arnold

[pixelmolkerei]

Hi

im wondering about arnold:

do i have to buy additional batchrender licenses for each workstation to be able to batch render?

we have 5 Workstations with maya

and 7 renderslaves in the network

that would end in 13150 euros additional costs???

or do i understand something wrong?

Thank you for clarification

thorsten

[Stephen.Blair]

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@Anonymous wrote:

-I'd love to see Arnold released under the same academic licensing and price as Maya-that is, for free to non-profit educational institutions. We can teach the basics of rendering on almost any renderer; so we will probably have to go with the lowest price solution otherwise. V-Ray seems to be most popular and fairly inexpensive, but it seems to be dongle-based which is a nightmare to administer in an academic setting. I'd rather go with Arnold or MR.

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My understanding is that we will support the same academic licensing model, once some technical issues are ironed out. I don't know the ETA on that.

Stephen

Solid Angle Support

[slimboJoe]

Eric,

From a production standpoint, I would never start using a new release of Maya for production.  Too many issues, bugs, etc. creating headaches, lost time, and missed deadlines.  I recently just switched to 2016 from 2014 (comPLETEly skipping 2015) and really blew a job (no jokes, please) due to some unexpected things that were changed/added in Maya and Mental Ray.  I would have been MUCH better off sticking with 2014 and my knowledge and expectations of the software.  New modeling tools and the COLOR MANAGEMENT system were a GREAT improvement over 2014 and lured me into thinking it would be all roses.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  MR Satellite does NOT work with the color management system, the Parallel Evaluation mode messed me up big time (being ON by default), and various other problems.  And this was service pack 5.  Had I spent some time reading the documentation, I might have learned of the Parallel Evaluation mode.  The MR Satellite problem was documented in 2015, but was not in 2016.

As a teacher, I would suspect that a certain comfort level with the software is a #1 priority as you don't want to be caught off guard in the middle of class with something that worked as expected in 2016 but now was buggy or different in 2017.  2016 (and 2016.5) are fairly stable now, but only after 6 service packs.

I would continue to teach Maya 2016 in the Fall/Spring semester.  You know MR, so trying to learn Arnold whilst teaching it seems like a doomed proposition.  Give nVidia time to catch up and see what they have to offer in terms of educational licensing. 

We're moving into new territory here.  There are SO many renderers available and I think it's great that Maya is working towards an open rendering API.  It took SO many years to integrate MR into Maya, yet it never really seemed truely a part of Maya even to this day.  I think we will see schools such as yours adding RENDERING classes, where students are introduced to many different rendering solutions.  SO many studios use multiple DCC applications, combining the best that each package has to offer.  Redshift licenses cover multiple applications with one license, so working in Maya AND Houdini AND C4D is becoming more common.  Teaching students across multiple applications AND multiple renderers will become the norm.

Good point about Macs not having nVidia support.  So many renderers are moving to GPU rendering, including nVidia with MR.  Hmmm....

[Anonymous]

Hi slimboJoe,

Thanks for your input. I've pretty much already decided to stick with 2016, at least for the Fall semester. Not only is Arnold an issue, but it appears that they've made some changes to Human IK that cause the workflows I used with 2016 invalid for 2017. Also, I've had a lot of crashing with 2017, so 2016 seems like the way to go.

FWIW, we already have an Animation Rendering class that covers more advanced rendering for animation. The fact is that in academia, you have a choice of teaching broadly across a number of applications and renderers or teaching more deeply with one application and one renderer. Balancing breadth and depth is always an issue. Given our limited budgets both in terms of funding and time in class, I've decided to go with one software and rendering solution: Maya 2016 and MR at least for now.

From what little I've used Arnold, it seems easier to get more advanced effects. Skin for example is much easier to get an acceptable result. MR is just so hard to get a convincing skin tone. Arnold is much easier. I haven't explored IBL in Arnold, but hopefully it will be the easier too.

But short-term, we will stick to 2016 and MR. Thanks again, and have a great weekend!

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

[slimboJoe]

Cool.  Good to know about the Human IK stuff in 2017.  I have not used it yet (2017).

It's been so long since I was out of school.  My college (Columbia College in Chicago) had just purchased an SGI system running SoftImage or Power Animator (boy, I can't remember which one) when I was a junior.  I was one of the first 10 people to be allowed to take the course since I had previous computer experience.  Rendering was something we didn't really do at the time.  People in school now are learning so much more than I could have even dreamed of back then.

BTW, thanks for teaching!  I know it's a hard job, but it can be very rewarding.

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hey all I know this is an old thread but I'm just gonna accept this post as a solution since there is no issue 🙂

[desarajuamruth]

 How to import Arnold Scene Sequence files into Maya 2018?

[mspeer]

Hi!

Use Import, or Arnold - StandIn -> Create (you may need to reselect Path/file when using Import) !?

Please read the Maya Online Help / Documentation and Arnold for Maya User Guide for more details.

Also, please create new threads for new questions.