Exploring the Features of Arnold 7.2.4.0: Improved Toon Outlines, Interactivity, Light Sampling and More

Arnold 7.2.4.0, the latest feature release, brings a host of improvements and enhancements that are bound to spark the interest of digital artists and professionals. This includes improved toon outlines, better interactivity, faster light sampling, superior USD and MaterialX support, along with numerous bug fixes and performance upgrades.

Enhancements

One of the most prominent enhancements in Arnold 7.2.4.0 is the improved detection of internal edges in the toon shader. You'll notice this change in regions between almost parallel surfaces of an object that are at different distances from the camera (ARNOLD-10560).

Another significant improvement is the mesh-light sampling and update. You can expect a faster time to first pixel, especially in scenes with many large meshes, and an overall reduction in render time for scenes with multiple flat mesh lights (ARNOLD-13639).

Interactive performance has also been boosted with several optimizations. These changes enhance the interruption rate during scene modifications, making interactive rendering more efficient and responsive (ARNOLD-9833, ARNOLD-14077, ARNOLD-14083).

Arnold 7.2.4.0 also improves Global Light Sampling behavior around flat lights, reducing noise for surfaces near or behind flat lights like disk or quad lights (ARNOLD-13192).

USD Enhancements

Arnold now supports custom MaterialX node definitions under a specified environment. Users can render with Arnold, through USD or Hydra, without any restriction on the node definitions prefix and naming convention (usd#1603).

Also, primitives ArnoldProceduralCustom are now supported in Hydra, allowing the rendering of 3rd party Arnold procedural nodes (usd#739).

API Additions

One of the API additions includes the AiMaterialxGetNodeEntryFromDefinition. This feature, given a MaterialX node definition, returns the corresponding Arnold node entry. This function can return the relevant Arnold node type if the node has a native Arnold implementation, or the OSL node type if the node has an OSL implementation only (ARNOLD-13957).

Incompatible Changes

There are a couple of incompatible changes in Arnold 7.2.4.0. For instance, AiUniverseGetOptions() no longer returns "sanitized" threads count. They have also modified the use of the dependency graph for interactive renders. Now, the dependency graph is always enabled, regardless of the value of options.enable_dependency_graph (ARNOLD-10732).

Bug Fixes

Arnold 7.2.4.0 also comes with numerous bug fixes, such as resolving the hang when toggling denoiser ('N' key) in kick (ARNOLD-12005) and fixing the crash in IPR when enabling the OptiX denoiser, light mixer, or Arnold denoiser imagers (ARNOLD-13983).

System Requirements

Arnold 7.2.4.0 supports Windows 10 or later, Linux with glibc 2.17 and libstdc++ 4.8.5 (gcc 4.8.5), and macOS 10.13 or later. GPU rendering works on Windows and Linux only. For GPU rendering, the cache also needs to be re-populated after installing a new Arnold version, updating to a new NVIDIA driver, or changing the hardware configuration of GPUs on the system.

In conclusion, Arnold 7.2.4.0 is a comprehensive upgrade with significant improvements and enhancements that can improve the efficiency and productivity of digital artists. For more information about the newest and most advanced design software technology, contact our sales team at NOVEDGE.