This description is for the Arnold Standalone to render .ass files (with kick).

(It is not a description how to setup/render Maya/Houdini scenes with Arnold enabled)



Setup 


By default Arnold is configured to use a Shared Executable.


  • Create the folder        [RR]\render_apps\renderer_exe\arnold\win_x64\Arnold-4.0.6.0\
    Change the Arnold version and OS to match your environment. (Arnold version, not MtoA version)
    If you do not know the Arnold version, please load a .ass file into the rrSubmitter. It will show the version in the lower left.
  • Copy the contents of your Arnold Standalone/MtoA/KtoA... folder into this new folder
  • If everything is setup right, then you find the kick executable in  [RR]\render_apps\renderer_exe\arnold\win_x64\Arnold-4.0.6.0\bin\kick




Setup - Houdini / HtoA .ass files


By default, HtoA has the kick executable not in /bin, it is in /scripts/bin

Therefore we have created a second render config for rendering with HtoA.

  • Create the folder        [RR]\render_apps\renderer_exe\arnold\win_x64\HtoA-4.0.6.0\
    Change the Arnold version and OS to match your environment. (Arnold version, not HtoA version)
    If you do not know the Arnold version, please load a .ass file into the rrSubmitter. It will show the version in the lower left.
  • Copy the contents of your HtoA... folder into this new folder
  • If everything is setup right, then you find the kick executable in  [RR]\render_apps\renderer_exe\arnold\win_x64\HtoA-4.0.6.0\scripts\bin\kick




Modify Shared Executable folder for Arnold

You can simply change the location of the Shared Exe folder [RR]\render_apps\renderer_exe\arnold\[os] to something else.

Create a text file [RR]\render_apps\_config\A80__Arnold_StdA__inhouse.inc


Add a line:

ExeCopyFromDir = \\MyFileserver\Shaders\Arnold\



With this example path, the Arnold executable has to be in this path:  \\MyFileserver\Shaders\Arnold\Arnold-4.0.6.0\bin\kick


If you want to keep a setting for the OS, use for example

ExeCopyFromDir = \\MyFileserver\Shaders\Arnold\<rrOS>


rrOS is  replaced with "win", "lx" or "osx". (Note: without any "_x64")




License

Please see our help page Autodesk Licensing for more information.


Submission


Just like every other archive renderer type, you have to load one file of your .ass sequence into the rrSubmitter.

The rrSubmitter recognizes the frame range of your sequence and output name.

You can also start the rrSubmitter with the file as commandline parameter.


All Archive/Standalone renderer are based on a scene file per frame in Royal Render.

You can not export a complete animation into one file, you need one file per Frame.

name.#.ext



Infos


Tiled EXR

Arnold writes full-float tiled EXR by default.


You can enable/disable "Tiled" in your Arnold render settings.

Tiled EXR use a bit less memory as the image is not kept in RAM during the render.

The disadvantage of tiled images is that the output file is always valid to load.

RR can not detect if the image was finished or aborted/crashed.


No matter what you have set in your Arnold render settings, half-float scanline EXR are faster to load in compositing apps.

You can use the CropEXR job option to convert any .exr file them into  half-float scanline EXR files. 

(In addition CropEXR converts files into faster EXR 2.0 and reduces the image size by removing empty areas (crop region) as well)



Machines CPU

As of Arnold 4.2.13.0, the minimum requirement for CPUs is SSE4.2.

You can use baCPUInfo to test if the supports SSE4.2.

To check all your machines, please open the rrSubmitter and execute the menu item "Scripted Job; check for Arnold support" to get an Excel file with the information which machine supports Arnold.