Monthly Archives: November 2017

Buying Arnold

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get_arnold

 

Annual subscriptions

You get annual subscriptions from Autodesk resellers

You can get Arnold 5-packs at 50% of the usual price, or you can get single Arnold licenses at full price:

Monthly subscriptions

  • You can subscribe for one, two, or three months.
  • Monthly Subscriptions are £60 / €70 / $65 Per Month
  • Monthly subscriptions are available online from solidangle.com

Permanent licenses

Until 30 April 2018, you can still get permanent Arnold licenses. Contact your local Autodesk reseller.

Arnold light_groups and shadow_groups

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Light linking in Maya, include/exclude objects for lights in CINEMA 4D, light masks in Houdini, inclusive/exclusive lights in Softimage, they all are translated to light_groups and shadow_groups in Arnold.

Here’s a sphere on a plane, with two area lights (cyan and green).

default

If we add a light_group to the sphere polymesh:

 use_light_group on
 light_group "CyanAreaLight"

then we get this (see below). The sphere is lit only by the cyan area light: the light_group is the lights that affect the object.

light_group_on_cyan
Note that the sphere still casts shadows from the green light, even the sphere isn’t lit by the green light. That’s because there’s no shadow_group, so all lights cast shadows from the object.

If we add a shadow group, so that the light_group and shadow_group are both “CyanAreaLight”, then the sphere is lit by the cyan light only, and casts shadows from the cyan light only.

use_light_group on
 light_group "CyanAreaLight"
use_shadow_group on
 shadow_group "CyanAreaLight"

light_shadow_groups_on_cyan

And finally, here’s the sphere when light groups are on, but there’s no lights in the light group:

use_light_group on
use_shadow_group on
 shadow_group "CyanAreaLight"

light_group_empty

[OSX] Getting Arnold logs for batch renders

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You can get individual log files for each frame:

  1. In the Arnold Render Settings, go to the Diagnostics tab.
  2. In the Verbosity Level list, click Warnings + Info.
  3. Click the File check box.
  4. Click the folder icon and choose a folder for the Arnold log files.

mtoa_render_settings_log

Or you can check the MayaRender log, which will be one log file, with the log messages for every frame.

On OSX, open the Console and look for ~/Library/Logs/Maya/mayaRender.log
mayaRenderlog

Removing MtoA from Maya scenes

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If you don’t use Arnold, but someone has saved your scene files with MtoA loaded, then you’ll get some errors and warnings when you open that scene without MtoA.

// Error: line 0: The camera 'perspShape' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "perspShape" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The camera 'topShape' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "topShape" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The camera 'frontShape' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "frontShape" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The camera 'sideShape' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "sideShape" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The mesh 'pPlaneShape1' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "pPlaneShape1" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The mesh 'pSphereShape1' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "pSphereShape1" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Error: line 0: The mesh 'pCubeShape1' has no 'ai_translator' attribute. // 
// Error: line 0: Node "pCubeShape1" has no attribute "ai_translator". // 
// Warning: line 0: Unrecognized node type for node 'defaultArnoldRenderOptions'; preserving node information during this session. // 
// Warning: line 0: Unrecognized node type for node 'defaultArnoldFilter'; preserving node information during this session. // 
// Warning: line 0: Unrecognized node type for node 'defaultArnoldDriver'; preserving node information during this session. // 
// Warning: line 0: Unrecognized node type for node 'defaultArnoldDisplayDriver'; preserving node information during this session. //

Here’s how to remove all the MtoA (aka Arnold) attributes and nodes.

First, don’t load MtoA. Uninstall MtoA.

Now, just loading and saving your scene will get rid of the ai_translator attributes. All that’s left to do is get rid of the unknown nodes. There’s just four (assuming nobody created any Arnold shaders or lights or standins in the scene): the four defaultArnold nodes:

ls -typ "unknown";
// Result: defaultArnoldDisplayDriver defaultArnoldDriver defaultArnoldFilter defaultArnoldRenderOptions //

Here’s a MEL script to remove all unknown MtoA nodes from a scene:

string $mtoaNodes[] = `ls -typ "unknown"`;

for ($node in $mtoaNodes){
	if (`objExists $node` && `unknownNode -q -p $node` == "mtoa"){
		print("Deleting mtoa node " + $node + "\n");
		delete $node;
	}
}

Maya standins with Softimage ass files

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sitoa_ass_in_maya
If you want to export ASS files from Softimage and use them in Maya, all you have to do is add the SItoA shaders (eg SItoA\Application\Plugins\bin\nt-x86-64) to the Plugin Search Path
mtoa_plugin_search_path

ASS files from Softimage use SItoA-specific shaders, so you need to tell Arnold where to find those SItoA shaders. For example, since SItoA 4.0, there’s a new Closure node that connects shaders like Standard Surface to color parameters.  MtoA doesn’t  have a Closure node, because MtoA took a different approach to dealing with the fact that Standard Surface returns a closure data structure, not a color.

kicking a cputime heat map

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cputime-heatmap.png

New in Arnold 5.0.2! You can press T to get a cputime heat map. From the Arnold release notes:

  • Added cputime heatmap view to kick: When using kick you can now toggle between viewing kicks default output and a cputime heatmap with the T key. The mapping of the heat map can be scaled with the [ and ] keys.

To get the cputime heat map, you have to run kick interactive (eg with the -ipr flag):

kick -ipr example.ass

How to check what mip levels are used

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You can use the Arnold log to check what mip levels are used. In the Image file statistics, there’ll be a MIP-COUNT for every texture

00:00:02 124MB | Image file statistics:
00:00:02 124MB |       opens tiles MB read --redundant-- I/O time res             File
00:00:02 124MB |     1   1   538   12.6                  2.2s     8192x8192x3.f16 debug.tx MIP-COUNT[0,13,314,147,40,15,4,1,1,1,1,0,0,1]
00:00:02 124MB |

For example, with my debug texture, I see

MIP-COUNT[0,13,314,147,40,15,4,1,1,1,1,0,0,1]

in the Arnold log for this render:

 

[clm] product key not found (44)

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The Problem

To use Autodesk licenses for Arnold when you batch render with Maya, Arnold must be registered in the Product Information file (aka the PIT file).

Normally the MtoA installer does this for you. But if you’re running Maya and MtoA from a network install, then Arnold won’t be registered in the PIT file, and you’ll see this in the Arnold log:

00:00:00 381MB WARNING | rendering with watermarks because of failed authorization:
00:00:00 381MB | [rlm] error initializing license system:
00:00:00 381MB | [rlm] * Can't read license data (-102)
00:00:00 381MB | [clm] product key not found (44)

and you’d see something like this in the Adlm.log:

337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 Reason=Fatal error
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 ComputerName=WORKSTATION
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 OS=6.1.7601.Service Pack 1
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=594
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 Reason=Fatal error
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 ComputerName=WORKSTATION
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 OS=6.1.7601.Service Pack 1
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=595
337296 2017/11/03 12:29:54 AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]

Solution

MtoA includes pit/pitreg for registering Arnold in the PIT file, so you just need to run pitreg on the local machine, like this:

C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2017\pit\pitreg.exe
Succesfully added Arnold information to PIT file

Don’t do this:

cd C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2017\pit\
pitreg.exe

because you’ll get this error:

Failed to add Arnold information to PIT file (Error 26)

 

Setting up Arnold render nodes

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I’ve seen several variations of this question recently. Usually there’s some confusion about “Arnold standalone” and what’s actually required on a render node.

If you rendering scene files from Maya, or 3ds Max, or some other 3d application, then you do not need Arnold standalone.

You need the 3d application (Maya, 3ds Max) and the Arnold plugin for that application (MtoA, MAXtoA). Download the Arnold plugin from https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/arnold/download

For example, let’s suppose you want to render Maya scene files.

  • You need to install Maya and MtoA on each render node.
  • You don’t need Maya licenses for batch rendering, and you don’t need Maya licenses to install Maya on render nodes.
  • You need Arnold licenses, which are a separate purchase. MtoA is free and unlicensed. Arnold, however, does require a license to render without the watermark. You need one Arnold license for each render node (for you CINEMA 4D users, a TeamRender client is an Arnold render node and requires its own license).
  • You need an Autodesk network license server running somewhere (not on a render node).
  • You need to connect Arnold to the Autodesk network license manager.

It’s the same thing for 3ds Max and MAXtoA.