# Arnold Reviews **Vendor:** Solid Angle **Category:** [3D Rendering Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-rendering) **Average Rating:** 4.0/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 12 ## About Arnold Arnold is a fast, memory efficient and scalable physically-based raytracer. ## Arnold Reviews ### 1. One of the best fast Rendering engine **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Arnold rendering engine is very fast and it gives very realistic output , best part of this it is a plugin of one of the best 3D software MAYA **What do you dislike about Arnold?** Sometimes when files are heavy it crashes without autosave **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** It gives me any models or object in very high quality preview , arnold gives very photorealistic renders that is awesome ### 2. Superfast & HQ Rendering **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Priyanuj D. | Senior Learning Content Producer, E-Learning, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Arnold?** The intuitive integration with my preferred tools and seamless rendering of scenes. **What do you dislike about Arnold?** Sometimes the viewport crashes and need to restart the whole software to fix. **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arnold is fast and with GPU rendering now, it is much faster than ever though it produces a bit LQ results but it is quite okay for a quick review. ### 3. Good render engine, comes nativa with Maya **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Simone G. | Rigger - Animatore - Animatore tecnico, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Arnold?** It's very easy to use, installation is built in Maya. Plugin can be unloaded for faster start. It's pretty well integrated with Maya nodes and also Bifrost. Renders in the viewport are supported for immediate preview and initial tuning **What do you dislike about Arnold?** Materials lack some advanced settings, interface is sometimes a little bit messy. Over the years I've encountered some performance issues, many of them were related to memory leaks in big batches. **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main advantage of Arnols is its compatibility with Maya and the immediate setup. Autodesk provides some example materials for fast setups, the forum is helpful for problems solving and tips ### 4. Game changer. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prudhvi Krishna M. | Lighting and Composting Artist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2020 **What do you like best about Arnold?** The best I like in Arnold is its ai standard surface shader and cryptomatts. We can give the best quality of output but we need a good configured machine. **What do you dislike about Arnold?** I can't able to render associate passes in gray scale like mental Ray. If anybody know about how to please give me a solution. It would be grate if we have a separate option to control reflections and n shader itself. **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** I recommend everyone to use Arnold. Compare to some other render engines Arnold is best and cost efficiency. **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are lots of benefits using Arnold like Giving best quality of output and optimising man days with user friendly shader. We can reduce the render time which are too much expensive in our feild. ### 5. My view of Arnold **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shridhar H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2020 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Arnold is best rendering engine out there. Sky and physical light just works perfect.Rend ers are bit slow but are photo-realistic **What do you dislike about Arnold?** The only downside of Arnold is the rendering time. **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** Just make a nice PC setup. So that you can obtain nicer outputs **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits that I have overcome is it is the best photo realistic rendering engine. The problems I can solve it is I get better scenes through credit window ### 6. amazing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Goran L. | Senior Lighting Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 10, 2020 **What do you like best about Arnold?** user friendly, easy to control and great renders **What do you dislike about Arnold?** when i change standin path, "use file sequence" field goes to default unchecked (still frame) i guess that is maya problem, but anyway, still annoying **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** Best rendering software ever **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arnold solved my financial problems and made my career. Thanks Marcos ### 7. Arnold can be a bit tricky but it's an excellent both for PBR workflow and stylized rendering **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amanda M. | 3D Modeler, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 22, 2019 **What do you like best about Arnold?** I use the Arnold plug-in for Maya. It has excellent results and it's pretty easy to use - I was taught this in university and I've always loved the results. Arnold's raytracing and lighting options are particularly appealing. Considering that the only other option I was taught in school was Maya Hardware and Maya Software, it's a great option for me. I don't know how it compares to other options like RenderMan and Occulus, but what I need it for, it's excellent **What do you dislike about Arnold?** It can be difficult to learn more nuanced techniques - there are weird settings you need to do to use a lot of features, like turning opacity off in model geometry to make things transparent. It's also not compatible with some of Maya's older features that worked with Mental Ray. I've also had a lot of issues with spec maps and getting them to work properly - but that could be me just not knowing how to plug them in properly **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** I would compare Arnold to other major renderers, especially in terms of being able to render using the GPU and not CPU renderers **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arnold helps me create photo-realistic product renders as well as environments. The benefits of Arnold are that it's a good, cheap alternative to Maya Hardware and Maya Software as it comes built in to Autodesk Maya when you purchase it. It's pretty easy to learn how to use (at least, the basics are) and any issues that you have, you can find the answers in the forums and in YouTube videos ### 8. its great I love it **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Architecture & Planning | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Arnold?** works with everything in Maya. quick and fairly straightforward great product docs and amazing support **What do you dislike about Arnold?** lacking real caustics which would be great and a function like multi light in Maxwell but get on well without them **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** its great try it out **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** very fast to set up and preview very high quality. ### 9. Great! **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 11, 2020 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Helps me to create realistic comps for clients **What do you dislike about Arnold?** sometimes it crashes and doesn't autosave my work **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** i ve been able to preview things in very high-quality (which is new) ### 10. No pain No gain attitude **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 08, 2018 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Physical based renderer with adaptive sampling. Photorealistic feel from the final render. Organic shaders, hair and fur shading looks and feels natural. Used in international movies for CG and Visual effects. **What do you dislike about Arnold?** CPU Based, in the world of GPU accelerated rendering, this is still on the CPU side. Another piece of software which is trying to re-invent the wheel maybe. Autodesk's lame attempt to get people to give them more money. VRAY still beats it for single machine output. **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** Another piece of software which is trying to re-invent the wheel maybe. Costly for something why Autodesk gives for free. Please try GPU based rendering solutions (like Keyshot) before going for another CPU based renderer. **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mental ray was what people were used to , this is not the greatest way to integrate. Until VRAY is there, other renderers will have to work quite hard to compete in the same space. ### 11. Arnold is amazing! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Construction | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2019 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Beautiful renders and beautiful materials **What do you dislike about Arnold?** It only uses CPU to render and not GPU like others **Recommendations to others considering Arnold:** Loar you machine up with CPU cores and not GPU cores. **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Visualization needs for new projects ### 12. Honest Arnold review 2018 **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** LeAnne R. | Freelance Illustrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Arnold?** Its packaged with Maya and offers alot of autodesk support and training. **What do you dislike about Arnold?** For being integrated, it fights you from install onward . **What problems is Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arnold renders fairly quickly and its plugin with maya does make attempts to work natively , but i honestly prefer mental ray. ## Arnold Discussions - [What is the best way to implement spec maps into Arnold's standard shaders](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-best-way-to-implement-spec-maps-into-arnold-s-standard-shaders) - 1 upvote - [How do I use RGBA AOV in grey scale pass?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-use-rgba-aov-in-grey-scale-pass) - [View Arnold pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/arnold/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-15+05%3A59%3A19+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=77747acb-949e-4521-989a-7f9c5e7bd2b2&secure%5Btoken%5D=8f33e826a3b194d2b288890ed112bafbc6dfffccb3a8e6659ecaafa43ba08dbf&format=llm_user) ## Arnold Features **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-Video - AI Text-to-3D ## Top Arnold Alternatives - [Blender](https://www.g2.com/products/blender/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (305 reviews) - [V-Ray](https://www.g2.com/products/v-ray/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (214 reviews) - [KeyShot](https://www.g2.com/products/keyshot/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (177 reviews)