Other new features include global light sampling, which reduces render times in scenes with multiple lights. Global light sampling cuts render times in scenes with many lights You can see the range of possibilities in the video above, created by in-house artist Lee Griggs, who has a set of video tutorials on how to use the distance shader on his blog. That makes it possible to create beautiful motion-graphics-style effects, in which concentric bands of colour are generated on surfaces according to their distance from surrounding objects. The most eye-catching feature in Arnold 7.2.1 is the distance shader, which uses sample rays to estimate the distance from the shading point to the nearest surface, then maps that distance to a colour gradient. New distance shader creates amazing motion-graphics-style effects

The plugins for 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini and Maya have all been updated to support the new features.

Autodesk has released Arnold 7.2.1, the latest version of the production renderer, adding an eye-catching new distance shader and support for global light sampling, and extending USD support.

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