25 March 2026

Arnold 7.5.0.0 is a feature release.

Enhancements

• Better backfacing normal: Interpolated normals facing away from the camera could produce darkening artifacts on low‑poly meshes. Such normals are now bent toward the view direction to prevent this. (ARNOLD-6993)

• Unify Gaussian filter on GPU: The GPU camera code now uses the same Gaussian filter implementation as the CPU. This provides a closer match and more consistent results between CPU and GPU. (ARNOLD-17059)

• OpenColorIO 2.5.1: Arnold now includes OpenColorIO 2.5.1. This update includes all fixes and small improvements since the 2.5.0 release. See the full release notes for more details. (ARNOLD-17324)

• Upgrade Autodesk Analytics Program: Arnold includes a newer version of the Autodesk Analytics Program (ADP), which brings stability and performance improvements. (ARNOLD-16814)

API Changes

• AtMatrix API: Now supports inequality comparisons via operator!=. (ARNOLD-17354)
• Distributed Kick: kick has two new command-line parameters: --tile y x and --merge, for splitting a render over multiple processes. --tile y x takes two integer arguments specifying tile y out of x total tiles (for example, --tile 0 4 renders tile 1 of 4, '--tile 1 4' renders tile 2 of 4, and so on). Each tile is saved with the tile number as part of the file name (for example, example.0002_0_4.exr). After you render all tiles, run kick --merge with the same command line to merge the tiles into the final image. (ARNOLD-16921)

Incompatible Changes

• Bloom now defaults to aperture mode: The lens_effects imager's bloom mode now defaults to using the aperture mode instead of the deprecated simple mode. (ARNOLD-17295)

• Bloom dispersion enabled by default: The bloom dispersion used in aperture mode now defaults to 1. (ARNOLD-17305)

• USD doubleSided attribute ignored by default: The UsdGeom doubleSided attribute is false by default, so geometry renders as single-sided, which is different from the default Arnold behavior. To prevent unexpected renders and unwanted artefacts caused by this difference, Arnold now ignores this USD attribute and uses the Arnold-specific primvars:arnold:sidedness instead. usd#2099 You can roll back this change by disabling the new options attribute usd_override_double_sided (ARNOLD-17312)

• Cryptomatte with instances: The Cryptomatte attribute object_split_instances is now disabled by default, so that Cryptomatte produces smaller manifests for intstances and returns the same hash for all instances of the same object. (ARNOLD-17320)

• Still API compatible with 7.4: No Arnold ABI has been modified/removed, so Arnold 7.5 is still backwards compatible with shaders/plugins compiled for Arnold 7.4. (ARNOLD-17301)

• Autodesk Network Licensing version: Arnold 7.5 switches to ARNOL_2027 licensing.

  • Single-user subscriptions will work with Arnold 7.5. The plugin installers automatically register the new version. If you do not use a plugin, then after you download Arnold, open the Arnold License Manager and click Register.
  • Existing network licenses will not work with Arnold 7.5. Log on to your Autodesk account to generate your new ARNOL_2027 licenses.
  • If you do not run the installers, and you manually register Arnold, then use--pk C0PS1 --pv 2027.0.0.F with the AdskLicensingInstHelper command.

• macOS 12: Arnold now requires macOS 12 or later. (ARNOLD-15807)

• Improved API Safety with [[nodiscard]] Annotations: The Arnold API now uses [[nodiscard]] on key return values to help plugin developers catch unintended mistakes at compile time. If your code fails to compile, it likely means a return value that affects behavior was being ignored. This change helps surface issues earlier, making your custom plugins more reliable and easier to debug. Update your code to use the returned value where appropriate, or remove calls that have no effect. (ARNOLD-16995)

USD Enhancements

• USD 25.11: Arnold USD now uses USD 25.11. See the USD release notes for more information.

Bug Fixes

• ARNOLD-17045 - Fixed procedural curves not having transparent shadows
• usd#2533 - Connections to shader with multiple outputs not properly authored to USD
• usd#2519 - Fix transform of cameras under procedurals
• usd#2526 - Update the arnold frame value when changing frame in solaris
• usd#2542 - Remove dependency on usdSkelImaging in the scene index.
• usd#2530 - Support uniform and vertex-interpolated primvars that are indexed
• usd#2532 - Fix crashes in IPR with ArnoldGinstance primitives

System Requirements

• Windows 10 or later, with the Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.
• Linux with at least glibc 2.28. This is equivalent to RHEL/Rocky 8.
• macOS 12 or later.
• x86-64 CPUs need to support the SSE4.1 instruction set. Apple Mac models with M-series chips are natively supported.
• GPU rendering and OptiX denoising work on Windows and Linux only, and require an NVIDIA GPU with the Maxwell architecture or later.
  • On Linux, we recommend 590.48 or higher drivers.
  • On Windows, we recommend 591.28 or higher drivers.
• Intel OIDN GPU support is limited to:
  • macOS
    • Apple native CPUs (M1 and newer)
  • Linux
    • NVIDIA GPUs using Turing or newer architectures
  • Windows
    • Intel Xe dedicated and integrated GPUs
    • NVIDIA GPUs using Turing or newer architectures
    • AMD GPUs with RDNA2 (Navi 21 only) and RDNA3 (Navi 3x) architectures