Is there a way in arnold to generate à distance texture (gradient texture between two object) like vray does ? That may be one of the last interesting basic feature Arnold would need.
Thanks! We have a ticket to investigate this.
In the mean time, depending on how complex your objects are, you could probably easily make such a shader in OSL. Its pretty easy for compute distances from analytic geometry like planes and spheres. Meshes are probably a little too complicated though.
We need this for MaxtoA. Had some fellow artists asking for this tool.
The just released Arnold 7.2.1 and associated plugins now have a distance shader.
https://arnoldrenderer.com/download/