Support for Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs) for compositing and post-processing.Arnold Properties modifier controls render-time effects on a per-object basis.Simplified image-based lighting workflow with separate background and environment capabilities.Supports third-party shaders compiled for Windows and Arnold 5.A comprehensive selection of integrated Arnold shaders and materials.Procedural objects (proxies) allow scene exchange with other Arnold plugins.Volumetric effects with OpenVDB support.You can read more about the new features in Arnold 5 here.Īutodesk’s own summary of the new features available to 3ds Max users is as follows:
Solid Angle has also now officially released Arnold 5, a sizeable update to the renderer, and the version included with 3ds Max 2018.
The plugin has now reached 1.0 status – previously, it was available, but feature-incomplete – and has now been included with the 3ds Max install for the first time. However, one change that wasn’t announced at the time is the update to MAXtoA, the 3ds Max integration plugin for Arnold. MAXtoA integration plugin now includes Arnold 5 At the time, users welcomed Arnold’s feature set, but criticised the loss of unlimited network rendering. You can read more about Autodesk’s switch from mental ray to Arnold in our original story. Nvidia will continue to provide mental ray for 3ds Max as a third-party plugin, including a free licence with similar restrictions to the free version of Arnold bundled with 3ds Max. The bundled version can be used to render from a single machine via the viewport, but output generated in other ways is watermarked, so for command-line or network rendering, you need extra commercial licences.
The biggest change in 3ds Max 2018 is the one we knew about in advance: that Autodesk has switched from bundling Nvidia’s mental ray renderer with the software to Solid Angle’s Arnold, which it acquired in 2016. The update replaces mental ray with Arnold 5 as 3ds Max’s de facto third-party render engine, introduces new options for editing motion paths, and overhauls the user interface and Max Creation Graph. The two materials will then be blended together by adding the Metallic map to the Mask slot.Autodesk has released 3ds Max 2018, the latest update to its 3D modelling and animation software.
When plugging in your materials to the Blend material, typically the lower IOR material will be plugged into Material 1 while the higher IOR material will be plugged into Material 2. A copy of that material is made for the metallic version as Material 2 with correct high IOR. A dielectric version of the material is created as Material 1 using correct low IOR value. This way one material applied to the single object represents both surface types. The Blend material is used to combine the 2 different IORs for dielectrics and metals. When an individual dielectric or metallic material can not be separated by object, that is the only time a blend material needs to be used. See When to use Blend Materials for more information on these situations.
There are some situations where a material may require a dielectric and metallic materials on the same surface. What if my texture map set has multiple material types?