Help Needed: Arnold Kick Scene Rendering Output Black

sumit67SZK — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:02:07 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I'm encountering an issue rendering Arnold scene files and would greatly appreciate your insights.

Setup & Background:

I received Arnold scene files created using Arnold MtoA Version 4.2.4 (Arnold Core 6.2.1.1) from a Windows machine.
My goal is to automate rendering these scenes using the kick command-line renderer with Arnold 7.3.7.0 running on a MacBook Pro (M3 Pro chip, Darwin ARM64, CPU-based rendering).

Issue:
- Rendering the original Arnold scene files directly with kick produces completely black .exr outputs, which don't match the expected outputs .
  
  Command used:

kick -i /test.ass \ -o /test.exr \ -dw \ -set options.abort_on_error off \ -set color_manager_ocio.config "/OCIO_config_new/aces_1.1/aces_1.1/config.ocio" \ -set options.AA_samples 7 \ -set options.AA_seed 1105 \ -set options.xres 4096 \ -set options.yres 2160 \ -set options.GI_specular_samples 4 \ -set options.GI_transmission_samples 4 \ -set options.GI_specular_depth 4 \ -set driver_exr.compression "zip" \ -set options.texture_searchpath "/04_cache/v03" \ -v 4

-I have managed to achieve somewhat better results by manually reconstructing a custom lighting setup after inspecting and extracting lighting details from the OpenEXR headers of the client's provided .exr outputs. When applying this custom lighting setup, the rendered output improves but still isn't fully correct or matching the client reference exactly.

How can I achieve the correct results without manually modifying the lighting? My goal is simply to render the original .ass files directly via kick to get the accurate .exr outputs matching the client’s results.

I've attached both the black output .exr file from the default render attempt and the improved result after applying my custom lighting setup.

Any guidance or tips would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

Re: Help Needed: Arnold Kick Scene Rendering Output Black

Stephen.Blair — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 22:01:43 GMT

What errors are you skipping with abort_on_error off?
An Arnold log (kick -v 5) is always the first thing to look at.

All the lights are already in the ass file, and you can easily read the light settings in a text editor.

There's almost four years between those two versions. There's almost certainly going to be look differences.

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Help Needed: Arnold Kick Scene Rendering Output Black

Re: Help Needed: Arnold Kick Scene Rendering Output Black