If you want to get up and running quickly making your first great-looking image with Arnold, fast, then this is the tutorial for you. Arvid Schneider takes you through creating a variety of materials with the aiStandard shader in Maya 2017.

Pretty much every material can be created with the aiStandard Material in Arnold.

how to set up simple physical shading using MtoA basic aiStandard shader

Arvid Schneider offers a look into the aiStandard material, walking through the settings to create liquid, glass, and wood — recreating a render and trying to get ti to match the reference image.

Arnold has a simplicity and elegance to it. It has a small but powerful node-set, intuitive materials, and lightning fast renders that look fantastic.

Missing Mental Ray yet? Autodesk’s transition from mental ray to Arnold is seeing a bit of a bumpy road, but there really is no denying that Arnold is a brighter future than mental ray has ever had for the last 5-10 years.