Autodesk Arnold

{{short description|3D rendering software developed by Autodesk}}

{{Infobox software

| name = Arnold

| logo = 90px

| logo caption = Official Autodesk Arnold logo

| screenshot =

| caption =

| author = Marcos Fajardo

| developer = Solid Angle, Autodesk, Sony Pictures Imageworks

| released = {{start date and age|1998}}

| latest_release_version = 7.3.3

| latest_release_date = {{Start date and age|2024|7}}

| operating_system = Linux, Windows, macOS

| platform = x86-64, Apple M series, CUDA-enabled NVIDIA

| programming language = C++, CUDA

| genre = Rendering system

| license = Proprietary commercial software

| website = {{URL|https://www.arnoldrenderer.com}}

}}

Autodesk Arnold (also known as simply Arnold) is a computer program for rendering three-dimensional, computer-generated scenes using unbiased, physically-based, Monte Carlo path tracing techniques. Created in Spain by Marcos Fajardo, it was later co-developed by his company Solid Angle SL (now owned by Autodesk) and Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Arnold is one of the most widely used photorealistic rendering systems in computer graphics worldwide, particularly in animation and VFX for film and television.

Technology

Originally written in C99 and progressively rewritten in C++, Arnold runs natively on x86 and Apple CPUs, where it tries to take advantage of all available threads and SIMD lanes for optimal parallelism. Since March 2019{{cite news | url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/news/press-release-arnold-5-3-gpu/ | title=Introducing Arnold 5.3 with Arnold GPU in public beta | date=18 March 2019}} it supports Nvidia RTX-powered GPUs through the use of OptiX.

Its ray tracing engine is optimized to send billions of spatially incoherent rays throughout a 3D scene composed of geometric primitives including polygons, hair splines, and volumes. It often uses multiple levels of diffuse and specular inter-reflection so that light can bounce off of a wall or other object and indirectly illuminate a subject. For complex scenes such as the space station in Elysium, it makes heavy use of geometry instancing, which helps it render trillions of visible polygons in a reasonable amount of memory. It can render large numbers of high-resolution texture maps thanks to its efficient integration of the OpenImageIO library. It has a fully programmable API, and uses shaders written in C++ or Open Shading Language to define the materials and textures.{{cite journal | doi=10.1145/3182160 | journal=ACM Transactions on Graphics | volume=37 | title=Arnold: A Brute-Force Production Path Tracer | date=August 2018 | s2cid=216145164 }}

Arnold is based on the Monte Carlo Path Tracing algorithm, making extensive use of importance sampling and other numerical techniques to improve the quality of rendered images. Throughout the 2010s, its team published research that popularized the use of solid angle-based sampling of area lights in production rendering,{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/egsr2013_spherical_rectangle.pdf| title=An Area-Preserving Parametrization for Spherical Rectangles| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=Eurographics Symposium on Rendering| date=2013}}{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/egsr2017_spherical_ellipse.pdf| title=Area-Preserving Parameterizations for Spherical Ellipses| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=Eurographics Symposium on Rendering| date=2017}}{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/egsr2018_projected_spherical_caps.pdf| title=Stratified Sampling of Projected Spherical Caps| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=Eurographics Symposium on Rendering| date=2018}} equi-angular sampling for volumetric scattering,{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/s2011_equiangular_slides.pdf| title=Importance Sampling of Area Lights in Participating Media| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=ACM SIGGRAPH| date=2011}} ray-traced sub-surface scattering,{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/s2013_bssrdf_slides.pdf| title= BSSRDF Importance Sampling| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=ACM SIGGRAPH| date=2013}} and blue-noise dithered sampling.{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/research/dither_abstract.pdf| title=Blue-noise Dithered Sampling| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com| publisher=ACM SIGGRAPH| date=2016}}

History

File:Marcos Fajardo, Siggraph 2013.jpg 2013 in Anaheim, CA]]

Marcos Fajardo was the chief architect of Arnold until 2020. The beginnings of what is now Arnold emerged in 1997 when Fajardo decided to write his own renderer. That year, he attended SIGGRAPH, where his interest in stochastic ray tracing (a foundational part of Arnold's rendering technology) was piqued in discussions with friends attending the conference.

Early versions of Fajardo's renderer were called RenderAPI. The name Arnold emerged when one of Fajardo's friends suggested it after mocking an Arnold Schwarzenegger film they saw in a theater.

In 2004, Fajardo entered a licensing and co-development agreement with Sony Pictures Imageworks, which resulted in separate branches for the commercial and Sony-proprietary versions of Arnold.{{Cite web |url=https://www.arnoldrenderer.com/about/| title=about| website= www.arnoldrenderer.com}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.realtimerendering.com/resources/RTNews/html/rtnv23n1.html#art3| title=Marcos and Arnold| author=Eric Haines| date=July 20, 2010|publisher=Ray Tracing News}} The commercial version was integrated via plug-ins into several DCC packages including Softimage, Maya, Katana, Cinema4D, and Houdini.

Solid Angle SL, the company behind Arnold, was founded in 2009 in Madrid and purchased by Autodesk in early 2016. The acquisition was announced officially on April 18, 2016.{{cite news | url=https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/solid-angle-joins-autodesk | title=Solid Angle joins Autodesk | date=18 April 2016}} Arnold is now bundled with Maya and 3ds Max.

Awards

On 4 January 2017, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized Fajardo with a Scientific and Engineering award (Academy plaque) for "the creative vision and original implementation of the Arnold Renderer."{{cite news|last1=Giardina|first1=Carolyn|title=Oscars: Scientific and Technical Awards Winners Revealed|url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/oscars-2017-scientific-technical-awards-winners-revealed-960765|accessdate=January 5, 2017|work=The Hollywood Reporter|date=January 4, 2017}}

On 21 October 2021, the Television Academy recognized Fajardo, along with colleagues Alan King and Thiago Ize, with an Engineering Emmy statuette for the Arnold Global Illumination Rendering System.{{cite news|last1=Goodell|first1= Stephanie |title=73rd Engineering Emmy Awards Winners Announced|url=https://www.emmys.com/news/awards-news/engineering-211007|work=Television Academy|date=October 7, 2021}}

On 1 December 2023, as part of the first CVMP Technical Awards, Fajardo received a CVMP Implementation Award for Arnold, "to individual(s) who have taken academic research and then have pioneered in a timely manner a tool that implements that research in a novel way."{{cite news|title=CVMP Awards|url=https://www.cvmp-conference.org/2023/awards/|work=The ACM SIGGRAPH European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP)|date=November 30, 2023}}

Shows

Notable feature films that have used Arnold include Monster House, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Alice in Wonderland, Thor, Captain America, X-Men: First Class, The Avengers, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Elysium, Pacific Rim, Gravity, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.{{cite web | url=http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-rendering/ | title=The Art of Rendering (updated) | publisher=fxguide.com, LLC | work=fxguide | date=10 April 2012 | accessdate=6 August 2013 | author=Seymour, Mike}}

Notable television series include Game of Thrones, Westworld, Trollhunters, LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS, Foundation, The Mandalorian, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and 3 Body Problem.

Notable studios using Arnold

class="wikitable" ! scope="col" \| Country ! scope="col" \| Studio
scope="row" \| Australia \| Rising Sun Pictures
scope="row" rowspan="4" \| Canada \| Sony Pictures Imageworks
Rodeo FX
Image Engine
Hybride technologies
scope="row" \| France \| Mikros Image
scope="row" rowspan="3" \| Germany \| Trixter
Pixomondo
LAVAlabs Moving Images
scope="row" \| Hungary \| Digic Pictures
scope="row" \| India \| Prana Studios
scope="row" rowspan="2" \| Japan \| Marza Animation Planet
Square Enix
scope="row" \| Norway \| Storm Studios
scope="row" \| Poland \| Platige Image
scope="row" rowspan="2" \| Spain \| Skydance Animation Madrid
El Ranchito
scope="row" rowspan="2" \| United Kingdom \| Cinesite
The Mill
scope="row" rowspan="3" \| United States \| Luma Pictures
Reel FX
Psyop

class="wikitable"

! scope="col" | Country

! scope="col" | Studio

scope="row" | Australia

| Rising Sun Pictures

scope="row" rowspan="4" | Canada

| Sony Pictures Imageworks

scope="row" | France