In this article, Radarrender will answer why you should use Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D.

Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D

What is Arnold Renderer?

The Arnold Renderer is an advanced rendering software developed by Solid Angle, then acquired by Autodesk company. This cross-platform application is designed as a photorealistic, physically based ray tracing render solution to replace traditional scanline based renderers for CG animation. Thanks to the high quality it delivers, Arnold has been used by various well-known film, television, and animation companies, including Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Arnold employs modern algorithms so that it can make the best use of your computer’s hardware resources, which include system memory, disk space, multiple CPU cores, and SIMD/SSE units.

The developers developed Arnold architecture to be easily adaptable to the existing pipelines. It is based on a pluggable node system which allows users to extend and personalize the system by creating additional shaders, cameras, filters, and output driver nodes, as well as procedural geometry, custom ray types, and user-defined geometric data. The Arnold architecture’s major purpose is to offer an all-inclusive rendering solution. In other words, to provide a main renderer for animation and visual effects. Arnold, furthermore, can also be used as:

• a ray server for traditional scanline renderers
• a tool for baking/procedural generation of lighting data (lightmaps for videogames)
• an interactive rendering and relighting tool

Image source: autodesk.com

Why should use Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D?

Software Arnold is a Monte Carlo ray/path tracing engine that assists 3D artists in producing beautiful and predictable 3D images. This renderer is highly optimized, unbiased, and physically based. It is free of caching techniques, which introduce artifacts such as photon mapping and final gather. Arnold enables animation and visual effects companies to produce the more and more complex works they need in an effective manner. At the same time, the renderer makes the pipeline, infrastructure needs, and user experience simple.

Arnold delivers interactive feedback, which typically eliminates the need for many render passes and allows you to quickly match on-set lighting. It integrates better with your workflow, it renders beautiful, predictable, and unbiased outputs. More important, Arnold removes many of the unpleasant parts of other render engines, in order to bring pleasure back into the rendering process.

However, Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D still has its limitations.

Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D limitations

Arnold GPU gives you a set of Arnold software features. These features includes arbitrary shading networks, SSS, hair, atmospherics, instancing, and procedurals. Below are a few feature limitations of C4DtoA plugin.

– Does not support Turbulence FD and X-Particles volumes.

– Does not support specific shaders for C4DtoA from previous versions (before 2.5.0) (for example, when loaded from a previously exported ASS file via an Arnold Procedural):

• normal_displacement
• vector_displacement
• mesh_light_material (visible mesh light)
• c4d_vertex_map (Vertex Map)
• xparticles

You can find the full list of Arnold GPU limitations here.

Image courtesy of Lee Griggs. Image Source: arnoldrenderer.com

Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D System Requirements

First of all, Arnold GPU will require the system to work the same as Arnold software in general. Please check the detail below:

Operating System: 64 bit of

• Windows 10 or later, having the Visual Studio 2019 redistributable.
• Linux with glibc 2.17 and libstdc++ 4.8.5 (gcc 4.8.5) at least. This means RHEL/CentOS 7.
• macOS 10.13 or later.

CPU

• The SSE4.1 instruction set must be supported by CPUs.
• Arnold runs natively on Apple M series CPUs, like the M1 CPUs.

As we are talking about Arnold GPU, a very important component we must look at is GPU.

Arnold GPU rendering works on Windows and Linux only. It is compatible with NVIDIA GPUs based on the Ada, Ampere, Turing, Volta, Pascal, and Maxwell architectures.

• An NVidia GPU with CUDA Compute Capability 5.0 or higher is needed for Optix denoiser.
• Autodesk advises installing drivers version 525.89 or higher on Linux and version 528.49 or higher on Windows.

You can find a detailed list of GPUs supported by Arnold GPU here.

Moreover, Arnold GPU can take advantage of multiple GPUs to boost performance. Plus, NVLink can be used to connect many GPUs of the same architecture in order to share memory (Autodesk recommends enabling SLI on Windows as well).

Best Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D render farm

Professional render farms are really helpful when your projects are big and your deadlines are around the corner. Radarrender recommends some render farms that support Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D.

Gridmarkets

Gridmarkets is a company providing powerful cloud rendering for animation, VFX, and molecular simulations. It supports Arnold 4.2.0 for Cinema 4D R21-23, and Arnold 4.5.1.1 for Cinema 4D R25. You can choose these rendering solutions for your C4D Arnold GPU projects: machines with OB220, OB330, OB660, OB1200, OB2400, OB4800.

iRender

iRender is a company offering high-performance GPU rendering for your needs. It allows you to use your version of C4D and Arnold GPU on their servers. You can choose these rendering solutions for your projects: 4090 GPU servers (1, 2, 4, 6 GPUs) and 3090 GPU servers (2, 4, 8 GPUs). 

Ranch Computing

Ranch Computing is a company providing fast cloud rendering services for your 3D projects. It supports:

• 1) C4DtoA 3.0.3.1 for Cinema 4D R19.
• 2) C4DtoA 3.3.3 for Cinema 4D R20.
• 3) C4DtoA 4.2.4 for Cinema 4D R21, R23.
• 4) C4DtoA 4.5.1 for Cinema 4D R24, R25, R26 and 2023.

You can choose these rendering priorities for your C4D Arnold GPU projects: GPU-Low (56 cards), GPU-24-VRAM (80 cards, 24 VRAM), GPU-Medium (112 cards), and GPU-High (224 cards).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Radarrender has explored the features and limitations of Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D. We also recommend the three best Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D render farms to help when your projects are big and your deadlines are around the corner.

See more:

• Arnold GPU Vs Redshift
• Hardware Of Render Farm

Part of our guide: for a full overview of cloud options, see the Cinema 4D render farm guide.

The post Why should use Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D? appeared first on RadarRender.

The last time, we talked about the best render farm for Arnold CPU rendering; therefore, in this article, we will clarify the difference between them and the best render farm for Arnold GPU.

Arnold GPU overview

Arnold is a ray-tracing renderer program from Autodesk for calculating three-dimensional, computer-generated scenes and has become one of the most widely used rendering programs in professional film production worldwide in recent years.

Arnold was created as an alternative to conventional scanline-based rendering software for CG animation that uses ray tracing and is more photorealistic. It supports all software: Maya, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and 3DS max. 

It is impossible not to say that Arnold is quite a complex software, but it is very user-friendly. Especially for newbies, you can spend little time learning basic operations.

Autodesk Arnold can now render on both the CPU and GPU as of version 6. While GPU rendering is optimized for speed, CPU rendering focuses on accuracy. Autodesk Arnold works very well with the following processors: 10 cores, 20 threads, with a maximum speed Intel Xeon W-2155. You should not be confused when you are new to Arnold; we will introduce more about Arnold GPU rendering and Arnold CPU rendering.

Difference between Arnold GPU vs. CPU 

As we said above, rendering with Arnold GPU and Arnold CPU gives different quality and speeds. 

Choose whether to render with CPU or Arnold GPU is better depending on your scene requirements and project time. You know, Arnold can render with both GPU and CPU, so your scene will give very different results when tested on these two types. 

Arnold is an unbiased rendering engine, so you will take a lot of time to cause when rendering. If your project has many scenes and techniques and is quite complicated, consider using Arnold GPU.

Why should we use render farm for Arnold?

We recommend a business workstation with a dual CPU for high-speed CPU renderings. We Recommend hardware for Arnold that can achieve the best performance: 

Arnold GPU works on NVIDIA GPUs of the Turing, Volta, Pascal, and Maxwell architectures. It supports:

• Linux 460.32.03 or higher
• Windows GeForce: 461.09 or higher
• Quadro: 461.09 or higher

Arnold does not support macOS.

You can hire the Render farm service to avoid building the machine yourself. With a high-performance machine system, you can handle projects faster and with better quality.

Top 3 best render farms for Arnold GPU 

iRender farm

As a fledgling render farm behind the market, iRender farm has also had many remarkable achievements. We have also used their services many times and must admit that they save the working environment very well. The first time we tried their service, we had to install the software we used. However, the second time, the climate remains the same. We did not see any software removed.

• Hardware: RTX 4090, RTX 3090, AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX @ 3.90GHz
• RAM: 256 
• Pricing: pricing starts at $3.8/hour/node to $28/hour/node—50% bonus for students and educational purposes.

So if you choose iRender farm as the best render farm for Arnold GPU rendering, feel free to download the latest Arnold version.

Fox render farm

Rox Renderfarm is a farm in China; their service supports Arnold with any 3D software such as Houdini, Cinema 4D, Maya, etc. 

• Hardware: 16 cores (hyperthreading available), 64-128 GB RAM
• Pricing: free trial $25 credits, with a discount for students. The price starts at $0.06 per core per hour.
• Arnold support: Because of its approach as SaaS, you will need to check if their Arnold version and 3D software match yours. Below is the list we have collected:

I have asked for their support about supported versions, but I am still waiting for a satisfactory answer. They just asked me to use Arnold GPU or CPU and with which software. I also tried to look on the website but needed help finding information regarding supported versions. Please assist us with more details about the active version.

Ranch Computing

A French startup called Ranch offers high-quality 3D rendering services. It is a well-established farm with a 15-year of experience in this field. They offer a SaaS platform with RANCHecker, an integrated plugin for your modeling program. You can use it to determine whether your project is sound. It will upload using RANCHecher if all is fine. You then submit it on their website. They are now responsible for rendering for you and alerting you when it is finished.

• Hardware: High-end NVIDIA cards, Dual Xeon E5-2697A v4 and Dual Xeon E5-2690 v2
• RAM: 128 GB or 256 GB
• Pricing: pricing starts at $0.011-$0.047/hour. Free trials are $36, and you need to apply for them. 
• Arnold support: Ranch supports some versions of Arnold (both CPU and GPU), along with several 3D software and plugins.

Ranch Computing is also one of the few render farms that support Arnold GPU for Houdini. In addition, this renders farm also supports Arnold GPU for Cinema 4D, 3DS Max, and Maya software. Arnold instances will be integrated with the latest software versions on their systems.

Summary 

iRender and Ranch computing and possibly Fox render farm are the best render farms for Arnold GPU rendering, which you can choose according to your project.

See more:

1. Best render farms for Arnold CPU

The post Top 3 Best render farm for Arnold GPU appeared first on RadarRender.