2.4.0

FEATURES

• Texture baking: a new dialog is added that will produce an image of a given polymesh's shaded UV space as output.

• Sheen in standard surface: the standard surface shader supports a new, energy-preserving sheen effect designed to render cloth-like microfiber materials such as velvet. The sheen effect is layered on top of the diffuse and subsurface components.
• New cell noise shader: a new cell noise shader has been added which can create many different useful cell-like patterns. The color of each cell is mapped to a palette parameter, enabling the easy creation of patterns with colors chosen from a specific palette.

• Export / import operator graphs: operator graphs now can be exported to an ASS file and import back in any DCCs supported.

• Built-in cryptomatte: the Cryptomatte ID matte creation tool is now being included as a part of the Arnold core package.

• Matrix shaders: The matrix_multiply_vector and matrix_transform shaders have been reinstated.

ENHANCEMENTS

• New control in toon shader: edge detection can now be controlled using a STRING type user data called Toon ID, available in the Arnold Tag of shapes. This feature is enabled when the Use Toon ID parameter of the toon shader is checked. Otherwise, the detected edges will be driven by the object's own name as a toon-specific ID.
• New controls in range shader: the range shader has been augmented with parameters to control contrast, bias and gain. 
• RGB clamping in clamp shader: the clamp shader can now be configured to either a scalar or color mode.

• Improve alpha options of the Arnold Material: alpha channel of a texture is now supported to control blending when stacking materials.

• Support for the native decal workflow: adding textures over a material via the texture tag is now fully supported.

• Run ASS export while a render is running in the background

• Change Export scale parameter to length unit type

• Support for blend opacity in the object mask tag

• Reload the procedural when it's disabled and re-enabled

• Add -arnoldAbortOnLicenseFail command line argument

FIXES

• ASS export from command line does match ass export from gui

• Exported xpEmitters don't match original if you have a short particle lifespan

• Multiple folders in the procedural search path do not work on OSX

• Arnold tag shows wrong parameters on a Lathe object under a Cloner

INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES

• Length unit: the following parameters have changed to length unit type, therefore they are multiplied by 100 when the scene is loaded in a previous version.
  • Aperture size of the perspective and fisheye camera.
  • Displacement padding and displacement zero value in the Arnold tag of meshes.
  • Volume padding.
  • Near and far clip of the ambient occlusion shader.
  • AO distance of the utility shader.
  • Radius of the curvature shader.

NOTES

• The Cryptomatte AOVs can be assigned only to an EXR driver, therefore Cryptomatte has no preview in the Picture Viewer and IPR.
  

API

• There are modifications in the C4DtoA API which require third-parties to recompile their C4DtoA extensions.