597$/year (still way lower than an single Arnold license) you can simulate and render on 6 computers). On top of that if you already have V-Ray render licenses you will soon be able to use them with the upcoming V-Ray for Houdini.
I really wonder if the people who decided to ask the users to pay the high price for Arnold really knows about the other options out there?
How do compare the Arnold for Max to Arnold for Maya in term of features ?, are they apple to apple ?
Where can I download the demo version to get my hand on it ?
And last and don’t least if Arnold is gone save me time from tweaking parameters all the time to get a good render I have no problem to spend extra money. For me all the v-ray steps kill my creativity and let’s don’t talk when you have mounted a render farm with 100 nodes and they fly start to appear !
I love V-Ray but I’m very excited to give Arnold a try !
Are you going to pay 1250€per node for your farm?
And don’t forget that you acquire 1250€ per node for a software that is rental only…quite an investment…
Arnold Floating
A permanent Arnold license key which must be hosted using an RLM license server and can be distributed to multiple clients.
£790 / €1095 / $1220
Sorry, you are right, I was mistaken by 100€ 🙂
Oh dear.
I’d thought it would be rolled into it too.
I remember those good old times like it was yesterday. Arnold suddenly popped up and showed us the wonders of skylight, infinite planes and nice brute-force grainy GI 😀 I was so envious of all of the beta-testers who were doing some insane stuff with it.
There were some pretty interesting rumors going around in those times like :
– It was insanely fast.. much much faster than Brazil, Vray or Mental-ray.. and it didn’t had to resort to biased methods – pictures were rendered in a matter of few minutes and not hours.. but it still had trouble with interior scenes but that’s understandable
– It also had adaptive sampling
– It could do unprecedented object lights like Maxwell, Octane and etc do – does that mean Arnold was the really first ussable path-tracer?? None of the standard monte-carlo gi raytracers could pull it off back then or even today.. believe me I tried (putting a white self-illuminated material with output set to crazy numbers to get the object to light stuff around it.. but the luminance decay was always too strong
– It was “unbiased” – the first unbiased renderer that I could get my hands on was Maxwell and I finally understood the word “unbiased”
– You had to sacrifice your first-born and pledge alliance to the great Spanish nation to become a beta-tester of it
I will pay for arnold to own it. It not rental autodesk buy.
I don’t mean that Arnold is rental only, I mean that you pay 1250€ per node to use it with a software that is rental only (like Max or Maya) so you are making a BIG investment that can go through the WC in seconds…
The upside is that you pay for Arnold Arnold and the plugins are free, meaning that if AD goes banana, you will still own the render nodes for Houdini or C4D.
What worry me the most, is now autodesk may choose to not develop correctly the integration on those 2. And now modo will probably never see it.
.. And so further locking studios that bite into the subscription model. Arnold seemed a real positive addition to Max/Maya.. But Adesk seem to have done a good job of turning a positive into a negative. At these prices surely you would need to have a *really* good reason to choose Arnold.
Why AD realise AR as a half solution ?
I see only one reason – bad sells of 3d max 2017.
Why ?
Just simple – 3d max 2017 bring NOTHING usefull and it’s lost a Mental Ray.
AD fu__ing cancer of CG industry.
??? MentalRay is in 3dsMax 2017.
“3d max 2017 bring NOTHING usefull” Really?
2017 is beautiful
I love 3ds max, but this 2017 I don’t like for this rendering confusion.
Arnold is a plugin with a watermark.
Mental ray is a plugin with many bugs, 2016 work better.
Iray is a plugin with many bugs, 2016 work better.
Art yes is nice but is a copy for a little mental ray.
I decided to terminate my Subscription, and I asked the downgrade to 3ds max 2016.
when everything will be clearer maybe I’ll do another subscription. But today I want my stand alone version that works, not a version with watermak or bugs for Mr and iray.
Best regards.
Marcello – Mak21
Today I changed my idea and I renewed the subscritpion for 3ds max.
I want to see if 3ds max 2018 will be a new possibility with Arnold.
good luck to everybody
Best Regards.
Marcello – Mak21