Up Close and Personal with Arnold: A Workflow Process for Using Arnold in 3ds Max 2019

RENU MATHOO: Hello. Good morning, everyone. So I think it's the time, like 9:50. So how is everyone today? Good morning.

Yeah, OK. So we'll be talking Arnold today. And as all of you know that Arnold was introduced in the 3ds Max 2018. And so it's just a little bit of a workflow process of how to get a basic render with Arnold going. So let's talk Arnold. So the class, the title-- as you all know, it is "Workflow Process for Using Arnold in 3ds Max 2019."

So I think most of you must have read my bio. But still, I just go over a little bit about myself. And my name is Renu Muthoo. And I have over 20 years of experience working with Autodesk products, which include AutoCAD and all the work that goes with AutoCAD and then 3ds Max, as well.

So I work for a company. And we are the Autodesk authorized publishers. And we write all the courseware material for AutoCAD and AutoCAD [INAUDIBLE], like Electrical, Mechanical, and so on-- and then, also, 3ds Max. So that's a basic overview. You can have the detailed bio with the class if you have taken out the handouts and all this stuff.

So let's get into Arnold. And before I start with the workflow process, let me give you a little bit of an overview and history of Arnold. So I wasn't aware, but maybe most of you must have been, that it has been there for a pretty long time. And it is basically used mostly in the movie production industry, both for visual effect films, as well as the animated films.

So it is ray-tracing, photo realistic, and physically-based rendering engine. And it was developed by Solid Angle around the late 1990s, which was 1998 or 1999. So the first movie-- there was a short film that was created using Arnold. And that was called 50% Gray. This was actually even nominated for the Academy Awards.

And this movie came out in 2000. And then after that, they started putting in more features into Arnold, making it faster, and quicker to-- and a robust engine. So they were developing all that stuff until 2006, when the actual first full-length feature film came out. And that was called Monster House. It was done for the Sony Picture Imageworks.

So since then, it has been extensively used in the movie industry. As you can see on the screen-- do you recognize that shot from that movie? Anybody? Gravity. Yeah, so Gravity was produced using Arnold renderer. And many other movies-- a huge list of movies-- have been rendered using Arnold.

So some of them include-- have you watched The Avengers? Who has watched Avengers here? All of you. And I have, too, many times. And I didn't know it, but it has also been produced using Arnold.

So the visual effects in Avengers was using Arnold. So Captain America, Alice in Wonderland-- there are so many more movies that have. So it was used extensively over. But it was not used more in the construction industry and the engineering circles. It was not very well-known there.

So then Autodesk, in 2016, they got in a partnership with Solid Angle. And Solid Angel and Autodesk became one company. They bought Solid Angle. And since then, it has been their own company.

So gradually, they incorporated it into a 3ds Max. Where else would they incorporate a rendered so robust and good? So that's when it got introduced into 3ds Max 2018.

And at the same time, it replaced Mental Ray. Most of us were using Mental Ray until then. And that's when it replaced that. So let's get into the actual workflow process.

So the learning objectives for today is we'll be talking the workflow process for Arnold. It includes many other features, including with the render. It came with the Arnold lights and Arnold materials, as well. And then with that came the Arnold renderer.

So today, we will be going over each one of those features that are included along with Arnold. So we'll be creating Arnold lights to illuminate the scene. We'll be modifying the Arnold Standard Surface shader to create different looks, and apply a texture to the Arnold Standard Surface shader, and create a render of the scene using Arnold renderer. So these are the learning objectives for today.

So the first one is create Arnold lights to illuminate the scene. Now, the Arnold lights actually, first of all, are not a renderer. If you take any other photo-- the photoelectric lights that are already provided in 3ds Max-- they also work well with Arnold. So there is no need, actually, to use Arnold lights specifically.

But Arnold lights are more geared towards Arnold. Because it came with Arnold's renderer. So that's a good point to be learning how to use Arnold lights. And they're pretty easy to use and pretty easy to work with. So why not make that shift from photometric lights-- instead of using photometric lights, go on and use Arnold.

So as usual, the way we get the we get the Arnold light is like any other light-- how we put it in 3ds Max. And it's through the Command Panel. So in the Command Panel, we have the Create and Light. And then from there, in the list, you choose Arnold, as you can see up there.

And then there are different rollouts where you can change the different parameters of the Arnold lights. So the first rollout is the general rollout. And here, what you can do is on and off. As it clearly indicates, it's switching the Arnold light off or on. And then you can put in either free light or a targeted light. So that's in the general rollout.

So the next is a shape rollout. And in the shape rollout, there are different types of Arnold lights that are available with 3ds Max. And so these are point, distance, spot, so on, and so forth. But we will just be looking at a few of them.

And the overall commonly-used lights in Arnold are basically the point, the quad, and the spot. So we'll talk about the spotlight a little bit. So when you choose one of these types of lights-- each one of them-- the parameters, they depend basically on which light you chose. So not all the different types of lights have the same parameters. And obviously so, because each one has a different way and different usage.

So in the spotlight, one of the parameters that is commonly used is the cone angle. And what cone angle does-- it emits or casts light in a directional-- in a cone. And in that cone area, that is the only area where the light will fall. Outside of it, no light is going to fall.

So you can choose the cone angle. So for example, you can see here. On the right side, you will see the cone angle is 60. It is 60. And then that is how much area it will cover to cast it's light.

So when we reduce it-- so we reduced it to 30. So see, even though the radius or the diameter of the outer circle, that area got smaller. And similarly, it emits light or casts light into that area.

So it makes it smaller. So it increases or decreases the area in which the light is being cast. So that's the cone angle.

Then the aspect ratio-- so aspect ratio is another parameter that is provided with the spotlight. And what it does is at 1.0-- so it ranges from 0 to 1. And at 1.0, which is the maximum that you can go with, it is a complete circle. And it casts light in a complete circle.

But then you keep on reducing that aspect ratio. It changes the cross-section. And it makes it into elliptical-- from circular to elliptical. So you can go on decreasing or increasing.

So these are the main two parameters. There are many more. And you can always have a look at those parameters. And they're quite intuitive to see. And they are not very hard or difficult to understand what they mean-- by each of those parameters can do.

Then is the quad lights. Let's see the quad light. And then one of the types is quad light.

And what it does-- it simulates actually those rectangular office lights-- if you have seen those-- the ceiling lights, the rectangular ones. So that is a quad light. Because it emits light from a source which is rectangular. So you can simulate that kind of a light in an office environment or something by using the quad light.

So one of the parameters in quad light is the spread. And what spread means-- it is that-- what is the focus? Where does it focus at-- the light when it is cast, where does it focus to?

So again, most of the Arnold parameters, they range from 0 to 1. And so 1 is the maximum spread light. And at 1, it spreads it all over. Like, it is a diffused kind of a light, all over, equally.

If you keep on lowering the spread, at 0.2, it makes it more concentrated at a point. And so it makes it much sharper, much intense. So you can increase the intensity of a light by decreasing the spread in quad light.

So these were the two types of light that we discussed-- was cone and the quad. Now will go on to other rollouts that are in the Arnold lights.

And then one of them is the color and intensity rollout. And one of the parameters is intensity, and the other one is exposure. Both of those are required to be tweaked to get a good render. Otherwise, it will be too dark.

So they are basically the same. Intensity and exposure are the same thing. But the only difference is that intensity-- it moves in small steps. You can increase in little, little, little steps.

Whereas, exposure is a jump. It will change it drastically by using it. It is basically a multiplier of intensity.

So when do we use exposure and intensity? Basically, it depends on everybody's own preference. Do you want to have a bigger jump or a smaller jump-- based on that. And also, intensity can be used when you are going in for a very artistic control, like very slight changes, subtle changes. For that, you can use intensity.

So if you can see here, intensity at 8 and exposure 12, it is basically dark. But in density 10, I increased it-- but exposure 16. It gets even brighter. So we are required to. It is given that we are required to change the intensity and exposure to get a good render.

Kelvin is another parameter that is provided with Arnold lights. And this Kelvin, it gives a tone to the light. For example, do you want a warm tone or a cooler tone light? So it also simulates the different manufacturers. They have lights which are different.

If you see-- you go out into a store and buy a light, it will say what kind of a tone it has. Is it warm tone, cool tone, or whatever, white light, yellow light, or something like that? So each manufacturer has their own set of lights.

But generally speaking, Kelvin here-- it is the color temperature, basically. And at 2,500 Kelvin, it gives us a warmer tone by adding yellow and all those colors to make warm. And at if you keep on increasing beyond-- 6,500 is the base. If you increase beyond 6,500, then-- for example, at 9,500, it adds blue to it and makes it more cooler. So that's the Kelvin temperature.

So next, I just put in-- this is from the Atlanta light bulbs. So their bulbs, based on their color temperature-- what kind of a light you will be getting. So this is their Atlanta light bulbs. All different manufacturers have different color selection at different Kelvin.

So let's go into a little bit of a software demonstration in 3ds Max to see where we can find those lights. And how do we tweak a little bit? So this is a scene. And I have already put in two lights there.

One is up there. One of these lights is a spotlight, and the other one is a point light that I have placed already. So if you can see this 001 I am selecting, this is a spotlight. As you can see here, it has a cone right there.

That was a picture I had taken. Actually. So we will go into the Modify panel as always, and tweak the parent parameters if you want to. So let's see the rendering for this one first.

So you can see here, it's rendering here. And then on the left, you can see that a circular area is being lit, or the light is cast in-- so in that area. So let's change the cone angle from 60, to 20, or 30, or whatever.

So if we reduce it and then render it one more time, you will see that the area will reduce. So that's the area right there. So it will reduce. So it will be more concentrated. It's like, in a theater if you are moving, you need those spotlights and things like that.

Then aspect ratio-- again, if we go back to 60, have a bigger one, and then go into aspect ratio from 1, we'll go into 0.2. And then render it one more time. You'll see the cross-section changes. And it renders in the form of an ellipse and not a circle. So that's basically it about the cone.

And then there are other parameters, as well. For example, the roundedness is there. What happens with roundedness-- at 1.0, it's completely round. But if you lower it and keep on going, like 0.8, it will have little, filleted edges on the four corners. It will start making it into a square, building it into a square, until, at 0, it becomes a complete square. So that's the spotlight.

And let's get into the-- oh, that's a point light. And similarly, you can choose another light here. We don't have to choose Select a Light.

So if we go in here and choose Lights in the Command Panel, and right here in this dropdown list you choose Arnold, then you have the Arnold light. And then those parameters come in. And here, you can choose the shape, whatever shape you want, point, distant, spot, quad, so on, and so forth.

So this is basically a little bit overview about Arnold light. And now let's move back into our presentation and go into to the next one, which is the materials. We talk about modify the Arnold Standard Surface shader to create different looks.

So it's done through those Slate Material Editor as all the materials are. But just one thing you have to be sure about-- the Arnold category of materials will only show up if you have selected Arnold as your renderer. If you do not choose Arnold as your renderer, it's not going to show up in the Materials category.

So for that, you have to choose Arnold as your production renderer. And then you will get the Arnold materials. So in the Arnold materials, we have all different types of materials. And these are all physically-based materials, as well.

And again, with Arnold, you can use physical materials, also. But then specific materials have been provided with Arnold. So the most commonly used material is the standard surface material. And it is available in the Surface category of Arnold.

And using this material, you can create all different kinds of looks in a single one. By tweaking some parameters here and there, you can get all different kinds of materials, like metals, plastic, glass, self-illuminating, and so on, and so forth. So it is pretty easy to use, the Standard Surface shader. And by tweaking just one or two of the parameters, you can get a different look altogether.

So let's go on in, and see what kind of parameters are there. So once you apply Standard Surface shader, it has the basic parameters where it defines the color of the material. And then in the Specular Reflections is where you can make a plastic, or a metal-looking, or a comb-looking material in there.

So in the specular reflection, you have the-- actually, in even in the basic parameters, you have the roughness. And if you apply that roughness-- like if you increase that roughness-- what you do get is a rough area which simulates an effect of sand or concrete. So you can do that by using the roughness in basic parameters. In the specular reflections, what happens is that, if you increase the roughness in the specular reflection, what it does is it gives you a diffused reflection area.

So for example, in the first picture on the left side, the roughness is 0. There is no roughness. And specular is 1. So you can see that the specular reflections are really sharp.

And they make it more like a shiny material. It looks shiny, plastic-y kind of a material. And if you increase the roughness to 0.4, it becomes more-- the specular reflections-- you can see, they become more diffused. And it is quite handy to use in the brushed metal look and all that.

So then there is another up there. In the speculum reflection itself, there is another parameter, which is metalness. And that is what makes it from the plastic to a metal. Just by changing that parameter, you can get an altogether different look of metal.

And so 1 is the maximum. It will be more completely metallic looking. And 0.8 is a good metal which gives a metal look. But here, I have applied a metalness of 1.0 to the same roughness as 0.4 for the specular. That's why it's giving you a diffused, brushed metal look there.

So then there is another rollout, which is called the transmission rollout. And there in the transmission rollout, you can create all those glass-looking surfaces. So it is in the same Standard Surface shaders, all those parameters. And you can create an altogether different look, from plastic, to metal, to glass.

And then there is another one of parameters rollout, which is the emission rollout. And by tweaking those, by changing those, you can get a self-illuminating material. So here you can see all different kinds of materials that have been created using the same Standard Surface shader.

So we got a brushed metal. We got a chrome-y looking one. And then if you apply a little bit of a yellow color, or a bronze-y color, orange color, you can make into a brass-looking or a bronze-looking. And similarly, we were able to create a glass by tweaking all those parameters in there.

So that's how easy it is to use our new Standard Surface shader. Again, it is so versatile, the Standard Surface shader, that you can directly apply a texture map to it. And if you wire your texture map to the base color, it will become like a texture. You are using a texture in there.

So for example, then, in the map parameters, you can go into the real world scale. And then make it into-- for example, the tile here is 1 to 1. It is a complete square tile.

If you change the width and height to 0.25, it will become smaller tiles. And then you can have a different value for width and height to get a long or short tile. So it is all done-- even the textures-- are done through the Standard Surface shader in our Arnold Standard Surface shader.

So let's get into our software and see how the material is going to look. So maybe I can go a little bit closer to show you the effective materials. So open the Slate Material Editor, where I have applied the Standard Surface shader. It is right here that I have applied the Standard Surface shader to the candlestick.

And then double click on it to see its parameters. Now, here you can see different kinds of parameters. So there is this basic parameters that I talked about, where you can change the color. And then the specular reflection is where you can make into a metal-- for example, changing it into a metalness.

So for example, I can add a metalness value of 0.8 and roughness. So if we want to create a material which is specifically-- maybe let's create a chrome-looking material here. So for creating a chrome-looking material, we will use the parameters for that. The values are in the basic color. You just make it white.

And then in the specular reflection right here, you can, again, have complete white. And then for that, you had to add a roughness of 0.2 instead of 0.4, because we will lower the roughness. And then we can apply metalness as 1.0. That's the maximum.

And then if I render it one more time, you will see it's a chrome-y looking material. You can just tweak, and test, and try. It's all about trial and error method-- how you can get different types of materials.

But the thing that I wanted to show is how easy it is to use this Standard Surface shader-- the parameters there. By changing one parameter or two parameters, you can have a completely different look. So that's about the materials. So let's go back get back into our presentation.

So now it's the create a render using Arnold and modify Arnold renderer settings. I should go in a little fast. So again, as I said before, Arnold, the renderer, is a physically-accurate renderer. And it's a ray-tracing rendering.

It produces high-quality images. And it's CPU-based. And it does not use the graphic card at all. It supports both physical materials at the same time and the Arnold materials-- photometric lights and Arnold lights-- and the sun positioner.

So the Arnold Render Setup is pretty easy to use. And when you open the Render Setup dialog box for Arnold, you have the different tabs up there. But all you need to do for creating a basic good render is the Arnold Render tab. That is the one where all the main meat of the render setup is. So in the sampling and ray depth-- so by changing different-- like, this diffuse specular transmission-- these three of those-- if you change the samples and the ray depth, you could have a phenomenal improvement in the renderings that you create.

So again, the camera AA is a multiplier. When we talk about in density and exposure, camera AA here is a multiplier. And it changes all three, the diffuse, the specular, and transmission. It changes the samples and the ray depth in there.

And then for diffuse samples, it brings some brightness to the materials. So it makes the materials more bright. And what it does is it actually removes the noise. If there is a lot of noise in the render, you can remove that by increasing diffuse samples.

And ray depth is that it brings more light in there, because more light is bounced. The rays are bounced around. And it increases substantially by changing this ray depth. So it brings into-- if you have dark spots at dark areas, you have to increase the diffuse ray depth.

Then similarly, for the reflections, you have the specular samples and the specular ray depth. Against specular samples, it removes the noise. And ray depth, it adds brightness to the specular reflections.

Transmission is that, if you have, for example, glass and you are rendering an indoor scene-- you can look through into outside, but you cannot see. So if you increase the transmission ray depth, then light penetrates the glass. And then you can see outside. So that is what transmission ray depth is used for.

So we will directly go into the software demonstration for this. And you can see here, on the screen, the render setup-- there is no changes applied to it. It is an indoor scene. And we are rendering an indoor scene here.

And the camera is 0, basically. So you can see how much noise there is, how much darkness there is. You cannot see outside. And that's what it is. So we will make slight changes into those parameters. And you can see how much improvement there will be to the render.

So this is at a camera AA of 4. Actually, let me go into the software. And I'll show you the first render at 0.

So if we go into the Render Setup dialogue box right here and go into the Arnold renderer, you will see that the camera AA is 0. So if I render this scene right here-- so you can see how much noise there is, how much darkness there is. But if I increase camera AA from 0 to 4, you will notice that all the different parameters have increased.

Like at the top, you can see rays per pixel, no lights. It shift from 0. It changed to 208 to 208. So that means that all of them were multiplied. The diffuse, the samples, the transmission, everything here was multiplied, like increased. And if we render now, you will see how much difference there will be.

So it'll slowly render it. This is a bucket rendering. So see how it's clearing that noise and bringing in more brightness? Can you see that?

By changing one of the parameters, you can do that. So if you further want to make it better looking-- so you can just go on increasing the defused ray depth from 2 to 4 samples to 4. And it will be further refined, and further noise will be removed, and further brightness will be brought in.

But it comes with a catch, that, the more you increase the diffuse, for example-- you increase the diffuse ray depth-- the render time will also increase. So if make this 4 defuse, and then make ray depth 4, and then try to render, it you will see, it will take much more time than the previous one. So the render time increases substantially.

So you need to work how much you want to refine it at an early stage of your renderings. And when you have to do the final renderings, at that point in time, you can just increase-- we can go crazy with all those settings to produce. Because you have time at that time. So you can see that it is taking quite a bit to render this scene.

But you can see how clean the image has become now-- how much of noise is lost-- it has been removed-- and how much of light has been brought in. But still, there needs to be a lot of work to be done. Because you cannot see outside. It is a daylight scene. And you cannot still see outside.

But for that, you have to change the transmission ray depth. And if you change the transmission ray depth here to 4-- I have already rendered. I'm not going to render it now, because there is the time limit. I have to be ready to leave at 10:00. Another class will be coming in.

So here, you can this was camera AA 4. This was defuse 4 and ray depth 4. When I changed the transmission to 4, you can see how I can see outside now. So what it is doing-- light is not penetrating four polygons. And then you can see outside. So that's what it is doing.

But as you can see here, there is still so much of noise there. There are darkness at the end of the room. There is so much of darkness. You can go on increasing the specular, the defuse, all the samples, and the ray depth.

And for the next one, you can see, I have changed the defuse to 4 and ray depth to 4. And here, I change the camera AA to 7. And see, it's become much better now.

And then if I change the camera AA to 10, see how much better it is-- so how easy it is to change. There are-- yes?

AUDIENCE: Because of that trade-off in time, what tempered course do you recommend?

RENU MATHOO: It depends. It's personal. Pardon?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RENU MATHOO: No, it depends on how much you want to go-- like, the cleaner rendering you want. So there is no trade-off like that. It is all personal preference and what works for you, basically.

So in renderings, always, it has been trial and error, what suits you the best. You keep on trying different-- but there is no such thing as-- I cannot give you-- and it also depends on how many objects there are on the scene, how much time it will take. It's not only this factor that we can think about. There's so many other factors that influence the time length, how much. But substantially, it will increase. If you increase the value of those diffused samples and ray depth, the rendering will be slower.

AUDIENCE: How long did it take for you to render that [INAUDIBLE]?

RENU MATHOO: Which one?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RENU MATHOO: With 10, 10-- it also depends on how good your processor is. It also depends on that. Because it's a CPU render. It is all based on your processor. I think a few minutes, for me-- it had taken me maybe five minutes. Pardon me?

AUDIENCE: I said, not days.

RENU MATHOO: Oh, no, no, no, not at all, not at all-- no, not days. These days, the processors are fast. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to make them faster and faster. And that's what the main thing is with the rendering and all that stuff.

So yeah, we got to the end. And we made it. And we have still five minutes there.

So to summarize all these, you can see that the Arnold renderer is such a useful feature that has been added to 3ds Max. And it's great, useful, easy to use, pretty intuitive to use. And to summarize, we had an Arnold overview. We created Arnold lights to illuminate the scene. We were able to provide materials in Arnold renderer, modify the Arnold Standard Surface shader, apply texture, work with controls in the Arnold Render Setup, and create a render of the scene using Arnold.

So to end, thank you, all, for being here. And the class, please make sure that you fill out the evaluation for this class. That will be really, really helpful for me, please.

And all this material-- I had taken it from my book, which is called Autodesk 3ds Max 2019 Fundamentals. And you can order the copy of my book where there is so much more with practices and everything else. And you can do it online through ASECENTeStore. And because you guys attended my class today, you will get a 25% discount using the promo code. That's on there.

And keep in touch. I'm going to say, it's not only for asking if you have any questions. Just throw me an email. And I'll try to answer it as best as I can.

And also, if you don't have any questions, just keep in touch. Talk about weather, maybe. So yeah, so just keep in touch there.

And that's about it. Thank you so much. If you have any more questions that you want to ask-- thank you.

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