Solid Angle has released Arnold 5

Artikel Arnold, Artikel Arnold for 3ds Max, Artikel Arnold For Cinema 4D, Artikel KATANA, Artikel MAXtoA, Artikel MtoA,
[ #Arnold #SolidAngle #Rendering ]
Solid Angle releases major Arnold 5.0 update with improved performance and new shaders, bundled with 3ds Max 2018.

Highlight Enhancements in Arnold 5.0:

• Shaders:
- Standard Surface: a new standard_surface shader was added, with intuitive and energy conserving parameters, a secondary specular coat with separate normal, metallic Fresnel, thin surface support and more. The standard shader is still available but considered deprecated.
- Standard Hair: a new physically based standard_hair shader was added, with much more accurate specular and transmissive scattering, better diffuse scattering for dirty hair, melanin randomization, and simple and intuitive parameters. The older hair shader is still available but considered deprecated.
- Standard Volume: a new standard_volume shader was added, usable for rendering a wide variety of volumes. The shader provides independent control of density, scattering color and transparency, in a way that is energy conserving by default. Fire can be rendered using blackbody emission driven by temperature. Displacement can be used to add more detail to volumes. This supersedes the density volume shader, which has been removed.
- Utility shader: the utility shader has been enhanced with a new metal shading mode, and a roughness control has been added that affects plastic and metal modes.
• OSL, Closures and AOVs:
- Open Shading Language: shaders can now be written in Open Shading Language, an advanced shading language for production GI renderers. OSL shaders placed in the shader search path are automatically registered as Arnold shader nodes, with their parameters converted to Arnold parameters. Once loaded, they can be inspected, instantiated and linked in exactly the same way as C++ shaders. OSL shaders can be used to implement texture patterns and materials using closures
- Closures: a new closure parameter type has been added, which shaders can output instead of final colors. There are BSDF, BSSRDF, emission, matte, transparency and volume closures. See the API documentation and examples for more details on how to use these. Linking a color to a closure parameter will automatically create an emission closure with that color. A closure parameter however can't be linked or converted to a color, as the integrator only computes lighting after shader evaluation.
- Light group AOVs: surface shaders now natively support light group AOVs, previously this feature was only available for volume shading.
- Light path expressions: light path expressions are used to write lighting components into separate AOVs. No longer should individual shaders define AOVs for direct/indirect light and various layers, rather a regular expression syntax is used to define the subset of all scattering and emission events in the scene that should be written to each AOV. Built-in AOVs are available for the common cases.

• Color Management
- Linear color spaces: any linear color space can now be specified through the color manager for any output driver that supports halfs or floats.
- Color Managers: custom color_manager nodes can now be implemented to handle input and output color transforms. A color manager is a package similar to SynColor or OpenColorIO. If no color manager is specified in options.color_manager, Arnold will use the built-in one which supports linear (no transform), sRGB and Rec709 (non linear)

• Sampling
- Dithered sampling: most samplers (e.g. soft shadows, indirect illumination, depth of field) will now take advantage of dithered sampling, which improves the visual distribution of noise specially at low sample rates.
- Quad lights: sampling has been improved, reducing noise for surface lighting. For comparisons with the previous sampler, options.enable_new_quad_light_sampler can be disabled.
- Cylinder lights: sampling has been improved, significantly reducing noise for cylinder lights in volumes or where cylinder lights are located near other surfaces.
- Disk lights: a novel sampling algorithm has been implemented for disk lights which can greatly improve their rendering quality when shading points near the disk's surface, particularly in volumes

You can read the full release features HERE.

>> See Also: Arnold for Maya Guide


Chad Ashley from Greyscalegorilla has shares his favorite features in brand new Arnold 5 update.

  More Arnold Plugin [post_ad]
[ #Arnold #SolidAngle #Rendering ]
Solid Angle releases major Arnold 5.0 update with improved performance and new shaders, bundled with 3ds Max 2018.

Highlight Enhancements in Arnold 5.0:

• Shaders:
- Standard Surface: a new standard_surface shader was added, with intuitive and energy conserving parameters, a secondary specular coat with separate normal, metallic Fresnel, thin surface support and more. The standard shader is still available but considered deprecated.
- Standard Hair: a new physically based standard_hair shader was added, with much more accurate specular and transmissive scattering, better diffuse scattering for dirty hair, melanin randomization, and simple and intuitive parameters. The older hair shader is still available but considered deprecated.
- Standard Volume: a new standard_volume shader was added, usable for rendering a wide variety of volumes. The shader provides independent control of density, scattering color and transparency, in a way that is energy conserving by default. Fire can be rendered using blackbody emission driven by temperature. Displacement can be used to add more detail to volumes. This supersedes the density volume shader, which has been removed.
- Utility shader: the utility shader has been enhanced with a new metal shading mode, and a roughness control has been added that affects plastic and metal modes.
• OSL, Closures and AOVs:
- Open Shading Language: shaders can now be written in Open Shading Language, an advanced shading language for production GI renderers. OSL shaders placed in the shader search path are automatically registered as Arnold shader nodes, with their parameters converted to Arnold parameters. Once loaded, they can be inspected, instantiated and linked in exactly the same way as C++ shaders. OSL shaders can be used to implement texture patterns and materials using closures
- Closures: a new closure parameter type has been added, which shaders can output instead of final colors. There are BSDF, BSSRDF, emission, matte, transparency and volume closures. See the API documentation and examples for more details on how to use these. Linking a color to a closure parameter will automatically create an emission closure with that color. A closure parameter however can't be linked or converted to a color, as the integrator only computes lighting after shader evaluation.
- Light group AOVs: surface shaders now natively support light group AOVs, previously this feature was only available for volume shading.
- Light path expressions: light path expressions are used to write lighting components into separate AOVs. No longer should individual shaders define AOVs for direct/indirect light and various layers, rather a regular expression syntax is used to define the subset of all scattering and emission events in the scene that should be written to each AOV. Built-in AOVs are available for the common cases.

• Color Management
- Linear color spaces: any linear color space can now be specified through the color manager for any output driver that supports halfs or floats.
- Color Managers: custom color_manager nodes can now be implemented to handle input and output color transforms. A color manager is a package similar to SynColor or OpenColorIO. If no color manager is specified in options.color_manager, Arnold will use the built-in one which supports linear (no transform), sRGB and Rec709 (non linear)

• Sampling
- Dithered sampling: most samplers (e.g. soft shadows, indirect illumination, depth of field) will now take advantage of dithered sampling, which improves the visual distribution of noise specially at low sample rates.
- Quad lights: sampling has been improved, reducing noise for surface lighting. For comparisons with the previous sampler, options.enable_new_quad_light_sampler can be disabled.
- Cylinder lights: sampling has been improved, significantly reducing noise for cylinder lights in volumes or where cylinder lights are located near other surfaces.
- Disk lights: a novel sampling algorithm has been implemented for disk lights which can greatly improve their rendering quality when shading points near the disk's surface, particularly in volumes

You can read the full release features HERE.

>> See Also: Arnold for Maya Guide


Chad Ashley from Greyscalegorilla has shares his favorite features in brand new Arnold 5 update.

  More Arnold Plugin [post_ad]

HDRI Link Plugin - New Greyscalegorilla Plugin for Octane and Arnold in C4D

Artikel Arnold For Cinema 4D, Artikel Cinema 4D, Artikel HDRi, Artikel Octane for Cinema 4D,
[ #HDRI #Plugin #C4D ]

The Greyscalegorilla Story

Greyscalegorilla INC from Chicago IL was started to give Motion designers and 3D artists the tools, training, and tutorials to help them make their best work. They have been serving the 3D community for over 8 years and have helped over 100,000 students and artists make their best work. (greyscalegorilla.com)

Their Top Class Cinema 4D Plugins are used by over 40,000 customers including major studios such as Sony, Disney, Fox, NBC, ESPN, Microsoft, NFL, Samsung, Direct TV, and much more.

Company Facts

• They have shared over 350 free tutorials online in the last 8 years.
• Their yearly “Half Rez” event in Chicago draws over 300 people from all over the world to celebrate Motion Design as a career.
• Greyscalegorilla Plugins have been used to help make Blockbuster movie titles like Pacific Rim, Dynamic Sports graphics for The NFL, and have helped animate, texture and light thousands of commercials aired all over the world.
• Their “Intro To Cinema 4D” Training has helped over 50,000 people learn Cinema 4D. (https://greyscalegorilla.com/intro-to-cinema-4d/)
• All Plugins are created, designed and coded in USA.

Style Guide

• Greyscalegorilla is all one word spelled with a capital G “Greyscalegorilla”

HDRI Link™ is a new Cinema 4D Plugin from Greyscalegorilla INC. HDRI Link™ speeds up your lighting and reflection workflow when using third party renderers like Arnold, Octane, Cycles 4D, and Vray. Easily expand your HDRI Library with unique Greyscalegorilla HDRI Packs.


HDRI Link™ is a new Cinema 4D Plugin from Greyscalegorilla INC. HDRI Link™ speeds up your lighting and reflection workflow when using third party renderers like Arnold, Octane, Cycles 4D, and Vray.

Simplify your HDRI Workflow with HDRI Link and the included HDRI Browser. Just point and click in our custom HDRI Browser to easily try over 300 different HDRIs in your C4D scene no matter what Cinema 4D renderer you use.

Not finding the exact HDRI for the job? Easily expand your HDRI Library with unique Greyscalegorilla HDRI Packs.

Easily find the perfect Lighting and Reflections in Cinema 4D with HDRI Link™

>> See Also: 3 Advanced Xpresso Techniques in Cinema 4D


HDRI Link Example Renders

  More Cinema 4D Plugin [post_ad]
[ #HDRI #Plugin #C4D ]

The Greyscalegorilla Story

Greyscalegorilla INC from Chicago IL was started to give Motion designers and 3D artists the tools, training, and tutorials to help them make their best work. They have been serving the 3D community for over 8 years and have helped over 100,000 students and artists make their best work. (greyscalegorilla.com)

Their Top Class Cinema 4D Plugins are used by over 40,000 customers including major studios such as Sony, Disney, Fox, NBC, ESPN, Microsoft, NFL, Samsung, Direct TV, and much more.

Company Facts

• They have shared over 350 free tutorials online in the last 8 years.
• Their yearly “Half Rez” event in Chicago draws over 300 people from all over the world to celebrate Motion Design as a career.
• Greyscalegorilla Plugins have been used to help make Blockbuster movie titles like Pacific Rim, Dynamic Sports graphics for The NFL, and have helped animate, texture and light thousands of commercials aired all over the world.
• Their “Intro To Cinema 4D” Training has helped over 50,000 people learn Cinema 4D. (https://greyscalegorilla.com/intro-to-cinema-4d/)
• All Plugins are created, designed and coded in USA.

Style Guide

• Greyscalegorilla is all one word spelled with a capital G “Greyscalegorilla”

HDRI Link™ is a new Cinema 4D Plugin from Greyscalegorilla INC. HDRI Link™ speeds up your lighting and reflection workflow when using third party renderers like Arnold, Octane, Cycles 4D, and Vray. Easily expand your HDRI Library with unique Greyscalegorilla HDRI Packs.


HDRI Link™ is a new Cinema 4D Plugin from Greyscalegorilla INC. HDRI Link™ speeds up your lighting and reflection workflow when using third party renderers like Arnold, Octane, Cycles 4D, and Vray.

Simplify your HDRI Workflow with HDRI Link and the included HDRI Browser. Just point and click in our custom HDRI Browser to easily try over 300 different HDRIs in your C4D scene no matter what Cinema 4D renderer you use.

Not finding the exact HDRI for the job? Easily expand your HDRI Library with unique Greyscalegorilla HDRI Packs.

Easily find the perfect Lighting and Reflections in Cinema 4D with HDRI Link™

>> See Also: 3 Advanced Xpresso Techniques in Cinema 4D


HDRI Link Example Renders

  More Cinema 4D Plugin [post_ad]

Solid Angle Arnold v1.0 for Cinema 4D

Artikel Arnold, Artikel Arnold For Cinema 4D, Artikel Cinema 4D, Artikel Rendering, Artikel Solid Angle,
[ #SolidAngle #Arnold #Cinema4D ]
SOLID ANGLE, the creator of the industry leading “Arnold” global illumination ray tracer for animation and visual effects, has officially released version 1.0 of Arnold for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA).

See also: Arnold for Cinema 4D preview


Since its preview at SIGGRAPH 2014, the Arnold plug-in for Cinema 4D has been polished and optimized thanks to extensive feedback from its beta-testing program. C4DtoA supports most Cinema 4D features such as instances, cloners, deformers, generators, MoGraph geometry, hair, and Thinking Particles.

C4DtoA 1.0 implements the most fluid Arnold IPR experience yet. Interactive results are seen in virtually all Cinema 4D components, including creating, moving, and deforming objects, as well as adjusting lights, materials, and volumes.

Features

  -Seamless integration with C4D: objects (instances, cloners, deformers, generators), MoGraph geometry, hair and splines.
  -Support for both native particles and Thinking Particles.
  -The fastest interactive rendering (IPR) of all Arnold plugins, allows parameter changes to be rapidly previewed without interrupting your work.
  -Arnold Shading Network Editor, a node-based material editor.
  -A comprehensive list of shaders and utilities, including vertex maps and per-face materials.
  -Volume rendering with OpenVDB.
  -Deferred, render time generation of geometry with the Arnold procedural node.
  -Native linear workflow.
  -Team Render, including single-frame distributed rendering.
  -Support for third party plugins like X-Particles and Turbulence FD.


C4DtoA is the only render plug-in that supports both animation and single-frame distributed rendering in Team Render, allowing the use of all computers in a local network to speed-up Arnold rendering. Another unique feature in C4DtoA is a node-based material editor for assembling arbitrarily complex shader networks, following Arnold's node-based approach.
Third-party plug-ins TurbulenceFD and X-Particles are natively supported, allowing artists to render high quality smoke, fire, and particle effects with fully interactive feedback.

“We are excited to see Arnold finally available to all Cinema 4D artists,” said Solid Angle founder and CEO Marcos Fajardo. “It was great working with MAXON’s engineers as we pushed the APIs to make C4DtoA as fast and interactive as possible.”

Oliver Meiseberg, Director Product and Partnership Management at MAXON, states: “With Arnold, Cinema 4D users get an extremely powerful and easy to use renderer. Customer demand has been enormous and I am very excited about Solid Angle’s outstanding development work. Special thanks go to Daniel Hennies who brought this project into being”.

C4DtoA 1.0 was demoed to a cheering audience at FMX 2015 by Aixsponza's Manuel Casasola Merkle. View the FMX presentation.

Download:


Individual node-locked licenses can be purchased from Solid Angle's new web shop. Free trials are also available for download.

  More Cinema 4D Plugin [post_ad]
[ #SolidAngle #Arnold #Cinema4D ]
SOLID ANGLE, the creator of the industry leading “Arnold” global illumination ray tracer for animation and visual effects, has officially released version 1.0 of Arnold for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA).

See also: Arnold for Cinema 4D preview


Since its preview at SIGGRAPH 2014, the Arnold plug-in for Cinema 4D has been polished and optimized thanks to extensive feedback from its beta-testing program. C4DtoA supports most Cinema 4D features such as instances, cloners, deformers, generators, MoGraph geometry, hair, and Thinking Particles.

C4DtoA 1.0 implements the most fluid Arnold IPR experience yet. Interactive results are seen in virtually all Cinema 4D components, including creating, moving, and deforming objects, as well as adjusting lights, materials, and volumes.

Features

  -Seamless integration with C4D: objects (instances, cloners, deformers, generators), MoGraph geometry, hair and splines.
  -Support for both native particles and Thinking Particles.
  -The fastest interactive rendering (IPR) of all Arnold plugins, allows parameter changes to be rapidly previewed without interrupting your work.
  -Arnold Shading Network Editor, a node-based material editor.
  -A comprehensive list of shaders and utilities, including vertex maps and per-face materials.
  -Volume rendering with OpenVDB.
  -Deferred, render time generation of geometry with the Arnold procedural node.
  -Native linear workflow.
  -Team Render, including single-frame distributed rendering.
  -Support for third party plugins like X-Particles and Turbulence FD.


C4DtoA is the only render plug-in that supports both animation and single-frame distributed rendering in Team Render, allowing the use of all computers in a local network to speed-up Arnold rendering. Another unique feature in C4DtoA is a node-based material editor for assembling arbitrarily complex shader networks, following Arnold's node-based approach.
Third-party plug-ins TurbulenceFD and X-Particles are natively supported, allowing artists to render high quality smoke, fire, and particle effects with fully interactive feedback.

“We are excited to see Arnold finally available to all Cinema 4D artists,” said Solid Angle founder and CEO Marcos Fajardo. “It was great working with MAXON’s engineers as we pushed the APIs to make C4DtoA as fast and interactive as possible.”

Oliver Meiseberg, Director Product and Partnership Management at MAXON, states: “With Arnold, Cinema 4D users get an extremely powerful and easy to use renderer. Customer demand has been enormous and I am very excited about Solid Angle’s outstanding development work. Special thanks go to Daniel Hennies who brought this project into being”.

C4DtoA 1.0 was demoed to a cheering audience at FMX 2015 by Aixsponza's Manuel Casasola Merkle. View the FMX presentation.

Download:


Individual node-locked licenses can be purchased from Solid Angle's new web shop. Free trials are also available for download.

  More Cinema 4D Plugin [post_ad]

Arnold for Cinema 4D preview

Artikel Arnold, Artikel Arnold For Cinema 4D, Artikel Cinema 4D, Artikel Rendering,
[ #Arnold #Render #Cinema4D #C4D ]
VFX artist and C4DAPT founder Pingo van der Brinkloev has a look at using Solid Angle's rendering engine Arnold for C4D which was introduced in SIGGRAPH 2014

>> See Also: Cinema 4D tutorial



Arnold for C4D is currently in alpha, and slated for release in Q4 2014. Learn more about Arnold for C4D, an exclusive in depth setup guide is available as part of C4DAPT2 vimeo.com/ondemand/c4dapt2
  More Cinema 4D Plugin
[ #Arnold #Render #Cinema4D #C4D ]
VFX artist and C4DAPT founder Pingo van der Brinkloev has a look at using Solid Angle's rendering engine Arnold for C4D which was introduced in SIGGRAPH 2014

>> See Also: Cinema 4D tutorial



Arnold for C4D is currently in alpha, and slated for release in Q4 2014. Learn more about Arnold for C4D, an exclusive in depth setup guide is available as part of C4DAPT2 vimeo.com/ondemand/c4dapt2
  More Cinema 4D Plugin

Arnold For Cinema 4D is coming to SIGGRAPH 2014

Artikel Arnold, Artikel Arnold For Cinema 4D, Artikel Cinema 4D, Artikel Rendering, Artikel Solid Angle,
[ #Arnold #Cinema4D #C4D #Render ]
SOLID ANGLE, maker of Arnold, the industry leading global illumination ray tracer, and MAXON, leading developer of professional 3D software solutions for modeling, painting, animation and rendering, will unveil Arnold for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA) at SIGGRAPH. After several years of independent development, the Arnold for Cinema plugin is now officially within the Solid Angle stable and will debut on the MAXON booth (#1422) on August 12th, at 9:30. This bridge between the two applications will allow Cinema 4D artists direct access to the advanced rendering capabilities of Arnold.

>> See Also: Arnold Render tutorial

Solid Angle founder and CEO Marcos Fajardo said: “Customers have been asking for a bridge to Cinema 4D for several years. We are delighted to be working with MAXON to make this a reality.”

MAXON Cinema 4D Product Manager Oliver Meiseberg said: “Arnold for Cinema 4D is extremely important to us for high end visual effects. We are proud to be delivering the first public showing of C4DtoA at SIGGRAPH.“
Currently in alpha, Arnold for Cinema 4D is slated for release in Q4 2014. And if you still don't know much about Arnold Render you should check the Arnold Showreel 2013
  More Rendering Plugin
[ #Arnold #Cinema4D #C4D #Render ]
SOLID ANGLE, maker of Arnold, the industry leading global illumination ray tracer, and MAXON, leading developer of professional 3D software solutions for modeling, painting, animation and rendering, will unveil Arnold for Cinema 4D (C4DtoA) at SIGGRAPH. After several years of independent development, the Arnold for Cinema plugin is now officially within the Solid Angle stable and will debut on the MAXON booth (#1422) on August 12th, at 9:30. This bridge between the two applications will allow Cinema 4D artists direct access to the advanced rendering capabilities of Arnold.

>> See Also: Arnold Render tutorial

Solid Angle founder and CEO Marcos Fajardo said: “Customers have been asking for a bridge to Cinema 4D for several years. We are delighted to be working with MAXON to make this a reality.”

MAXON Cinema 4D Product Manager Oliver Meiseberg said: “Arnold for Cinema 4D is extremely important to us for high end visual effects. We are proud to be delivering the first public showing of C4DtoA at SIGGRAPH.“
Currently in alpha, Arnold for Cinema 4D is slated for release in Q4 2014. And if you still don't know much about Arnold Render you should check the Arnold Showreel 2013
  More Rendering Plugin

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