The new version Arnold 7.4.1 now supports the cartoon shader contour filter for rendering both on GPU and CPU. However, the GPU implementation currently only works with direct lighting and does not support reflections, refractions, or diffuse lighting, while maintaining the standard limitations of the CPU version.
The update significantly speeds up rendering, especially in complex scenes with a large number of procedural instances. The new feature, procedural_instancing_optimization, typically provides a speedup of 1-2 times, but in particularly complex scenes (as demonstrated by the test rendering of the Call of Duty: Warzone map by Activision), the performance gain can reach up to 18 times. Additionally, parallel scene loading has been improved, reducing the time to the first pixel on multi-core systems.
The update improved the rendering of photometric (IES) and mesh light sources through Global Light Sampling, providing better quality without increasing render time. The difference is especially noticeable on motion blur effects. When working with USD data, Arnold now uses Hydra by default for conversion, ensuring result consistency with the Hydra render delegate.
Arnold 7.4.1 also introduces a new interactive rendering statistics viewer based on HTML. It displays rendering statistics — such as frame render time, category or node render times, memory and texture usage — in a visual format, making it easier to identify performance bottlenecks.
An important clarification for 3ds Max 2026 and Maya 2026 users: the supplied MAXtoA and MtoA plugins work with Arnold 7.4.0, not the new version 7.4.1. However, MtoA 5.5.1 added support for OpenVDB with point data in the aiVolume node, allowing the rendering of VDB files as point primitives in Arnold.
Arnold 7.4.1 is available for Windows 10, RHEL/CentOS 7+, and macOS 10.13 and newer versions of software, with integrations for major 3D packages. GPU rendering (NVIDIA required) is supported only on Windows and Linux. The subscription price has increased to $55 per month or $415 per year.