Want To Learn The Arnold Renderer ?

 Fxphd has been creating classes and tutorials for the high-end VFX crowd for years now. Now they are teaching an introduction to the Arnold renderer. Below is the info. HERE is the site to get more information and to sign up.

ARN101: Introduction to Arnold

Professor: Ulf Lundgren
Software Version:
Original Run Date: October 2012

This course is targeted at anyone who may already be familiar

with rendering and lighting but who wants to move over to 

Arnold; or just wants to know how Arnold can help in production.

Taught by Ulf Lundgren, the goal of the course is to get you up

 to speed in Arnold and help you understand the differences 

when using Arnold compared to other Render engines. Prior

experiences of rendering and lighting is a plus but not necessary

since this course should still help you get on your way to

amazing renders.

Workflow, rendering optimization, basic shaders, usefull 

lighting riggs, sss, volumetrics, linare workflow, Aov and 

practical work-flow tools might not sound all that sexy 

but you’ll come to love the results. Furthermore this course

is designed to mix more theoretical classes with in-depth

case studies of Arnold working on real projects, giving a 

better understanding of how to use Arnold in production. 

This course gives you a very good understanding of how 

to do both full CG projects as well as taking you through 

all the steps of a production for using Arnold to integrate 

CG into a live action plate.

Even though the course is using Softimage as it’s main 

application all the classes are kept generic and should 

be as relevant for any implementation of Arnold; be it 

Maya, Softimage or feature implementations in Houdini 

or Light Wave. No knowledge of Softimage should be

 needed. Course members will be able to have access 

to the the Arnold renderer software, thanks to a 

partnership with Solid Angle.

Ulf Lundgren is a VFX supervisor and director at Lost 

Liner Productions in Stockholm Sweden. He’s worked 

on a number of international feature films and well 

known commercials like Harry Potter 1 and 2, Golden

 Compass, James Bond Die another day and Xbox 

Mosquito before starting his own studio and tackling

the Swedish movie scene of ghosts and Zombies.

class syllabus

Class 1: A brief history of Arnold and how it integrates

into a production workflow and the good vs bad when

comparing Arnold with other renderers.

Class 2: How to setup and render with a linear workflow 

using color managment in Arnold, followed by and an in 

depth look at all the types of lights Arnold has to offer.

Class 3: An in depth look at shading with Arnold and 

how to use the different types of shaders in production.

Class 4: An in depth look at render effects and settings

and learn how to export ASS files to do batch rendering 

of sequences using kick.

Class 5: Shading for production, a case study of how 

to create shaders for all objects in a scene.

Class 6: Working efficiently with Arnold, optimizing 

renders and setting up a good workflow.

Class 7: Case studies of how to do lighting and shading 

in a full CG productions.

Class 8: A case study of how to do lighting and shading 

for live action integration. Part 1. Using lightprobes and 

other on-set data to better integrate the CG elements

into the plate.

Class 9: A case study of how to do lighting and 

shading for live action integration. Part 2. Rendering 

with AOV’s and how to best use them in compositing.

Class 10: Wrap up any questions from the forums.