Autodesk has released Arnold 6, marking the official debut of production-level GPU rendering. Arnold 6 empowers users to seamlessly switch between CPU and GPU rendering while preserving their existing configurations. The innovative GPU mode leverages NVIDIA’s OptiX framework, engineered to harness the capabilities of NVIDIA RTX technology. Key features include:
- A unified Renderer allowing effortless transitions between CPU and GPU rendering modes.
- Arnold GPU now incorporates support for OSL, OpenVDB volumes, on-demand texture loading, the majority of LPEs, lights, shaders, and all camera types. GPU noise performance has been equalized with CPU noise through adaptive sampling, which features improvements for speedier, more predictable outcomes across all rendering methods.
- Optimized for NVIDIA RTX hardware.
- New USD Components, introducing a Hydra render delegate, Arnold USD procedural, and USD schemas for Arnold nodes and properties, are now accessible on GitHub.
- Performance enhancements to boost 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.
