A material shader returns mix of BxDF closures, and the renderer itself takes care of doing 'the right thing' with them. No longer are material shaders little dumb raytracers that count lights and shoot reflection rays. This relegates the work of rendering to the renderer, as it should be. The addition of 'closures' is a complete godsend. It's a giant step up from the old Arnold 4 both in features and technology, but more importantly in 'cleanliness' of the API and its internal concepts. Release newer stuff same day!Īrnold 5 is an amazing piece of technology, and working with it has been a complete joy.
(Yes, even same day as 3ds max 2018 was released with MAXtoA built in, we released a new MAXtoA that was 100 builds newer. The one that ships with max is build 712. So when you do get 3ds max 2018 you will find Arnold 5 inside it - in the form of the MAXtoA plugin. The last year for me has been busy as hell, but insanely fun!! We've done the impossible, and integrated a renderer fully in one year!