--- title: Autodesk Arnold Reviews meta_title: 'Autodesk Arnold Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 22 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Autodesk Arnold works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.6 review_count: 22 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-24' parent_category: name: 3D Design url: https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-design --- # Autodesk Arnold Reviews **Vendor:** Autodesk **Category:** [3D Rendering Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-rendering) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 22 ## About Autodesk Arnold Arnold raytracing rendering software helps artists render complex scenes quickly and easily. ## Autodesk Arnold Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **realistic rendering quality** of Autodesk Arnold, enhancing their visual projects significantly. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users experience **lagging issues** with Autodesk Arnold, noting slow processing times even on powerful laptops. (1 reviews) - Users find the **long rendering time** of Autodesk Arnold frustrating despite using adequate hardware for their projects. (1 reviews) - Users experience **slow processing times** with Autodesk Arnold, despite using powerful laptops like the Lenovo Legion. (1 reviews) - Users criticize Autodesk Arnold for its **slow processing time** , which affects rendering efficiency even on powerful machines. (1 reviews) ## Autodesk Arnold Reviews ### 1. Autodesk Arnold is a Rendering Powerhouse **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alan H. | Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2026 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** What I like best about the Arnold renderer would be it's realistic rendering. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** What I dislike about Arnold would have to be the slow processing time. I run Lenovo Legion laptop, so it's definitely adequate power, yet the rended processing time is still lagging. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Arnold solves the rendering problem for me. I want my renders to look photorealistic, and Arnold does a pretty good job with that. ### 2. Arnold is industry standard ,must have in your creative arsenal to work in a production environment. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Garvit G. | 3D Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** The look and feel you can create in your renders using Arnold is unmatched. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Arnold, although a great renderer, is still very hardware-dependent and GPU rendering is still not there. It is very slow for low-end machines. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** Every who wants to work in the animation or VFX industry must learn Arnold, as it is the current industry standard. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Arnold mostly in the production environment to create beautiful renders as per client requirement. ### 3. Physically Accurate & Photorealistic **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Easy configurability of shaders and render settings to obtain realistic and desirable results. Super user-friendly and easy to use. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Realtime shading is an aspect which needs to be integrated into arnold better. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy to educate and train junior artists to delegate manual tasks. Easy to automate the process through scripts. ### 4. Arnold an amazing Rendering Solution. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pankaj M. | Sr.FX Houdini Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** The speed and accuracy is the key aspect of Arnold, with minimal noise and jitters, it gives you realistic imagery. I really like the HDRI rendering workflow,I really like AI_standard shader having all in one shading abilities to address look-dev. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Sometimes while taking renders with area-specific or cropped regions, it leaves unfinished renders but to clarify that we need to do a small portion of rendering anywhere on the screen.Secondly, sometimes, the rendering status keeps on rolling despite it has finished rendering. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** I strongly Recommend Arnold bcoz of its flexibility and strong ability to kick heavy and complicated scenes in seconds. Its ability to handle large textures and meshes is impressive. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I find VDB workflow very intuitive and USD integration and making use of Standins are a great to work with.I use Arnold with MAYA extensively and Houdini. ### 5. Autodesk Arnold: My very first render engine. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nagendra P. | Lighting Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Autodesk Arnold is very user friendly, if you already know the terminology of CGI applications and rendering engines. Figuring out anything is easy. Arnold render layers are the best thing ever. Well organized and simplified. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Well, there were times while accessing IPR, sometimes it doesn't respond. And sometimes, you won't see changes you made in the assets doesn't get rendered in the IPR right away. You'd have to stop the IPR and run it again. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** It is a wonderful rendered. It is constantly evolving as per the requirements of the cgi industry. It is not rigid and can be made flexible as per your requirements. Which is what every cgi artists want. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** First of all, CGI is fun. And everything you do eventually gets bind with your muscles memory. Rendering anything realistic or semi-real or any sort of result you'd want you can achieve. I worked on a lot of scenes and assets and cgi movies. I had a lot of fun and just knowing this work will make someone smile or laugh is amazing feeling to be honest. ### 6. Is Arnold render engine good for production work? **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Uday H. | 3D Animator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** The Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer, I think it's the best thing in Arnold. I have tried this with one of our small projects. It turns out the output is excellent **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** I think the amount of time it takes to render a single frame is a bit too much, But the end of the results, it's worth it **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** If you are working on a tight schedule project and if you want to speed up post-production work, I believe Autodesk Arnold will help you to achieve it quicker, **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our primary focus was to reduce the amount of time in rendering department. we tried everthing from tutorials to having meeting with best autodesk arnold users. Its definetly faster than other render softwares, The more quality we ask from arnold its take more time which is fair enogh But we got the same quality in Unity With less time ### 7. Arnold makes realistic pictures but can be a tad slow. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Without a doubt, the best part of Arnold is the images it kicks out. The lighting gets so real that it can make great images with a minimal amount of effort. There is a lot of versatility from the Arnold Standard Shader which is nice so you don't have to worry about whether you have chosen a phong or a Blinn or whatever. Just go with the standard shader and adjust to get the look you want. It took me a little while to realize that reflectivity and specularity were connected, but it makes sense now that I understand. The physical sky light is very complete with lots of adjustments and using HDRI's to get even more realistic is very easy. Having worked with Mental Ray and other renderers, I have found that I can get better results with less set up time using Arnold. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** There are three things I dislike. First, render times can be lengthy. If you think about how Arnold handles light, calculating loads of bounces in a very realistic way, this makes sense. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Second, from time to time, if you are not careful with your textures and render settings, you can get a "firefly" effect where it appears as if little sparkles are going off in your specularity areas. This happened to me recently when I was doing some architecture work, and leaves in the bushes were sparkling as the camera moved in front of them. I removed specularity on the leaves to fix the issue, but sometimes you want specularity, and then you have to work at it a bit, clamping values and such. Lastly, if you aren't careful in your lighting setup or render settings, you can create a lot of noise in your shadows. This is often fixed by increasing samples and render passes, but that can lengthen render times significantly. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Arnold to do architectural previz and have liked the quality of the generated lighting and images. It would take a lot of time to realistically light exteriors with the proper bounce for various times of the day. Arnold makes it easy. ### 8. Beginner friendly **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Autodesk arnold is verymuch useful for beginners to understand the concepts of rendering shading and lighting and there are so many tutorials available for them to explore arnold. The latest cpu and gpu combination of arnold makes it more user friendly too. It's a strong shading and render engine one of the industry standard render engine **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** I like arnold and it's most of the features but what I don't like is when ever new update come they will remove some of the old features and names. So it make hard to figure out the old feature in new. Otherwise I like arnold and I prefer to use that **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** If you have a good system and want to learn rendering and shading arnold is best and it will be available free alng with autodesk maya **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use arnold for shading look dev and lighting. I like the pbr workflow in arnold and for shading I think if you give it a some time then you can learn easily and it's that simple to understand and learn shading networks and same as lighting too ### 9. Arnold is a very good physically based renderer. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Professional Training & Coaching | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** i like the PBR workflow in Physical accuracy in Arnold and recently added lightmix feature in arnold framebuffer. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** I think they need to work on GPU rendering because there is lots of limitation in GPU rendering part. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing major. ### 10. Realistic Product Rendering. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** piyush n. | 3D Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Easy to use Arnold Rendering interface and tools wise, And Rendering Result is fabulous you get it. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** I don't like its speed of rendering it takes a lot of time to render **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have solved most of the product lighting problems solve in Arnold's rendering. ### 11. Arnold is a very good engine and easy to use. For learning purpose also it's very easy to understand **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Motion Pictures and Film | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** It is effortless to understand what is the most fantastic thing about Arnold. Artists don't need to go through many tutorials to use it. We can quickly get the desired output because of PBR shaders. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** There is nothing much to dislike about Arnold. But if we could see the layer stack in the render view directly and the blending layers in it, it would be the most fantastic thing to try. We can see the whole image in it. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a CG artist and a tutor. Arnold is helping me to create personal artworks, as well as it is helping me to teach students how to use render engines. What aspects are helpful in making the materials. ### 12. UI is unfriendly and not easy for new users, but the output is great **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sagar S. | Wildcat 3D Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** The lighting and renders are great. Also, it is faster than VRAY. There aren't tons of settings to look after. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** UI and material creation. A greater material library would be nice. I hate the node system, so a clean basic material editor would be nice. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Faster rendering and real-time rendering. Since I follow most of the pipeline in Maya, it is great to take test renders. ### 13. Amazing Render, Best for animations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** the fact that it takes very little to start the render and it wholly integrated with Maya **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** As a stand-alone, it's a bit costly for other applications, but for Maya, it's fantastic. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** I want others to try it at least once. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** My major problem was real-time rending to see how my animation looked on the go, not on gray or clay colors. Arnold solved that problem, and in GPU rendering, I don't have to wait 10 minutes per clip ### 14. Best renderer I have ever used **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mayank S. | Creative Marketing Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Easy to use, unlike the other renderers. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Rendering speed could be much more faster for low end machines too. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** I would definitely recommend Arnold to other creative people. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** The photorealism is at its best. It gives cinematic renders on low budget. ### 15. Arnold easy to use, It's very useful and advance. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhojit G. | Asset Modeler, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** It has many advance useful tools. We can use it directly in Maya software. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Expensive compared to other render engines, Not suitable for beginners. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** Just try it, It's awesome. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's help me to work smart and saving my time. ### 16. Good but not there yet **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Simone C. | FX Supervisor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Speed, good volume shading options, IPR nice, in the viewport **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Material builder and assignation, I'd love see more katana managing scenes in maya **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Bifrost shader for volume, starting to be a nice workflow, but a lot to do here, still can compete with Houdini mantra as user-friendliness ### 17. Awesome render with flexibility settings **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** I like Arnold lighting, it's so realistic and dramatic. This is perfect for cg render. Most important part is it's free with maya subscription. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Some settings are complicated i know it's good but thye are improving it. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's is maya inbuilt pluging and free. It response very smoothly. ### 18. Arnold Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Autodesk support and training available and Photorealistic feel from the final render. It is fast and reasonably straightforward. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** I feel VRAY is better than Arnold. Sometimes it crashes, and I lose my work as it doesn't autosave. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** You can use it if you love photorealistic output. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me to create realistic comps. ### 19. Awsome **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Architecture & Planning | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Render time and quality, and Arnold sky light is great **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Nothing is there for dislike, every thing is awesome **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think may it's support to other materials also for better quality because right now it's supporting only arnold material library ### 20. Amazing features, and flexibility .. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Media Production | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Shading and render of quality, and we have AOV, and lot of utility. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Mainly it is taking too much time to render in some times. **Recommendations to others considering Autodesk Arnold:** It is a great App to use in 3D **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing much, while having displacement getting crash in some time, so we need to carefull while plugin time ### 21. Arnold is one of my favorite rendering engines as it has a number of advantages over the competition **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** Easy handling, less waiting time. Possibility of flexible adjustment of the final result **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** Sometimes I have crashes, because of this I have to sit down again for the same task. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** I found almost any solution to the problem on the Internet or on the official forum and easily solved them ### 22. Get good render in less moving here & there in render global **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Autodesk Arnold?** It’s user friendly, and the best part is we can achieve very good output with minimum tweaking.. **What do you dislike about Autodesk Arnold?** If we can little tweak in render global that will helpful. **What problems is Autodesk Arnold solving and how is that benefiting you?** Aliasing issue on edges. ## Autodesk Arnold Discussions - [Is Arnold render GPU or CPU?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-arnold-render-gpu-or-cpu) - [How does Arnold rendering work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-does-arnold-rendering-work) - [What is Arnold renderer explain its advantages?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-arnold-renderer-explain-its-advantages) - [What does Autodesk Arnold do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-does-autodesk-arnold-do) - [How can I see VDB files in MAYA viewport Realtime based.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-can-i-see-vdb-files-in-maya-viewport-realtime-based) - 1 upvote - [View Autodesk Arnold pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-arnold/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-24+19%3A01%3A21+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=9588ad9d-f260-4720-8638-95dbaed45210&secure%5Btoken%5D=477f8e654b7c2e448f40506c8529651c9aa111453eeffef132c58e3547532a3b&format=llm_user) ## Autodesk Arnold Integrations - [Autodesk 3ds Max](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-3ds-max/reviews) ## Autodesk Arnold Features **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-Video - AI Text-to-3D ## Top Autodesk Arnold Alternatives - [KeyShot](https://www.g2.com/products/keyshot/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (178 reviews) - [Unity](https://www.g2.com/products/unity/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (354 reviews) - [D5 Render](https://www.g2.com/products/d5-render/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (1,035 reviews)