@m9105826 - Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the community. I saw it myself and was tempted by the class. Like many decisions it came back to time. Hopefully they’ll run it again. If they don’t, I’m sure someone will run more Arnold classes at some point.
@all - If there is anyone taking these classes, it would be great to hear a little feedback. Either on Arnold or the course.
I’m taking the class, I’ve worked up through week 6 at the moment. It’s very good. It goes over the basics of Arnold very well in the first few weeks, covering all of the settings and material and light types in fairly thorough detail. It assumes a basic operating knowledge of SoftImage (understandable, as it’s not a SI class). Then it goes into camera settings covering things like DoF and motion blur. In the week I’ve just finished and the one previous, a troll character is setup, shaded, textured, and finally rendered. This includes skin, hair, clothing, and some other materials as well. All source files are included with the class.
Arnold itself is, as usual, great to work with. Very simple interface and material setup (I really hope the new Cycles hypershader resembles the Arnold standard shader!) It’s also very, very fast. As the author notes in the final render of the troll, it takes about 5-15 minutes per frame for him to render his short Troll animation, which looks great. The same animation in Mental Ray takes upwards of 5 hours per frame. And the same frames in Arnold show more detail, so much so that he comments that his model and textures aren’t really up to snuff for Arnold rendering as they were originally made for MR which tends to blur details. Things like hair and SSS are simple 3 or 4 click setups, and full integration with ICE and the SI node system are great for a speedy workflow, although admittedly I prefer the node interface of Blender for organization. I’ll comment more as I complete more of the class, but it is well worth the price of admission considering everything you have access to.
m9105826
what is special about that ueber shader or asked differently what does it do?
BLENDER IS BETTER WOOHOO!
Just jokes. Aside from speed and general awesomeness, are there any things Blender could learn (as a piece of software) from what you’re finding out about Arnold?
The standard shader in Arnold is basically one shader that 99% of all materials can be made from. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to make the equivalent as a node group in Blender, but it would be nice to have it available out of the box. Basically you add the shader, and then from within it you can tweak diffuse, gloss, fresnel, refraction, SSS, etc. from within one simple panel. Much more convenient than Add>Diffuse, Add>Glossy, Add>Mix, Add>Layer Weight, ad nauseum. Anything can be plugged into any value, and it’s just a very nice interface for rapidly prototyping different materials on the fly. Things like SSS and Fresnel are just simple tick boxes that enable or disable them, followed by their parameters. If Blender allowed for custom check boxes/buttons in node groups, I could probably create one in 5 minutes (minus things like SSS, obviously). It’s basically all of the freedom of a node workflow, with all of the simplicity of a stacked interface like BI.
There are plenty of things in Arnold I’d love to eventually see in Cycles. Speed is an obvious number 1. I’ve run scenes (mostly those with tons of geometry and lots of lights) that render faster than Cycles using my GPU (560Ti). Memory use is highly optimized. I recently upgraded to 24GB of RAM. I haven’t been able to create a scene yet that can take it out. I had a scene yesterday with 2 billion (yes, with a B) actual polygons, not instances, and aside from a maybe 1 or 2 minute BVH build at first render time, it runs smooth as butter. I had a shape with 1 million polys and 100 million hairs lit with IBL take up 8 gigs of ram and render clear in under 10 minutes. This is the kind of situation where it really shines.
Design-wise there’s not a ton to say about Arnold, because it uses the standards of the already-great SoftImage for all of its GUI. There are some important settings that are obscure and hard to find, and that irks me a little bit. Overall I still stand by my belief that Blender has one of the best UIs for content creation in the biz. Once you learn the shortcuts Blender flies. I am still thrown off by the reliance of clicking and menus in so many other packages. I’m also not a fan of overlapping windows. It would also be nice to have the UI in SI adapt to the render engine you’re currently using. It’s a hassle to have to scroll through a ton of internal options, materials, and whatnot just to get to Arnold stuff. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s one of the reasons I really like Blender. When you switch from BI to Cycles, you get only relevant options. It really helps to reduce visual clutter.
So those are areas where I prefer Blender. Mostly things not entirely related to Arnold. There are a few places where I think Cycles should take some cues from Arnold though. As I said above, the shader system manages to be both more powerful and more user friendly. The integration with SI is top notch (as Cycles is for Blender, but it would be nice to see other renderers able to have to same integration without magic coders, maybe even Arnold some day!) But in the end, it does all come down to speed. If Cycles and Blender can even get close to Arnold, I would consider it a wild success for open source software. There are places where Cycles comes close, but until BIG things like SSS and hair get figured out it will be hard to compare them. I’m a huge fan of Cycles and can’t wait to see it mature.
This is the model that comes with the class. This is a render done in Cycles. The materials are all quick and hacky, and obviously there is no SSS or hair like the Arnold version, but I still think it’s a good showcase of how easy it is to make a good looking render in Cycles. Rendered in about 40 minutes on my super bad, super old dual core laptop.
This would be awesome. But I can’t justify the cost, this close the christmas. Too many other things to buy. But with fxphd, the courses stay available don’t they? So I could pick it up at a later date??
@@m9105826:
Hey, thanks for the input! Can you answer a few questions?
The class doesn’t really give you Arnold, though, right? Just access to it while you take the class?
Also, the mega-polygons you describe is more of a Softimage thing than an Arnold thing, isn’t it? Softimage is famous for its crazy polygon count. The other question I have is, I am assuming you have Softimage on your computer? Are you running a demo, student, or did you get something provided from FXPHD?
Finally: How long would it take to render the troll image in Arnold (as opposed to the 40 minutes you spent in Cycles)
(side note: arnoldpedia.solidangle.com Requires a username and password…)
@All:
There is a Blender to Arnold Exporter, though I don’t know how current it is. Maybe someone can ping Rudy and get his input in this?
The reason why they’re not selling the product to the general public yet (like other companies do) is that they want to grow at their pace. SolidAngle is an extremely small company and there’s just no way they could handle supporting individuals properly at this point.
In particular, individuals like you, who are badmouthing a company they don’t really know anything about, are more trouble than their business is worth. You’d likely just run around blabbering how Arnold is an overpriced ripoff if they where even giving you a quote.
haha i watched the course informational video and had to remember to breathe while watching it render in real time. at least, i assumed that was real time, i can’t imagine they sped up the shots where it was actually rendering on screen. i can understand why it isn’t available to the general public, but i still wish it was. by the way, thanks for sharing comparisons, it’s interesting to know how Cycles is measuring up compared to industry tools.
Mods, please move this thread to the “Shameless Commercial Promotion with Elements of False Advertising” forum. Thanks a lot!
Seriously, guys, this isn’t good, this thread is a mistake, sorry. I’m quite sure 90 percent of us Blender users are not the target audience of Arnold and are, all things considered, better served by the options we already have. The effort here to entice the less than well-informed to spend their hard earned cash on “learning Arnold in SI” kind of stings. I very much hope no-one will fall for this and if people have any cash to spare for 3D software they will donate it to the Blender Foundation. BF caters to our needs, the money would be vastly better spent there.
Throw the bricks now if you like, but you know I’m right on this. Arnold is proprietary software for studios working with other proprietary software on team efforts, end of story.
The are lots of pro users on this board and some use SI in their pipelines with Blender. I kind of don’t understand this narrow mindedness, Solid Angle guys also post on this board at times. Let’s be welcoming. I don’t know how many people use this site but 10% of 10000 is a 1000 if the number people using this site is 90000-50000 that is a shit load of people who are their audience if your 90% figure can be taken as true.
If the news is not for you ignore the thread, but don’t troll.
Solid Angle’s guys and Marcos Fajardo himself do read this forum. I think they genuinely appreciate the work we do here.
Why did Arnold Render choose Softimage? From what I read most people use Maya in place of Softimage. Not sure how true this is but there are a lot more tutorials for Maya and 3ds Max, even blender then there are for Softimage. On the other hand why aren’t more people/studios using Softimage if it is so great?
Maybe you shouldn’t make assumptions about people regarding their software preference.
Maybe you shouldn’t make assumptions about people regarding their software preference
I was not making an assumbtions but asking a question.
The dream is not Cycles itself but for all rendering engines to be as integrated and available for Blender as a great open source 3d tool. Sure it would be OK to hope for everyone to work together and make Cycles THE BEST but we don’t decide that.
I mean who wouldn’t like a RE like Cycles with all the speed and polish of Arnold just waiting to be used inside Blender on first install. I don’t see how 2 or 3 people working on a hobby driven open source project can do better than 16 engineers with very good funding and direct connection " TO THE INDUSTRY "
Alright, I’m going to try to go through and answer the posts that popped up overnight one by one.
As far as using Arnold after the class is over, I have no idea. I’ve had access to Arnold for almost a year at this point, and I own a standing license for SoftImage. I believe that if you are a student (or even if you just say you’re a student) you can get a free copy of any Autodesk software with no restrictions other than no commercial work. I haven’t read anything that says the provided Arnold license expires when the class ends, but don’t quote me on that. I’ve just been using the copy I’ve had all along.
The huge number of polys is definitely an Arnold thing. I’m not talking about my viewport in those stats above, I’m talking about render time. One of Arnold’s main claims to fame is its incredibly efficient BVH code. I can throw geometry at it all day, and it just shrugs it off. This is something many people don’t realize is that as geometric complexity increases, the gap between GPU and CPU decreases, and eventually flips, especially with the way Cycles is coded.
As for how long it would take to render that troll in Arnold, I can’t speak for certain, and I especially can’t compare it to that particular Cycles render because I didn’t do it on my render box. I’m not running SI or Arnold on this laptop, but I will do a comparison as soon as I am back home and have access to my home computer. That having been said, in the video the tutor renders an even more complex version of the same troll with full SSS and hair and fur at 1080p on a four core (apparently no threading) machine in 12 minutes. The size of my 40 minute render was 2000x2000. So deduce from that what you will.
Finally, yes, I know the arnoldpedia requires a login. I was just pointing out to people that just because all they can see of the SA website is the landing page doesn’t mean there isn’t much more to see, and certainly doesn’t mean that they are an amateur company.
@Ray Tungsteen
This is in the “Blender and CG Discussion” forum. Where it belongs. We are discussing the 3D industry. There is no “false advertising”. There is an opportunity for average Joes to get their hands on Arnold for the first time. It comes with training. I fail to see how this is misleading or “bad” for the community. As I said before, there are those of us here who both do this as a job, and already own Softimage. I’m not trying to “entice” anyone to spend their money somewhere. People are free to spend their money however they wish, you’re the one here trying to get them to spend it on something specific. You say “Blender caters to our needs” as if everyone shares your needs. It’s comments like yours that give the Blender community a bad name. You say “commercial” and “working on teams” like they’re insults. They’re not; you’re just ignorant to successful workflows. If Blender wants to be a big player then it also needs to learn to be a team player, and that includes its users. No large production in history has ever said “OK, for this project, we are going to use one piece of software, efficiency and end product be damned!”. The single-app workflow is a uniquely “Blender” thing, and it’s meant to serve a much larger purpose than “prove that Blender is best”. It’s meant to find and fix cracks in the program (and trust me, there are tons) and update an existing feature set. When Blender gains these features and the ability to slot itself into a larger pipeline, that’s the day when it will be picked up by more professional users. Telling people to stay away from “proprietary” software not only hurts new users by discouraging them from learning industry standards (and thereby cementing them into the role of hobbyist) but hurts the community as a whole by making us look like spoiled children who refuse to shell out for others’ hard work and condemning those who do. Grow up, look at the big picture, don’t comment in places where you have nothing constructive to add.
Not sure why they chose SI, but I’m glad they did. It’s by far my favorite 3D suite to work in (right next to Blender). It hasn’t yet fallen to some of the horrible Autodesk design choices, even though they finally added the dreaded viewcube. The interface is clean and intuitive. And if I had to place a wager on why they chose it, I’d guess that the ICE system played a large part. There really isn’t a more powerful content creation tool ANYWHERE else. It’s also much easier to write integrated code than it is in 3DS and Maya. That having been said, Arnold also exists for Maya and has for some time now. MtoA is almost as well-integrated as SItoA. There are also Lightwave and Houdini versions already being tested out in the field, though I haven’t had the opportunity to play with either yet. I personally hate working in Maya; I think it’s bloated, cluttered, and outdated as far as GUI is concerned. But SoftImage is very popular in the professional field. I’ve never seen a studio who isn’t using it somewhere in the pipeline.
Also, hey! A fellow Fairfax person! I didn’t realize there were any other Blender users around here haha. No one is ever interested when I try to get a user group going!
