What's New in Rendering and Shading

Arnold for Maya renderer now available with Maya 2017

A default install of Maya 2017 now includes Arnold for Maya. For a list of new features, see Arnold for Maya new features.

• Arnold for Maya renderer
• mental ray to Arnold transition guide
• Arnold for Maya User Guide

New Render Setup features

Hierarchical collections are now supported in the Render setup system, improving performance and allowing for better organization and control. It is now easier to recognize the objects and nodes that have overrides applied, and more advanced workflows are now made possible.

Lights are added to render layers by default, and it is no longer necessary to drag and drop the lights collection to add them to a layer.

Create AOV overrides to enable or disable different AOVs on each render layer, or export your AOVs and import them into another scene.

Batch render scene files with either render setup or legacy render layers without having to switch the Preferred Render Setup System in your Maya preferences.

Note:

Maya's Render Setup system was introduced in Maya 2016 Extension 2. It replaces the legacy render layer system, and simplifies the management of complex scenes. It brings a modern approach to adding shot-based overrides to scenes, and you can then easily generate templates for the setup of a shot and propagate these setups from one shot to another. See What's New in Rendering and Shading in Maya 2016 Extension 2 for more information.

• Create subcollections
• Use hierarchical collections to override shaders applied per face
• Create light overrides in your render layer
• Create AOV overrides with Render Setup

Render a sequence of frames interactively

When rendering an animation, you can render a sequence of frames without the need to batch render. For convenience, you can also add these images to the Render View for preview.

• Render a sequence of frames interactively

New Viewport 2.0 features

• OpenSubdiv improvements:

• • Performance improvement by a factor of 2 to 4 for sculpting and mesh editing workflows when using the OpenSubdiv Catmull-Clark Uniform subdivision method.
  • OpenCL acceleration for OpenSubdiv Catmull-Clark Uniform subdivision method is now enabled on the Mac OS X platform, and therefore is available on all platforms.
  • OpenSubdiv Catmull-Clark Adaptive subdivision method is now integrated natively in Viewport 2.0.
    • It is available in both DirectX11 and Core Profile (both Compatibility and Strict) devices, on all platforms.
    • Through native Viewport 2.0 integration, OpenSubdiv adaptive meshes now support procedural textures and full shading networks, along with increased fidelity light effects.
    • Displacement maps can be previewed using the Adaptive method. See Preview displacement results in the viewport.
  • Note that there are still certain limitations. See OpenSubdiv Limitations.
• Improved fidelity displaying nParticle sprites in Viewport 2.0, where a higher texture resolution is supported.

New Hair material geometry in the Hypershade Material Viewer

You can now render your hair shader using the hair swatch geometry in the Material Viewer in the Hypershade.

OCIO look support for color management

If you are using an OpenColorIO configuration file that defines a view that includes a look transform, the look transform is now applied automatically when using the OCIO view as the View Transform.

New ShaderFX hair shader

A new Hair Surface Shader node has been added to ShaderFX that allows you to create hair materials for your game.

Texture files are provided in the /presets/Assets/Textures folder of the Maya install that you can connect to the Opacity Map and Breakup Map attributes of the ShaderFX Attribute Editor.

mental ray no longer provided with Maya

In Maya 2017, mental ray is no longer provided with Maya. To render scenes that contain mental ray nodes, download the mayatomr plug-in from the NVIDIA web site.