November 7 2014

This version uses the Arnold 4.2.2.0 core.

HIGHLIGHTED NEW FEATURES

• The ambient occlusion shader has a new check to only gather occlusion against the same object.
• The importance sampling tables needed by textured quad area lights can now be computed in parallel, which will speedup scenes with many lights.
• Faster thread creation/destruction.
• Reduced texture IO.

NOTES

• We now expose the new arnold matte parameter for all the shapes. Shader Matte functionality in our built-in shaders is still exposed but might be removed in a future release.

INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES

• SSS with zero diffusion radius: previously such shaders would render black, now the result is the same as a diffuse BRDF. This affects the standard shader.