Arnold 4.1.x has plenty of new features and improvements, and you can read about those in the release notes.
Here’s a few other little things to know about Arnold 4.1.x:
Cross posted here
NOTE: This is a Maya issue that can happen with any renderer, including mental ray.
Like many other Maya users, I started getting this error when I tried to batch render:
// Error: line 1: Socket error creating command port SOLIDANGLE-PC:7835 (10048).
I checked the port 7835 with netstat, and that gave me a PID (process ID) of 109736
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\bin>netstat -ano | find "7835" TCP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:7835 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 109736
But unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any process with that PID, so I couldn’t kill it to free up the port. tasklist | find “109736” came up empty; there was no such PID in the Task Manager or Process Explorer; and TCP View said that PID was non-existent.
I was resigned to having to reboot my machine until I saw this. Then I used Process Explorer to find the process that was referencing the “non-existent” PID, and when I killed that process, I could batch render again from Maya.
When you’re rendering with Arnold, convert your texture maps to .tx files with maketx. Always 🙂
.tx textures are better because they are:
Arnold loads one tile at a time, as needed, rather than loading the entire texture map in memory. So textures are loaded faster, because Arnold loads only what it needs to render the image.
Arnold uses a texture cache system to efficiently manage texture memory usage: only the most recently used tiles are kept in memory. You can have hundreds, or even thousands, of 4k and 8k images, and Arnold will never use more runtime memory than the user-specified max cache size.
Mip-mapped textures are anti-aliased, even at low AA sample settings.
If you don’t convert your texture maps with maketx, the default Arnold behavior is to auto-tile and auto-map your textures for you, but this is very inefficient because it is done once for every rendered frame, rather than one-time-only with maketx.
Another look at diffuse rays, this time focusing on ray depth and samples.
https://vimeo.com/74411692
Keywords: diffuse rays, GI bounces, ray depth, samples, shadow rays, indirect illumination
A quick, basic overview of camera, shadow, and diffuse rays.
* diffuse rays aka GI bounces.
Starting with version 2.8, SItoA no longer supports the Softimage motion blur property. Instead, you use the Arnold Parameters property to control transformation and deformation motion blur.
However, you cannot add an Arnold Parameters property to a camera (at least not using the SItoA custom menus, which will tell you that a camera is “is not a valid Object to add Arnold Parameters to”). Here’s a couple of ways to work around that:
cam = Application.Selection(0) cam.AddCustomProperty( "Arnold_Parameters" )
If you want the RLM license server to automatically start everytime you restart or turn on your Mac, you need to create a launch daemon. Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds 🙂
First, you need create a launchd property list (.plist) for RLM. It will look something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.solidangle.rlm</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/PATH/TO/RLM/rlm</string>
<string>-c</string> <string>/PATH/TO/RLM/arnold.lic</string>
<string>-dlog</string> <string>/PATH/TO/RLM/solidangle.dlog</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
This plist file basically tells the system to start rlm with the -c and -dlog flags, like this:
/Users/stblair/solidangle/RLM/rlm -c /Users/stblair/solidangle/RLM/rlm/arnold.lic -dlog /Users/stblair/solidangle/RLM/rlm/solidangle.dlog
The -c flag isn’t necessary if the license file is in the same folder as the RLM binary executable.
Here’s an example com.solidangle.rlm.plist. Download it, and use TextEdit to change the paths to match the RLM location on your computer, and then save the RLM plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons/. Note that this download plist assumes that the license file is in the same folder, and therefore omits the -c flag.
For example:
sudo cp com.solidangle.rlm.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons
Note: The plist file needs to be owned by root, otherwise you won’t be able to load the plist. If necessary, you can change the owner like this:
sudo chown root /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.solidangle.rlm.plist
Finally, you need to load the plist:
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.solidangle.rlm.plist
The license server will now automatically start, even after a restart or power down of the machine.
You can check the license server by opening a Web browser and going to localhost:5054.
I don’t think this set up works if you plug a Standard into the beauty of the aiWriteColor (eg Standard > aiWriteColor > Standard). With that set of connections, I could never get the opacity right in both the Beauty and the Mask AOVs.
With Arnold there are two things in an ASS file that specify the location of a texture file:
For example, if the texture filename was a relative path, you might have something like this in an ASS file:
options
{
...
texture_searchpath "//server/projects/test"
...
}
MayaFile
{
...
filename "sourceimages/noicon.png"
...
}
Arnold 4.0.16 added photometric lights, which can use IES light profiles.
Arnold does not support IES lighting profiles [generally, IES profiles are not used a lot in film/VFX work]. Most of the time, you can do what an IES light does by using an appropriate gobo (aka a slide projector). For example, SHED used gobo lighting in place of IES on their recent IGA Aide Gourmet spot.
SHED created their own gobo filters to create a similar look to IES lights
Arnold Support Corner 