Recommended RAM requirements for Arnold?

[litote]

Can someone give me an idea of what amount of RAM they commonly need for rendering scenes in Arnold? Is 32GB generally enough or would it be advisable to have 64GB?

I realize this all depends on the complexity of the scene. I am not thinking of a scene from Star Wars, but rather something like a student short with character animation and a background of geometry like trees, buildings — 2-4K textures.

[Christoph_Schaedl · Accepted solution]

for student work you could go with 16gb... and would be save with 32gb...

[dgorsman]

A good rule of thumb for CPU rendering (such as Arnold or Mental Ray) is 1 - 2 GB per thread.  So if you have a quad-core capable of hyperthreading, you should be looking for at least 16 GB.  If for some reason you had one of those monster 10 core processors (20 threads) you'd be looking at anywhere from 32 - 48 GB.

And don't forget to check your motherboard and processor specs.  Some older models only support up to 32 GB, while newer ones may support anywhere from 64 to 128 GB.

Check with your instructor, the school may or may not have a render farm to work with.  Running off a full short on a students personal desktop is a bit of work, and almost past what should be expected of most students.