Autodesk Maya 2017 released with full Arnold integration.

General Forums Latest News
#1

It has happened, not long after Autodesk purchased Solid Angle, the engine has officially replaced Mental Ray as the solution that comes with the software.

Full changelog for version 2017
http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-EAF7F00F-0380-4E8E-94F9-D484CAD5505A

However, if you think Autodesk would generously give you the full Arnold experience at no extra charge, you are sadly mistaken.

The catch…

This local version of Arnold for Maya only works interactively within Maya. You can render a single frame or a sequence of frames interactively; however, batch rendering and calling from mayabatch.exe are not available and your images will appear with a watermark. To render images without a watermark, purchase Arnold batch render nodes from Solid Angle.

Essentially, this means Maya users that stuck with Mental Ray will now have to purchase a license for either Arnold or another engine if they want to use modern shading and lighting features without any catches (such as if you’re using a renderfarm).

Over at CGTalk is seems this has caused the excitement of using a Hollywood-grade engine to largely evaporate, but many of them will not have to spend extra since they already have licenses for other solutions. I guess it wouldn’t matter to Autodesk though as long they continue to have their big VFX clients.

Comments?

#2

Well i can understand why thoses limitations are there in the case of exported batch files. Or when using a standalone version of Arnold.

But that mean too that the standalone version of Arnold will stay there, under Solid Angle control, so will continue to exist outside Maya and autodesk softwares.

#3

PRMan sounds as pretty obvious choice & Solid Angle in safe for now… no SI traps.

#4

…
welp

good news for maya users I guess
3ds max better come with arnold installed too.

Mental ray was kind of terrible.

#5

Does Maya has mesh fusion as MODO and splines modeling?

Can you set Blender’s shortcut workflow in Maya ?

#6

No but max does

#7

But you can still use Mental Ray if you want. This has been the same in the last release. They took Mental Ray out of the install.

mental ray no longer provided with Maya In Maya 2017, mental ray is no longer provided with Maya. To render scenes that contain mental ray nodes, download the mayatomr plug-in from the NVIDIA web site

#8

Yes and no, can use Autocad or max for work on Splines ( requisite in Autocad and Inventor ) set then moving to Maya ( who understand them correctly, so i still not really understand why it is not possible inside the sofware ) for the rest of work and render ( who is somewhat part of the workflow )

#9

Look like a good feet shoot in the a** of Nividia …

#10

Splines? Ha? Maya offers all three modeling tools: Polygon, Subdivision Surface, and NURBS !!!

#11

Take a look at Tiny Fixes For Maya… (video on vimeo)

#12

yes sorry,

#13

That depends on how you look at it. Are people really going to buy Arnold just because Maya is shipped with a useless version of it? It is more like a forced hand trial version. I think it will help Arnold sales. But people should know - and most will - that they can still use mental ray or any other solution.

If anything it shows the razor sharp competition for render solutions these days.

#14

There is also a Time Editor - like an NLA Editor in a Blender. Dont want to create a separate topic about this.

#15

Good Bye Arnold!

#16

@Looch

How is this a bad thing for Arnold?

#17

Comments on CGTalk indicate that some have already tried it and do not like how slow it is on interiors and how caustics don’t seem to exist (ie. the usual pitfalls of pathtracing, though it seems like the caustics may simply be turned off in the version that comes with Maya).

For individuals on home hardware at least, they might be more likely to purchase Vray or the new version of Mental Ray rather than switch to Arnold.

#18

of course, pay monthly for maya, and if you wanna render, pay separately for a decent renderer,!

#19

I am more excited about the new animation tools - which are as usual light years ahead of blender- unfortunately

#20

There are some great upgrades to the Arnold plugin itself too. Really excited for OpenColorIO support baked right into MakeTx, and run automatically! That means mipmapping, tilling, converting to linear color space, and caching the result for future renders all happens automatically at render startup. Also better material editor and viewport support, support for more Maya features like scene assemblies, etc.