Arnold AO Light Filter

So, what is the Arnold AO Light filter and what does it do?

  • Well, the Light filter is an Ambient Occlusion shader which wraps around the Arnold Skydome on a Light filter modifier.
  • It can speed up concept rendering and even finals tremendously, interior animations can be done in a swift.
  • Further more, you don’t have to manually implement AO on all shading nodes as the light filter is a global wrapper which essentially gives the users what V-Ray & Corona and other engines does, via (yet another example ) Octane’s  direct kernel rendering or Render-time AO overlays.
  • The filter should work fine in: 3ds MAX, Maya, Houdini, C4D, Katana running Arnold 5.

The Arnold AO Light Filter introduction video.

Check list:

  • Click here – to get the newest public build of Arnold installed on your system.
  • 3DS MAX 2018, 2019,2020 ( For other DCC’s, if they run Arnold 5 or Arnold 6, you should be good to go. )

Manual download and versions:

If you for some reason want this custom c++ node you can download it through the direct link here.

You need to install the AOLightFilter.dll in this folder:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\MAXtoA_2020

DOWNLOAD Arnold 5 AO Light Filter
DOWNLOAD Arnold 6 AO Light Filter

Technical and general info:

  • The Arnold AO Light Filter was originally fabricated by Mike Farnsworth from Autodesk/Solid based on an idea by Aaron on the Arnold Mail ring.
  • I am maintaining the c++ project files and recompile it against new SDK’s in the future.