Arnold 6

DEVELOPER Autodesk | WEBSITE www.arnoldrenderer.com PRICE Subscription only: £45/month / £350/year

A physically based CPU renderer that recently added GPU support, but only for NVIDIA GPUS on Windows and Linux. Arnold was developed in cooperation with Sony Pictures Imageworks and has been used for films like Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

and Gravity. The Cinema 4D

version is well implemented and the IPR (interactive preview render) is very fast. You will need to invest some time to learn all the features, but the documentation is excellent. The render results are reliable and have great physical quality.

Arnold was one of the first renderers that simplified the

render settings to make them more artist friendly. With adaptive sampling, the render is automatically optimised for parts that need more time in order to produce noise-free results. In my experience, investing some time to do it manually does result in faster render times.