Autodesk have done it again - This time with the Arnold Render

[^Lele^]

Vlado, What do you think about competing with Arnold?

What do YOU think?
Tried rendering a headlight with 25 straight reflection and refraction bounces, without AA?
I mean, not in an aggressive way, did you try and benchmark it? It runs as demo without a license.

[^Lele^]

So I guess the new ART Renderer is not Arnold ?

Nope, not at all.
ART is not just a renderer, but the start of a revolution in the max rendering architecture.

What about Mental Ray and Iray. Are they kicked out in 2017 ?

I can't recall, other that neither is installed as a default anymore.

[Moriah]

From personal experience Arnold is really good at managing very heavy scenes, loads of displacement, and it has very simple settings. Other than that i love Vray, and it doesn't take loads of hours to clean up noise lol... Also Arnold without alShaders is not the same. Anyway competition is always good, i'm just glad that it wasn't Chaosgroup that got bought. I'm always afraid of who's Autodesk gonna "buy" next...

[glorybound]

The first thing I saw when I launched Twitter.

"Autodesk's acquisition of Solid Angle = great news for AD customers, bad news for Chaos Group's V-Ray."

Good grief. Every time something happens in the industry.

[jasonhuang1115]

Not sure where this angle is from??? (source: fxguide)

Chaos Group has the most to lose from the deal. V-Ray has been making vast gains in popularity, user take-up and in-roads into all areas of production. If a user gets Arnold for free at some point, it will be harder to justify V-Ray - no matter how good it is. Of course, Chaos Group has extremely loyal followers and an innovative agenda so no doubt they will double down with things such as their push into VR and other new technology. The Pixar RenderMan team recently downsized, presumably due to increased competition. Rendering is certainly one of the hottest areas in 3D right now.

I felt Arnold is behind on GPU rendering and better to make this move now than later....

[jasonhuang1115]

God knows how many times Autodesk tried to aquire Chaosgroup?

I am curious about this too...

[cheerioboy]

Seems like now is the time for Chaosgroup to acquire a 3d program! Take thatttttt

[^Lele^]

From personal experience Arnold is really good at managing very heavy scenes, loads of displacement, and it has very simple settings

I heard that about complexity, too, and displacement, but i couldn't for the life of me find trace of either upon actual benchmarking.
On the very simple settings i wholeheartedly agree.

As for the competition being good, heck yeah.
Thing is, with competition, that the rules ought to be the same for everyone, and without solid data to move on, the competition is shifted on pure hear and say, and personal, subjective, perception.
Which is always going to last only up to when real world usage comes into play.
So I, for one, welcome the broadening of Arnold's user base, and wish the dev team luck: may the resources they were looking for to make it better pay all the dividends they dreamt of, and more.

[vlado]

Not sure where this angle is from??? (source: fxguide)

Chaos Group has the most to lose from the deal. V-Ray has been making vast gains in popularity, user take-up and in-roads into all areas of production. If a user gets Arnold for free at some point, it will be harder to justify V-Ray - no matter how good it is. Of course, Chaos Group has extremely loyal followers and an innovative agenda so no doubt they will double down with things such as their push into VR and other new technology. The Pixar RenderMan team recently downsized, presumably due to increased competition. Rendering is certainly one of the hottest areas in 3D right now.

I felt Arnold is behind on GPU rendering and better to make this move now than later....

Well, that's funny because RenderMan's team has actually expanded. And whether we have or have not anything to lose is really not for FXGuide to say...

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

Well, that's funny because RenderMan's team has actually expanded. And whether we have or have not anything to lose is really not for FXGuide to say...

Best regards,
Vlado

Exactly the part I frowned at curiously as reading it...

[Morbid Angel]

Bad news for customers of Vray?????????

If anything, its bad news for customers of Solid Angle; For all those licenses that they paid for of Arnold, which were far far more expensive then vray now they will just throw them out ) But wait, it will be few years before Arnold is well implemented into "whatever" autodesk software they plan to implement it to.

If anything, its good for Vray.

[glorybound]

Doesn't Autodesk just acquire and kill? A couple months ago wasn't Corona a V-Ray killer?

[Ihno]

ART is not just a renderer, but the start of a revolution in the max rendering architecture.

In what way?
Did they something which help's third party renderer developer to improve there products?
Like, well... you guys?
Or do you mean: Finally they start to phase out the scanline renderer?

I don't think there will be a 3ds max Implimentation of Arnold in the near future.
It would kill ART right after its birth.
Also I can imagine that they keep arnold as it is, a third party plugin you have to pay for.

[vlado]

Did they something which help's third party renderer developer to improve there products?

Yes, actually they did; there's a new API for detecting scene changes which we intent to use for the interactive version of the regular V-Ray renderer. They also give away the sources of the ART plugin (the part that's in 3ds Max) as an example for using that API.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Ihno]

Yes, actually they did; there's a new API for detecting scene changes which we intent to use for the interactive version of the regular V-Ray renderer. They also give away the sources of the ART plugin (the part that's in 3ds Max) as an example for using that API.

Best regards,
Vlado

That sounds pomissing!