Update: Autodesk Arnold 7.2.2.0

Autodesk Arnold 7.2.2.0 adds faster interactive scene edits and rendering optimizations. In addition, it provides improved support for USD and MaterialX. Plus, you’ll find many other user experience improvements and, of course, some bug fixes. Below, read a summary of what’s new.

Improved interactivity when modifying large scenes

Arnold 7.2.2.0 greatly improves interactivity with large scenes, allowing for nearly instantaneous rendering when editing lights or shaders in scenes with millions of instances. This greatly enhances rendering speed and performance, especially when using the point instancer in USD.

Improved global light sampling performance

In certain situations, it’s now more efficient to use global light sampling for indirect lighting.

Reduced numerical precision differences across CPU vendors

Since images on Intel, AMD, and Apple CPUs were already similar in appearance, Autodesk made improvements to eliminate more differences in shading and color rendering. As a result, more images now appear exactly the same to the eye.

Reduced noise from mesh lights in volumes

When using mesh lighting with very small triangles, less noise is produced in volumes.

There are also USD enhancements, API Additions, incompatible changes, and bug fixes, so check out the full release notes on the Updates tab on the Arnold product page. The system requirements have also slightly changed.