5.4.7 - Arnold for Maya
11 December 2024
MtoA 5.4.7 uses Arnold 7.3.6.0 and is a minor feature release.
Installation
Download Arnold for Maya from your Autodesk Account. See Download Arnold for more information about downloading MtoA from your Autodesk Account.
Follow these installation instructions.
Enhancements
Add layer_name parameter in AOV nodes : The ability to set the layer name for AOvs has been added to the AOV editor and the AOV nodes. This means you can declare the same AOV multiple times with separate names that will appear in output EXRs (MTOA-227)
Various normal types for triplanar: The triplanar shader has a new parameter
normal_type
which can be used to select the type of normal to use for selecting the dominant axis for texturing. The options areshading
, which is the previous behavior and uses the smooth shading normal (this normal includes bump),smooth_and_displaced
is like the shading normal but without the bump, and finallysmooth_before_displacing
gives the smooth normal before displacement and bump. Note thatsmooth_before_displacing
requires that autobump be enabled. (ARNOLD-15523)
- Improve interoperability between Arnold and MaterialX shaders: It is now possible to connect Arnold closure shaders such as standard_surface and openpbr_surface to MaterialX surfaceshader shaders such as mix. (ARNOLD-15238)
Register extra prims when exporting to USD : When exporting to USD using Maya USD we now make sure to export extra prims added by arnold (MTOA-2111)
Upgrade OCIO: OpenColorIO was upgraded to 2.4.0. (ARNOLD-15477)
Update OpenSSL to 3.14 : Updated OpenSSL to include security fixes (MTOA-2174)
USD Enhancements
- shader_override in Hydra: Arnold scenes with shader_override set in the options can be exported to USD and rendered through Hydra now (usd#2119)
- Operators in Hydra: Operators are now represented as UsdShade primitives. Arnold scenes with operators that are exported to USD can now be rendered through Hydra (usd#2110)
- Updated Arnold schemas : Legacy Typed schemas were replaced with API schemas for the corresponding USD node types (usd#2088)
- First support for versioned schemas: Versioned schemas (such as DomeLight_1) can now be rendered in USD and Hydra (usd#2145)
API Additions
Additional metadata for parameter grouping and types: New metadata added for most base types (such as polymesh, shape, light, and skydome_light to specify information about parameters. (ARNOLD-15674)
ui.groups
- Information on the grouping of parameters, useful for applications to automate the display of parameters. This metadata was previously available for some shaders only. It is in the form ofGroup Name 1:param_1 param_2,Group Name2:param_3 param_4
ui.hide
- This boolean hides a parameter in an interfaceray_vis_type
- A boolean metadata for parameters that takes a byte value that represents a ray-type mask, for example,visibility
,sidedness
Incompatible Changes
AiMakeTx without color conversion: When AiMakeTx or maketx are run on a texture that has the same color space as the rendering space, a TX file with the suffix "raw" is created, following the same convention as what auto-tx does at render time. (ARNOLD-15636)
Correct narrow space with the OCIO env var: When the default color manager node is used with an environment variable OCIO pointing to a custom config file, Arnold now use a proper narrow space for 8-bit textures, instead of assuming a narrow space called
sRGB
. (ARNOLD-15634)
Bug Fixes
- MTOA-2009 - Crash if unloading MtoA
- MTOA-2182 - UsdPreviewSurface not translating
- MTOA-2164 - [USD] Frame set incorrectly for USD node
- ARNOLD-12112 - Appending render causes buckets to be added in the wrong AOV
- ARNOLD-15247 - Fixed crash on systems with vGPUs, or GPU in TCC mode under Windows
- ARNOLD-15433 - OIDN treats AtVector as float2
- ARNOLD-15488 - MaterialX published compound with promoted color port does not render correctly
- ARNOLD-15533 - Fixed ordering of parameters in kick info
- ARNOLD-15670 - Crash when modifying vlist on an instanced mesh
- ARNOLD-15645 - Texture resolving not working with search path or path mapping in some cases
- ARNOLD-15587 - Parameter reset on an instance node creates unnecessary array copies
- ARNOLD-15278 - Crash on interactive modification of light_group or shadow_group array
- ARNOLD-15668 - Resetting a procedural node should unload its children
- usd#2129 - Fixed crashes when instancers have empty / invalid positions
- usd#2131 - Wrong transform when an instanceable prim is not xformable
- usd#2133 - Fixed crash when the root primitive is invalid
- usd#2122 - RectLight doesn't take width / height into account with scenes exported from Arnold
- usd#1764 - ArnoldUsd schema was missing from Arnold SDK
- usd#2154 - Fix regression in Husk renders missing motion and velocity data
System Requirements
- Maya 2023, 2024, or 2025
- Windows 10 or later, with the Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.
- Linux with at least glibc 2.17 and libstdc++ 4.8.5 (gcc 4.8.5). This is equivalent to RHEL/CentOS 7.
- x86-64 CPUs need to support the SSE4.1 instruction set.
- macOS 10.13 or later, macOS 11 and later for Maya 2024
- Apple Mac models with M series chips:
- Natively supported by Arnold for Maya 2024
- Supported under Rosetta 2 mode for older versions of Maya
- 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 535.104 or higher drivers.
- On Windows, we recommend 537.13 or higher drivers.
- Intel OIDN GPU support is limited to:
- Apple native CPUs (M1 and newer)
- 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