Autodesk Rendering the Future: A Vision for Arnold

Marcos Fajardo, Founder of Solid Angle, reveals his vision for Arnold and talks about why he is excited about the future of rendering.

Shave n Haircut 10 preview

Shave 10 Siggraph preview from joe alter on Vimeo.

www.joealter.com

Siggraph 2017 : Physically Based Shading in Theory & Practice

Siggraph university recently published this youtube video  for an introduction to "Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice" all about the physics and math for physical based shading models and renderers.

---

...and just hours ago they published the Live Talk from this years Siggraph . streamed live July 24th, 2016

---

Maya 2017 : "workarounds"

now that maya 2017 has been released to the gen pop, a few bugs and workarounds are popping up on the net..  I will try and keep on top of them and post them here:

• Can't snap objects or pivots to Nurbs Cvs on Curves on Nurbs Objects

    This appears to be a VP2.0 issue.. if you change your render mode for your panel to "legacy" it should snap with no issues. 

   alternatively you can turn on Display - Nurbs - CVS to show nurbs curve and object cvs permenantly, and then snapping will work in VP2.0 

• Centering pivot on Clusters results in non-centered pivot ( legacy issue)
• snapping to cluster handles results in offset (VP2.0 issue) 

  When you try and center pivot on a cluster handle it moves the pivot to the wrong position.  I think it's got something to do with the little "C" shape . I just tried a quick solution which is to replace the "weighted node" with a locator in the same position, that has had it's transforms frozen. ( and it appears to work) 

• Custom Hotkeys keep getting forgotten

Currently maybe you could use this workaround for the problem: Link a hotkey set to the workspace explicitly. Then the hotkey set will remain after Maya restarts or switching workspaces.

To link a hotkey set to a workspace, you can 

1) Open Windows->Workspaces menu

2) Click the option box of the workspace Maya is current in (little cube beside the workspace name).

3) Check on "Enable a Hotkey Set to this workspace"

4) Choose the hokey set you want to link

5) Apply and Close

• slowness when Mash is loaded

unload Mash from your plug-ins if you are not using it, and you should notice a speed increase in Maya

• Arnold Batch Rendering has watermark

Buy  a license of Arnold from solid angle https://www.solidangle.com/arnold/arnold-for-maya/

Menu - Render - Render Sequence - as set up in render settings.

• changes to Maya Rendering FAQ

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Changes-to-rendering-in-Autodesk-Maya-2017.html?_ga=1.14307895.187394389.1436452947#MayaRenderQ9

• can't select curves in Graph editor

For some reason there is now a default hotkey of "m" to allow you to select curves in the graph editor.  So, you can either leave this on, and hold "m" to select curves, or under the "select" menu of the Graph Editor.. toggle the check box for "select curves" on 

• UNDO QUE gets flushed (randomly) 

I've often heard people complain about this, and I know there are a few scripts and plug-ins out there, that flush and also sometimes shut the undo que off.   

but I just learned about a known issue/feature  that when you import/reference/load or reload or remove a reference Maya will flush the Undo Que.. This is mainly because those types of actions are I/O based and the undo can't normally handle the memory for full scene undo/redo ( or it would kill your memory) 

This includes "dragging" files into Maya, as that acts as an import I/O function

as well as using copy/paste from other open Maya sessions ( ctrl+c , ctrl +v) which also act like "import"  .   and I know a lot of people do that, but I highly recommend against it, as you lose all control for the import and can lead to all sorts of bad node clashing. 

Maya 2017 intro videos ....

Lynda and  Autodesk, have teamed up to bring you intro videos for maya 2017.. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/MayaHowTos/videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/lyndapodcast/videos

I'm sure they'll continue to update their channels,

here are some highlights:

Trevor Adams takes you thru some of the Maya 2017 updates

Arnold For Maya 2017 1.3.0.1

Basically a whole lot of bug fixes and Maya integration updates ! 

rather than repeat them, I'll just point you to the solid angle support page

https://support.solidangle.com/display/AFMUG/1.3.0.1












In Maya 2017, Arnold rendering no longer requires a license when executed from Maya interface. This applies for Arnold RenderView, Maya Render View, Sequence Rendering, and Render To Texture. Only batch rendering require an Arnold license to be rendered without watermarks.