Arnold Render Engine Basics Training Book - Material Creation - Cameras - Lights - Arnold Menu XN SwAVal ire leceya) and more..... aos aanAbout me Serdar Hakan DUZGOREN | Autodesk Expert Elite | was born in 1980 in Istanbul, | graduated from Umraniye Industrial Vocational High Schoo! Building Department in 1996. | first entered the computer world using Autodesk AutoCAD. For 3 years until 2000, | supported many companies in the fields of consultancy, project and implementation on AutoCAD. Between 2000 and 2004, | worked in both Autodesk AutoCAD and 2D design and printing areas in the digital printing systems sector (CorelDraw, Freehand, Quarkexpress, Adobe Photoshop.) Since 2004, Autodesk 3Ds Max, rendering engines and 3D design training and I have been providing consultancy and training in many local and foreign companies as a consultant and continue my business life. Since September of 2014, Turkey Autodesk and Autodesk Commnity | have been working on-site counseling training. Autodesk also held in Turkey for the first time on 10 December 2014 the University | took part as a speaker at the 2014 event. | conducted 7 webinars on 3Ds Max training and render-rendering systems in 2014-2015 at Autodesk Comminity. in year 2015 which granted only 240 people in the world with the title of Autodesk Expert Elite 2 people in Turkey, "I have someone from AUTODESK’ EXPERT ELITE rN AUTODESK UNIVERSITY 2014 E-mail: info@serdarhakan.net You can reach from the e-mail address. Also; To attend my training seminars, you can visit www.serdarhakan.net, blog. serdarhakan.net, www.autodesk.com.tr/ community. Social medi Twitter : @SerdarHakan Facebook: —_https://www.facebook.com/serdarhakannn ‘Autodesk Authorized Instructor Information: ‘Autodesk Education Identity ID Numer 5102634 ‘Autodesk Education Instructor ID Numer :46753Thank you 4 To my dear brothers and bosses, Hasan Serdar TOMURCU and Huseyin Ferdag TOMURCU, who taught me everything, to improve myself, tobe successful in my professional life and to “© Mylife partner, my dear wife, Selda SAHIN DUZGOREN, the biggest thank you for never withholding your support. + To my best father and old friend Ali GUNDOGDU, who criticized me mercilessly, who gave me the title of uncle when | had no chance to become the best software developer and uncle Thanks again to everyone Serdar Hakan DUZGOREN AUTODESK’ EXPERT ELITEPreface What is the Arnold Render Engine? What Is Not? You have now got a 1000-page book in which you can find an answer to the question. Welcome to the world of the Arnold Render Engine, with this book you'll have full detailed information about Arnold and be able to create realistic scenes. The Amold rendering engine, a render engine with a history of quality work, has been used for visual effects in many movies in Hollywood. Yes, a long journey awaits you, be prepared to take your place in this endless world What Can | Do With the Amold Render Engine? You Can Prepare Realistic Scenes You Can Create Super Visual Effects. You Can Model High Quality Characters and Rend them You Can Prepare High Quality Materials. You Can Create Great Animations. wawna You can be sure that you can make and create more quality and detailed works than many famous render engines on the market. Yes, no more waiting for you to enter the magical world of the Arnold Render Engine right now. Serdar Hakan DUZGOREN Autodesk Expert Elite | Autodesk Offical Member | Autodesk Int. Moderator | Autodesk Consultant AUTODESK’ EXPERT ELITE1003 Table of Contents Arnold 1 Installation ... vod Licensing Arnold... oo 8 Watermarks 4 Rendering Your First Scene. 4 Introduction to Arnold for 3ds Max 9 Understanding Physically Based Rendering in Arnold, 14 Photons and Scattering 15 Materials... Specular Scattering. Automotive Exterior Rendering... Importing the CAD Data Floor Plane ... Background (Backplate). Skydome Lighting. 24 Offscreen Color (shadow_matte). 26 Shading. 27 Headlights. 28 Automotive Studio Lighting Rigs 30 Lighting Rig Scenes. 31 Importing the CAD Data .. 32 Advertising Campaign... 33 Camera Product Visualization .. 38 Importing the CAD Data 38 Lighting 40 Background a2 Realistic Shading 43 Stylized Shading 47 AOVs 49 Final Render Settings Lego Product Visualization Importing the CAD Data Lighting Realistic Shading using Standard Surface .. Stylized Shading using Toon ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite1004 Final Render Settings... 63 Reducing No 64 Revit Interior to MAXtoA. 66 Rendering..... 70 Sampling, n Revit Exterior to MAXtoA. 2 Rendering 78 Sampling, 78 Denoising 79 Composing the Beauty AOV.... 82 Standard Surface AOVs. 83 Compositing AOV Object ID... Custom AOV... Motion Vector AOV 1 How to Read a Render Log 106 Caustic Balloon Effect. 116 Lighting 17 Shading, 120 Caustic Effect Using Cell Noise... Flash Photograhy Effect... Lighting... Atmospheric Volume... Lighting a Room. Rendering with Ambient Occlusion... Ambient Occlusion shader. Quad Lights, Indirect Diffuse Ray Depth Light Decay filter. Tone Mapping. ‘Area Lights with HDRI....... Emissive Geometry.. Lighting with the Physical Sky .... Lighting with the Sky Dome Light... Studio Automotive Rendering. Quad Area Lighting ....nnemnminnnnnnnnniesesenennnnnnnnnn nnn 151 ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite1005 Emissive Plane..... Shading, Studio Lighting.. Spherical Camera Lens... Introduction to Operators Modifying an Alembic Procedural Using Operators. Anisotropic Brushed Metal Cell Noise Displacement Effect. Cell Noise. Color Correcting Donut Sprinkles Depth, Dust, & Position Procedural Masks... Displacement Mapping Using the Token... Flakes Example Incandescent Metal Material... Marble Shading Motion Graphic Effect Using Color Shaders Noise Patterns. Noise Shaders Cell Noise Shaders. Refractive Caustics using an Emissive Shader Remap an Image Using UV Coords...... Rendering an Ocean with Displacement Rim Shader... Shading a Globe... Earth Shader. Clouds Shader Using a Volume for the Atmosphere Shading a Rose. Shading. Lighting Shadow Terminator Rendering..... Specular BROF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function)... Making of Sophie... Toon Shading a Building... ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 155 186 160 163 163 167 a7. 175 1.77 179 184 186 189 192 195 202 202 204 205 213 218 222 225 234 237 239 242 242 243 243 244 245 247 248 253 2591006 Toon Shading a Mech Toon Shading and Lighting Sven. Using the HalfTone OSL Shader with Toon... Using the Barndoor Light Filter Vector Displacement from Mudbox to Arnold. Mudbox. 3ds Max. Water Bottle Scene Setup... Shading the Bottle Shading the Water...... Removing Noise...... What is Sampling}... Removing Noise Workflow. Denoising a Room interior. Arnold Denoiser Set Fireflies - Boat Scene Using AOVS to Identify Noise {An Introduction to Procedural. Depth of Field... Fake Caustic Effect... How to Render a Mandelbulb... Infinity Mirror Scene.. Converting an Interior Scene to MAXtoA. Lighting Shading. Rendering a Bathroom Scene with MAXtoA Shading the Bathroom, Lighting the Bathroom: Rendering the Bathroom... Arnold Render Setup..... MakeTX: Wooden Floor... Part 1 - Set Up The Scene... Part 2 - Render & Conversion... ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 264 264 269 275 277 282 283 226 229 290 290 290 294 306 315 317 320 322 226 330 338 340 346 351 352 354 355, 356 360 360 363 364 364 367 368 3691007 Refractive Portrait... Rendering Glass Surfaces with Arnold ... Modeling Glass and Liquid Example 2 Shading Glass and Liquid Glass Render Settings. Subdivision Tutorial Custom UI for Third Party Shaders. Automatic User Interface MAXtoA Supported Metadata Parameters Extending MAXtoA Translation Through MaxScript Plugins... Code Examples... Additional Notes... Cell Noise to Volume Displacement Animation... Normalized Noise to Volume Displacement Polymesh to Volume Rendering a Cloud Rendering Clouds using the Volume Shader Volume - Displacement Volume Sample RGB Example... Getting Started with Arnold GPU Supported Features...... System Requirements.... Pre-populating the GPU cache .. Selecting a Render Device Matching Noise on CPU and GPU. Textures. Arnold Render Setup Sampling (Image Quality) General Adaptive and Progressive Sampling Ray Depth Depth Limits... Advanced. Filtering ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 372 376 377 379 381 382 384 386 387 1393 395 396 402 402 406 10 416 423 425 427 432 ABD ABZ 432 433 433 433 434 435 436 Ad 1 AQ9 450 ASB 456 4871008 Clamping ..... Filtering Environment, Background & Atmosphere .. Motion Blur General Motion Blur Time Span. Geometry, Subdivision & Hair Subdivision Displacement Default Subdivision ... Hair (Curves)... Hair in MAXtoA. Textures (settings)... AOVS... Arbitrary Output Variables window AOV Wizard Add New AOV Output File. AOV List. Custom AOVs Output Path Tokens. system... General... Arnold RenderView........ Threads... Search Paths... Devices Automatic Device Selection, ‘Manual Device Selection (Local Render) GPU Settings Archive. Exporting To .ASS/.USD.... Options Export to MaterialX File... Denoiser... Optix Denoiser.... Arnold Denoiser.. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 487 487 460 462 467 468 470 473, 474 ATT 479 481 482 484 486 487 488 488 490 491 M92 493 A948 494 495 496 496 497 497 498 498 499 500 502 502 5041009 Diagnostics ..... Log. Render Statistics/Profiling... Error Handling .. Feature Overrides. User Options. AOV Output File Deep EXR Tolerance Values. EXR, IPEG vss PNG. TIFF... Cryptomatte ... Light Group Manager Per-light AOVs. imagers. Imager Color Correct Imager Exposure. imager Lens Effects Imager Tonemap ..... Imager White Balance........ Shapes ee Alembic... Viewport eee Arnold Properties Modifier General Properties ity. Shadows Visi General Trace $et8 oc Displacement... Displacement Parameters (Arnold Property Modifier). Subdivisions Subdivision ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 507 508 509 510 510 517 518 519 521 524 525 526 527 529 530 531 532 533 543, 544 546 553 559 559 564 565 567 568 570 572 S73 S74 574 575 579 5801010 Motion Blur Properties...... Sub-Surface Scattering: SSS Set Name... Toon Modifier... Volume... Points, Light Group. Shadow Group Particle System Particle Flow System, CaMEFA esse User Options Properties... Object ID Color Mode... Pointclouds..... Procedural... The Procedural Node Viewport uso Viewport User Data Volumes.. Parameters... Bounding Box... Motion Blur.. Animation Support ... DB Workflow .... Reducing Noise Volume AOVs. Lights Common Light parameters. Shape. Shadow. Contribution AOV Light Group... Cylinder Light... Disk Light... Distant Light .. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 585 386 587 588 590 592 593 594 594 597 599 600 602 604 607 610 611 614 615, 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 624 625 626 6a 631 633 635 635 637 6401011 Mesh Light... 641 Photometric Light... 646 Point Light. 647 Quad Light... 648 Skydome Light 654 Spot Light. 657 Light Filters 661 Light Filter Modifiers 662 Barndoor. 663 Blocker... 668 Decay an 674 Near... 674 Far. 676 Gobo... 677 Cameras. 681 VR Camera 682 Workflow. 687 Pole Merging. 687 Pole Merging Workflow. 688 Cylindrical Camera ..690 Fisheye Camera... 692 Spherical Camera... 694 Workflow Example....... 694 Below is an example of a spherical camera lens. The image below shows a studio lighting rig scene. The spherical camera can be used to convert this scene into a spherical HDRI that can be used with the skydome_light. 694 Shaders... 695 Materials. 696 3ds Max Materials 697 Supported 3ds Max Materials. 697 Other Materials 697 AOV Materials 697 OV Read, 698 AOV Write. cesses 698, Surface Materials. 699 Car Paint... 699 Base... 701 ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite1012 Specular... 1 702 Flakes.. 1 708 Coat... 714 Clip Geo... 717 lambert 720 Layer Shader m2 Matte 72 Standard Hair. n27 Color: 729 Specular... 731 TINO onsen 734 Diffuse. 736 Emission... 737 Advanced. 738 AOvs 740 Standard Surface 7a Base 744 ‘Advanced. 746 Specular. 749 General 749 Advanced... 752 Options... 758 Transmission... 763 General... 763 Advanced. 769 Scatter 73 Transmission and Opacity 774 Subsurface 778 SSS Between Objects 787 Coat 787 Clearcoat...... ss nnn sntnnnsnnnesesnne BT Affect Underlying. 794 Sheen... 799 Thin Film... 802 Emission. 806 Special Features... 809 ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite1013 OVS (ID) . Two Sided Shader Utility Materials, Map To Material ..nnene Passthrough Ray Switch Shader Switch Shader Trace Set Standard Volume. Density Scattering... Transparency... Emission... Blackbody..... ‘Advanced. ‘Atmosphere. Atmosphere Volume Volume Parameters. Contribution Parameters. FOG esse Math... Mix Shader... Maps... AQV Maps... Cryptomatte Map... Cryptomatte Globals. Standard Cryptomatte User Defined Cryptomatte 3ds Max Maps Bitmap Particle Age BUMP Maps rrr Bump2d.. Bump3d.. Normal Map sree Color ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite 810 B11 B11 B12 313 813 817 817 819 820 822 822 823 825 827 829 830 833 836 838 843 1 BAR 847 847 848 849 849 850 asi 852 853 853 853 854 856 8581014 Color Jitter... 858 Object... 1 859 Face 861 User Data. 863 Procedural 865 Color Correct 866 Alpha 871 Composite 871 Conversion. 875 Arnold Data Type Conversions 876 Shuffle.... 879 Channels 880 Negate.. . 880 Vector Map nnn 881 Math Maps 884 Length 888 Mix RGBA, 888 Range 889 Space Transform. 891 Matrix Multiply Vector 892 Matrix Transform .... 893 hading State... 895 Surface Maps... 898 Ambient Occlusion . 898 lakes.. 1906 3d Flakes. 910 Layer Float 912 912 Layer RGBA. 913 Shadow Matte 923 Background... 924 Shadow. 924 Diffuse. 926 SPECUIAF nnn 928 Lights. 931 Avs. 931 ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite1015 TOOM ne 934 Edge 938 Edge Detection... 942 ‘Advanced Edge Control... 947 silhouette 950 Base (Toon) 954 Specular (Toon) 958 Stylized Highlight 962 Rim Lighting 966 Transmission (Toon).. 970 Emission (Toon)... 973 Geometry. 976 AOVs (Toon)... 977 Advanced (Toon)... 979 Sheen (Toon) 982 User Data Shaders: 983 User Data Float 983 User Data Int 984 User Data RGB. 984 User Data RGBA. 984 User Data String.. 985 Arnold RenderView Window. 1 985 Working with the RenderView.......1:smnnnnnnnnsnnn 986 Manipulation ne 987 Region Rend 987 Picking. 987 Status Bar 988 Menus. 989 File 989 dow. 989 View. 990 Render. 994 Denoising.. 996 Amold Scene Source... 997 Max Script Commands... 998 Arnold Menu .. 1000 ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteArnold Arnold is an advanced cross-platform rendering library, or API, used by a number of prominent organizations in film, television, and animation, including Sony Pictures Imageworks. It was developed as a photo-realistic, physically-based ray tracing alternative to traditional scanline based rendering software for CG animation. Arnold uses cutting-edge algorithms that make the most effective use of your computer's hardware resources: memory, disk space, multiple processor cores, and SIMD/SSE units. The Arnold architecture was designed to easily adapt to existing pipelines. It is built on top of a pluggable node system; users can extend and customize the system by writing new shaders, cameras, filters, and output driver nodes, as well as procedural geometry, custom ray types and user-defined geometric data. The primary goal of the Arnold architecture is to provide a complete solution asa primary renderer for animation and visual effects. However, Arnold can also be used as: + Aray server for traditional scanline renderers. + Atool for baking/procedural generation of lighting data (lightmaps for videogames). + An interactive rendering and relighting tool. Arnold is a highly optimized, unbiased, physically-based ‘Monte Carlo’ ray/path tracing engine. It doesn't use caching algorithms that introduce artifacts like photon mapping and final gather. It is designed to efficiently render the increasingly complex images demanded by animation and visual effects facilities while simplifying the pipeline, infrastructure requirements and user experience. Arnold provides interactive feedback, often avoiding the need for many render passes and allowing you to match on-set lighting more efficiently. By removing many of the frustrating elements of other renderers, Arnold fits better with your work-flow, produces beautiful, predictable and bias-free results, and puts the fun back into rendering! What is wrong with algorithms like photon mapping or final gather? Such algorithms attempt to cache data that can be re-sampled later, to speed up rendering However, in doing so, they use up large amounts of memory, introduce intermediate steps that break interactivity, and introduce bias into the sampling that causes visual artifacts. They also require artists to understand the details of how these algorithms work to correctly choose various control settings to get any speed up at all without ruining the render. Worse than that, these settings are almost always affected by other things in the scene, so it's often possible to accidentally use settings for the cache creation/use that make things worse, not better, or that work fine in one situation but are terrible in another, seemingly similar, situation. In short, they are not predictable, other than for very experienced users, and require artists to learn way too much about the algorithms to gain any benefit. We believe that your time is, more valuable than your computer's time; why spend an extra 30 minutes working with photon mapping or final gather settings, even if it saves 30 minutes render time (and more often than not it doesn't). That's still 30 minutes not spent modeling, animating or lighting, ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteWhat are the advantages of being physically-based? Does this have implications for modeling and lighting scenes? ‘The advantage of being physically-based is that artists can work in a physically accurate, high dynamic range work-flow, and by using plausible values (being consistent about how you set lighting intensities and modeling scale) the end results will be more predictable. The process becomes much more akin to how a real scene is lit and photographed. It also ensures that other aspects of rendering are not broken. Installation MAXtoA requires 3ds Max 2019 or later. You must complete the following steps: 1. Download the MAXtoA installer from the downloads page. 2. Double click on the downloaded exe file to start the installation. On Windows 8 you may get a warning message saying "Windows protected your PC”. If this happens, click "More Info" and then click "Run anyway" to proceed with the installation. 3. Keep the default installation options, and click through the Setup Wizard until the setup is completed. {@) MAXtoA for 3ds Max 2018 - Setup Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite. h to close the Setup Wizard. ‘The Setup has cuccesefuly installed MAKtoA for 3s Max 2018, hee Finish to exit the wizard, 5, Start 3ds Max and open the Render Setup window. Arnold should appear in the available renderers. You should now be able to render with Arnold. Seren) eee rd Arnald Licensing Arnold If you would like to use Arnold in production, you can buy a license from Solid Angle. With a valid license key installed, the Arnold watermark will disappear from your rendered images. Solid Angle issues floating licenses. If you have a floating license, please refer to the licensing page for instructions on how to. install it. The RLM licensing tools can be found under /Plugins/MAXtoA/license (2018) or C:/ProgramData/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins/MAXtoA/license (2019) ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteLicense File Once you have sent us the Mac address and received your license (.lic) file, you can install it. After installing it correctly, you will be able to start rendering with MAXtoA, You must place the .lic file into the root folder of the MAXtoA plugin: /Plugins/MAXtoA (2018) or ¢: /ProgramData/Autodesk/ApplicationPlugins/MAXtoA/license (2019). Watermarks The watermark will appear on renders if Arnold can't find a license. ‘Only those renders run by batch (BackBurner) are watermarked without a license. Renders run from inside 3ds Max are not watermarked. Geta license To remove the watermark a license server needs to be installed and valid license running. See the Licensing page for more information. I've got a license but the watermarks are still there If the watermarks are still there, go to the Render Setup, and in the System tab, verify Skip License Check is disabled. With this setting enabled Arnold will always render your image with a watermark even if you have a valid license. But I dont want any watermarks ever When running on a farm, you sometimes prefer the render to fail entirely when no license is available than have watermarked images. Tick the Abort On License Fail option to enable this behavior. Rendering Your First Scene It assumes you have already: * Installed Arnold for 3ds Max. + Set up licensing (if you plan to use your 3ds max on a render farm or render from the command line or with Backburner, you will need a license for MAXtoA), 1. Start 3ds Max. 2. Arnold should appear as the current renderer in the Render Setup dialog (from the top menu bar, Rendering> Render Setu the Renderer drop-down menu or by clicking Mla), set Arnold from ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteSere een Petre Seer eae er cd iscussed further in sub- Note how the renderer options are organized in groups (this, topics of the Arnold Render Setup page). = Next, create a plane to act as a floor. Create> Standard Primitives> Plane. Click to place the corner of the plane and drag to size the plane. Standard Surface Shader + By default, the floor plane has no material assigned and renders with a default lambert shader. We will assign a Standard Surface shader instead. In the Slate Material Editor window, create a standard surface material by dragging or double-clicking it under the Arnold category in the Material/Map Browser pane on the left. Double click it in the central View window to view its parameters in the Material Parameter Editor. Assign the shader to the plane. Change the base color of the standard surface shader to blue. Standard Surface Base Color changed to blue + Next, create a sphere, again by choosing Create> Standard Primitives> Sphere, and place it on the floor plane. By default, the sphere will intersect the floor plane in the y-axis (this will be obvious in Default Shaded view. This is fine for now, leave it where itis. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite+ For this object, assign another shader to it using the same process as before. For now, just select a green color for the Green Standard Surface shader assignes to sphere + Next, we'll create another object... let's choose a cylinder this time. Place it in the scene. ‘= Assign another new shader. This time, set the diffuse color to red. You should now have a scene that looks like this. Arnold Light © We can choose an Arnold light from the Lights tab in the Create Panel ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite+ By default, a quad_light will be created. Change it to a point light, Position it so that, it is above and in front of all of the objects in the scene + Now we need to increase the exposure of the light. Select the light, and under the Modify Panel, you should see exposure. Increases it to around 14. Arnold ight Type: Point. Exposure increased to 18. A directional light is added to the scene if no light is created (like in the viewport). Rendering + Now we're ready to do a render. Start an Active Shade render by clicking on the icon. If you do not see this icon, hold down the mouse and on the flyout choose the ‘ActiveShade' button. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite+ You may still find that the scene is a little dark for your taste. It's worth mentioning at this point that lights in Arnold use quadratic decay by default (because that is what happens in the real world, and Arnold is designed to work with a physically accurate approach to modeling and lighting). You can also address the ‘too dark’ issue by altering the intensity of the light. Generally speaking, we recommend you work using the quadratic decay as it is more realistic, so you should choose intensities (and the scale of the model) accordingly, and then use the exposure setting to fine tune. + Ifyou increase the Radius of the light (select the point light and increase the Radius), you get soft shadows. Increase the number of light samples for the point light from 1 to 3 to reduce noise in the shadows. Increasing the Radi ofthe light creates softer shadows ‘A quick way to add lighting is by adding a color to the Environment. Press the "8" key to bring up the environment dialog, add color, and a skydome light is placed into the scene (under the hood) with IBL from this background, disabling the default lights). = Try increasing the specular_roughness of the green standard_surface shader that has been assigned to the sphere. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteIncreasing the speculor roughness blurs the specular reflection or the sphere The result of all these changes is available instantly in the Active Shade window so that you can work interactively, changing materials, and lighting without having to re-render to see the effect of your changes. You simply need to wait slightly longer for a better quality render if you have things set up correctly). That's the end of this short introductory tutorial. Now that you know how to assign and edit Arnold shaders, and alter Arnold settings of lights, it might be useful to play around with various settings for a few minutes before reading on. Once you have finished this tutorial, there is also another introduction to MAXtoA tutorial here. Introduction to Arnold for 3ds Max ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite10 Arnold is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer built for the demands of feature- length animation and visual effects movies. This is a beginners tutorial that introduces MAXtoA, a plug-in which allows you to use the Arnold renderer directly in Autodesk 3ds Max. In this tutorial, we will cover how to build a simple photographic lighting studio setup that can be used for lighting and render all manner of objects. We will go through the steps of lighting, shading, and render a toy robot model using the Arnold renderer. We will use Arnold's proprietary lights to achieve a physically accurate, photo-realistic lighting setup. We will use the standard_surface shader to shade the robot and give it a metallic finish, The standard_surface shader is a multi-purpose shader capable of producing all types, of materials, from simple plastic to car paint or skin. It is very powerful, and allows a large number of different sorts of materials to be created, but can be somewhat daunting at first. Due to a large number of controls, itis split up into several groups such as base, specular, sub-surface_scattering (SSS), etc. We will need to adjust the base and specular parameters to get a believable brushed metal effect. Lastly, we will look at how to optimize render settings and eliminate any noise that may appear in the render. Note that, although 3ds Max and MAXtoA have been used in this tutorial, much of the material is really about Arnold in general and so is also relevant to users of other Arnold implementations such as Maya for Arnold (MtoA) and Houdini for Arnold (HtoA), for example. The estimated time it will take to complete this tutorial should be no more than 30 minutes. The final s downloade: e file can bi here. Scene setup ‘+ Start off by opening the robot scene. In the scene, you should see the robot model (positioned at 0,0,0 on the 3ds Max grid) and a simple studio backdrop model. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite‘+ Assign a standard surface shader to the Backdrop object. Change the base color to a medium gray and reduce the svecular_reflection weight to 0. Now we want to light our studio scene. Start off by creating three Arnold quad lights. This can be done by licking on the ight icorlin the Create Panel. Coen Coons eel Position one light on either side and another in the center, above the robot. Rotate them so that they are pointing inwards towards the robot as indicated in the screengrab below. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteIf you cannot see the quad light area shape of the quad light in the viewport, you will need to enable Always Visible in Viewport in Shape Rendering for the light. Light Settings + The scene may appear dark when it is rendered. We, therefore, need to increase the exposure of the lights. Under the Arnold parameters, increase the exposure to around 8 for each light. + We can change the color of the lights by changing the color_temperature of the light. Select the right light and Kelvin. Change the Kelvin temperature to 12000. This will give a cool blue feel to the light. Select the light on the left and do the same, except change the Kelvin to a warmer color, something like 4000. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite13 ight Samples + You may notice some noise in the shadows from the quad lights. This is because the light’s samples are set to 1 by default. To reduce the noise, try increasing ‘the light_samples to 3. This setting can be found in the Rendering parameters within each light. Light samples control the quality of the noise in the soft shadows and direct specular highlight. The higher the number of samples, the lower the noise, and the longer it takes to render. Light Samples: 1 Light Samples: 3 Shading + Now we need to create a brushed metal shader for the robot. Open the Slate Material Editor (M). Create a standard_surface material and assign it to the robot. + Toturnit into a brushed metal material we will change the following settings. Lower the base color weight to 0.5. Increase the metalness to around 0.8 and increase ‘the specular_roughness to around 0.4, The specular_roughness controls the glossiness of the specular reflections. The lower the value, the sharper the reflection. Rendering + Rendering the scene using the default Camera (AA) setting of 3 is good enough for test renderings. However, for a final render, you will need to increase this to at least 5 or more depending on the amount of depth of field you have set in the scene. + There may be some noticeable glossy specular noise on the surface of the robot due ‘to poor sampling of the indirect specular component of the robot's shader. Increasing the global specular value to 3 helps resolve this noise and to create a cleaner looking render. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert EliteSampling and noise Noise nearly always comes from insufficient sampling, but increasing sampling for the wrong rays can make the render times increase without helping to remove the noise. The aim is to allocate rays as effectively as possible to imize the noise in the most efficient manner. So if the Camera (AA) samples have to be increased to remove DOF noise, the other settings must be lowered to keep render times manageable. However, if DOF or motion blur is not a concern, then increasing Camera (AA) samples would fix all noise elsewhere but would also slow render times from the unnecessary rays. Understanding Physically Based Rendering in Arnold Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite15, Designing materials based on physical laws can tremendously simplify shading and lighting, even when we do not necessarily strive for realism or physical accuracy. By understanding. and applying a few principles, we can make images that are more believable, and create materials that behave more predictably in different lighting setups. In modern renderers, physically based rendering refers to concepts like energy conservation, physically plausible scattering and layering in materials and linear color spaces. Arnold is a physically based renderer, but it also lets you break the rules and create materials and lights that do not obey the laws of physics if you wish. In this document, we'll explain the underlying theory and how to set up your shaders to follow these principles. Arnold supports various third party applications such as Substance Painter, Photons and Scattering In rendering we simulate photons emitted from lights, traveling through the air and bouncing off surfaces and through volumes, eventually ending up on a camera sensor. The combination of millions of photons on the camera sensor then forms the rendered image This means that from a physics point of view, surface shaders describe how the surface interacts with photons. Photons hitting an object can be absorbed, reflect off the surface, refract through the surface, or scatter around inside the object. The combination of these components results in a wide variety of materials. Energy Conservation Unless an object is a light source that emits photons, it can't return more energy than is being contributed by the incoming light. For a material to be energy conserving the number of photons leaving the surface should be smaller or equal to the number of incoming photons. If a material is not energy conserving, materials will appear overly bright and render with increased noise, especially when using global illumination. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite16 To keep materials energy conserving, the weight and color of material components should never exceed 1. Further, we must be careful to ensure that the combination of all components is energy conserving, which we'll explain in detail later. eeeceeeees Materials At the microscopic level, object surfaces are intricately detailed. For rendering, we do not use geometry to represent all of this detail, but rather use statistical models that have easy to understand parameters. Arnold's Standard Surface shader models objects with one or two specular layers, and a diffuse or transparent interior. This model can represent a wide variety of materials. Let's look at the individual components. Diffuse and Subsurface Scattering First, consider the diffuse interior. Incoming photons will enter the object, scatter around inside and either get absorbed or leave the object at another location If photons scatter many times, we get a diffuse appearance, due to photons leaving the surface in many different locations and directions. For materials like skin, photons can scatter relatively far under the surface giving a very soft appearance, which we render with subsurface scattering. For materials like unfinished wood, photons do not scatter very far which gives a harder appearance, and we render these as diffuse. For thin objects like leaves, the photons can scatter all the way to the other side of the object, which we render as diffuse SSS with thin_wall enabled Note that fundamentally all of these types of materials have the same underlying physical mechanism, even though we provide separate controls for them in the shader. The diffuse interior also typically has the biggest influence on the overall color of the material. Each photon has an associated wavelength, and depending on the properties of the material some photons with some wavelengths are more likely to be absorbed than others. This, in turn, means that photons with some wavelengths are more likely to leave the surface, which will give it a colored appearance. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite7 ee ‘The skin ofa red apple mostly reflects relight. Only the red wavelengths are scattered back outside the apple skin, and the others are absorbed byt. Energy Conservation A single photon can only participate in one of the diffuse, subsurface scattering and backlighting components, for physical correctness we do not want more photons leaving the surface than entering. For Standard Surface, it is automatically ensured that the sum of these components is not higher than 1. ; Specular Roughness Oto 1 Specular Scattering Roughness The specular layer is modeled using a microfacet distribution. We assume that the surface consists of microscopic faces oriented in random directions. A surface with low roughness such as a mirror will have little variation between the faces, resulting in sharp reflections. With high roughness there will be a lot of variation resulting in softer, glossy reflections. Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite18 A strong Specular highlights visible on the apple. Note the table's specular reflection whichis broad and dll (high Specular Roughness value Rough reflections caused by scattered ight rays \ ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite19 Glossy surface. Angle of incidence and Diffuse surface. Ray direction varies reflection are equal. randomly. Roughness Map To get variation in the highlights of the surface, a map should be connected to the Specular Roughness. This will influence not only the brightness of the highlight but also it's size and the sharpness of the environmental reflection. Low Specular Roughness High Specular Roughness "Scratches texture connected to Specular Roughness (via Range shader) AAD AA AAD Transmis ion Photons can not only be reflected off the surface, but can refract through it as well. Photons will pass through the specular layer, typically changing direction when exiting on the other side of the layer, controlled by the index of refraction (IOR), If the interior of the surface is transparent, such as for clear glass, then photons can pass through the object and exit on the other side. If there is a diffuse interior, the photon can scatter inside the object and get absorbed or exit the object again. The more refractive the specular layer, the more the underlying diffuse interior will be visible. For materials like Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite20 metals, photons refracting through the specular are often immediately absorbed, and so the diffuse interior is not visible. Fresnel The percentage of photons reflected or refracted by the specular layer is view dependent. When looking at surfaces head on, most light is refracted, while at grazing angles most light is reflected. This is called the Fresnel effect. The index of refraction controls exactly how this effect varies with the viewing angle. Variation ofa Specular BROF with respect to the view direction Opacity and Transmission Opacity is best understood as a way to model surface geometry using textures. It does not affect how photons interact with the surface, but rather indicates where the surface's geometry is absent and the photons can pass straight through, UY Ramp texture connected to the opacity Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite21 A typical use for opacity would be a sprite type of effect, such as cutting out the shape of a leaf from a polygon card or making the tips of hair strands transparent. Be warned however that scenes containing many opacity sprites (for example tree leaves) can slow down rendering considerably. Leaf Opacity: Disabled Alpha map connected to Opacity Transmission depth is similar, but rather than the surface it controls the density of the object interior. Denser volumes will absorb more photons as they pass through the interior, making the object darker where it is thicker. Transmission Color: White Transmission Color: light blue ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite2 ‘shadow mete shader applied to floorplan. Roll over image to view backplate ony This tutorial will cover how to light, shade, and render a car model using an exterior HORI and backplate image. It will show you how to light the car model using an Arnold It covers how to realistically shade the car model using the and shaders. We will also use the shader to composite the car model onto a photographic backplate. + Acar model is available for download +The HDRI and backplate images can be downloaded + Ascene file (minus the car model) can be downloaded + Acar material library can be downloaded ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite23 Importing the CAD Data + Start off by downloading the CAD model (link above) ‘+ Extract the contents and import this step file: 01-AVENTADOR LP700.SLDPRT (SolidWorks Part File). + Position and rotate the car so that it sits flat on the grid as in the image below. ds Max defaults to the Z-Up axis, whereas the axis of this original CAD data is Y-Up. The axis can be changed to Y-Up in File -> Import (Import Settings). Fle > import Settings Floor Plane + Create a floor plane large enough to capture the shadow from the car model ‘Assign the shadow matte shader to it. This will ‘catch shadows from lighting witl the scene and will be used to integrate the car model onto the photographic background backplate. You will need to connect the shadow_matte shader to a Map to Material shader in order to assign it to the floor plane. ‘Arnold Render Basic Training Manual ~ Autodesk Expert Elite