熟悉传媒娱乐行业的朋友一定对Solid Angle公司和他的渲染器 Arnold 不陌生。Arnold是一款基于 Monte Carlo Ray tracing 的渲染器，很多好莱坞大厂和一些工作室都在使用。尤其是Sony Pictures Imageworks 基本上全线采用Arnold渲染。Arnold也帮助创造了很多优秀的影片，比如2006年获得奥斯卡提名的Monster House（怪兽屋）, 还有诸如Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs（美食从天而降），Alice in Wonderland（爱丽丝梦游仙境），Pacific Rim（环太平洋）， Gravity（地心引力）等等佳作。现在，随着加入Autodesk大家庭， Autodesk在渲染方面的短板又可以得以补充。
大家如果关注这次合并的细节的话，可以看Solid Angle 的官网关于这次合并的一些详细说明：https://www.solidangle.com/news/solid-angle-joins-autodesk
另外，关于Autodesk官方也对这次并购很兴奋，并宣告Arnold将继续支持Houdini, Katana 以及Cinema 4D等：
Solid Angle joins Autodesk
We are excited to announce that the Solid Angle team, the makers of Arnold rendering software, has joined Autodesk!
The Solid Angle team’s passion for numerical methods and obsession for performance is impressive. It has made Arnold the go-to solution for efficient, unbiased global illumination production rendering.
Our goal is to help them take it to the next level.
Arnold: high-quality, efficient, and cloud-ready
Rendering is critical to computer graphics (CG) production pipelines and as more CG content (and more complex CG content) keeps being created we need more efficient and scalable rendering solutions.
Our goal is to help customers solve this problem with improved rendering workflows and capabilities in our products as well as with new, cloud-ready solutions that can help both smaller and larger studios scale production without having to make massive infrastructure investments.
Arnold offers the dual advantage of being a high quality, efficient renderer as well as being cloud-ready.
Our commitment
We are committed to expanding Arnold’s support for third party applications such as Houdini, Katana and Cinema 4D. Autodesk will also continue to support other renderers with products like 3ds Max and Maya.
We are delighted to welcome the both Solid Angle team and Arnold users to Autodesk!