Arnold for Cinema 4D (or C4DtoA) provides a bridge to the Arnold renderer from within the standard Cinema 4D interface.
Features
Seamless integration with C4D: objects (instances, cloners, deformers, generators), MoGraph geometry, hair and splines.
Support for both native particles and Thinking Particles.
The fastest interactive rendering (IPR) of all Arnold plugins, allows parameter changes to be rapidly previewed without interrupting your work.
Arnold Shading Network Editor, a node-based material editor.
A comprehensive list of shaders and utilities, including vertex maps and per-face materials.
Volume rendering with OpenVDB.
Deferred, render time generation of geometry with the Arnold procedural node.
Native linear workflow.
Team Render, including single-frame distributed rendering.
Support for third party plugins like X-Particles and Turbulence FD.
Bug Fixes
ARNOLD-15556 – clip_geo not fully working with instances of procedurals
ARNOLD-15828 – [GPU] Shadow artifacts with transmission or opacity
usd#2159 – User data errors with deformed meshes and subdivision
usd#2168 – Updated code calling SamplePrimvar following the changes in USD 24.08 affecting motion blur.
usd#2187 – Cannot override output image with Arnold product typesDistribute shader presets as a zip file: Assets, like shader presets, are now shipped and installed as a single zip file, instead of several individual files. The asset database is now located in the C4DtoA/res/assets folder, instead of the Cinema 4D library/assets folder. (C4DTOA-3304)
Optimize handling of interactive object visibility changes: Improved detection of visibility changes gives faster scene updates. (ARNOLD-15708)
Control motion keys in alembic: The alembic procedural now has transform_keys and deform_keys parameters to control the number of motion keys (samples) for transformation and deformation blur. You can use these parameters to have a lower number of motion samples in the Arnold representation than in the alembic file. The parameters default to 0, which uses the original number of samples in the alembic file. (ARNOLD-15422)
Update Autodesk Analytics Program: A newer version of the Autodesk Analytics Program (ADP) has been integrated into Arnold. This brings performance and stability improvements. In particular, instead of waiting for five minutes, ADPClientService.exe now quits as soon as Arnold terminates and ADPClientService finishes its processing. (ARNOLD-15396, ARNOLD-12865)
Update CER: The Customer Error Reporting (CER) library is updated to v7.1.3. (ARNOLD-13834)
Update OpenImageIO: OpenImageIO has been updated to v2.6.3.0. (ARNOLD-13742)
USD enhancements
Better Hydra support: Improved compatibility with recent USD versions and Solaris:
Handle the DirtyRender tag properly in Hydra. usd#2170
Use Stop render instead of Pause render in Hydra, to avoid restarting renders when the user views a difference render output (AOV). usd#2177
Add more render statistics: The time taken to read the stage is not included in the Arnold render stats. usd#2190
Cinema 4D Compatibility
2023.0.0 and above
2024.0.0 and above
2025.0.0 and above
