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Vray 1.50 Sp4

Rhys — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:27:39 +0000

On October 26th, Monday, the newest build, V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4, Vray 1.5 sp4

The upgrade is free of charge for all current V-Ray customers of Chaos Group.The V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2008, 3ds Max® 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2010.

The new V-Ray build supports both 32-bit and 64-bit OS.
.
Added New Feature in V-Ray 1.50 SP4 is V-Ray Ambient Light.

It includes several modified features:

- Improved multithreading on multi-core machines;
- Ability to specify gizmo falloff for VRayEnvironmentFog;
- Ability to use arbitrary meshes as gizmos for VRayEnvironmentFog;
- Option to exclude the background from VRayEnvironmentFog;
- Added CIE sky models to the VRaySun and VRaySky;
- It is now possible to submit DR servers list for DR through backburner;
- Added option to not use area speculars in the VRayIES light;
- Added Kelvin temperature settings for the color of VRayLights;
- VFB history is now turned off when 3ds Max is in slave mode;
- Output .vrimg and split channel paths are listed in the Asset Tracker;
- GI cache files (irradiance maps, light cache etc) are listed in the Asset Tracker.

Vray RT

Rhys — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:24:29 +0000

Overview
Created with the busy and rigorous 3D artist in mind, this topnotch raytracing technology allows immediate interaction between the user and the virtual environment. V-Ray RT follows the user’s actions while working on the scene and automatically and progressively generates a photorealistic preview of the scene. It is designed to improve and fasten the artist’s work on the Texturing and Lightening stage.

Availability
V-Ray RT for Autodesk®3dsmax® will officially be out on 1st of June 2009. It will be available for purchase through our resellers network.

General
The V-Ray RT interactive rendering system has many advanced features; here only some of them are listed. Note that all features are subject to change without special notice.

Currently it is CPU-based. Does NOT require special graphics cards
Currently the V-Ray RT technology is based on CPUs - it does NOT require any special or expensive graphics cards. All V-Ray RT needs is CPUs. As usual - we will use ALL of your CPUs and cores at no extra license cost.
However, the V-Ray RT architecture is very robust and if needed - it can seemlessly be implemented to allow new hardware acceleration technologies in the future.

Distributed rendering
V-Ray RT supports distributed rendering across multiple machines in the local network.

Integration with 3ds Max
V-Ray RT is an ActiveShade renderer in 3ds Max, separate from the production V-Ray renderer. V-Ray RT does not introduce new plugins other than the interactive renderer itself. Instead, the existing 3ds Max and V-Ray materials, textures, lights, cameras etc. are used.

V-Ray RT consists of two major components:

V-Ray RT interactive renderer in 3ds Max;
One or more V-Ray RT render servers.

V-Ray RT performs the actual rendering outside of 3ds Max itself, with the help of the V-Ray RT render server(s), which can run either locally on the same machine, or on other machine(s) in the local network. The renderer plugin in 3ds Max only relays the scene changes to the render servers and displays the final result.

Interactivity
A major feature of V-Ray RT is its ability to track changes to the scene performed by the user and automatically update the ActiveShade preview. The following scene changes are supported:

Create/delete objects (geometry, lights, cameras, etc.);
Modify object parameters;
Move/rotate/scale objects;
Apply/remove/edit object modifiers;
Hide/unhide objects;
Apply materials on objects;
Modify material properties like textures, colors etc;
Modify light properties (like position, color, etc.)
Animation of cameras, objects, lights and materials (scrubbing the time slider);
Render settings change;
Camera/view orientation change;
Modify camera/view parameters;
Environment change (color, texture etc).

Geometry
The following geometric objects are supported by V-Ray RT:

Triangle meshes;
All other primitives that are convertible to triangle meshes (NURBS surfaces, patches, etc.);
VRayPlane objects.

Materials
The following materials are supported by V-Ray RT

V-Ray materials: VRayMtl, VRayBlendMtl, VRayOverrideMtl, VRayLightMtl and VRay2SidedMtl;
3ds Max materials: Multi/sub-object, Standard, Shellac and Blend;
VRayWrapperMtl material is only partially supported.

Textures
The following textures are supported by V-Ray RT:

Bitmap textures: PNG, BMP, TGA, JPG, EXR, HDR, SGI, PIC and TIFF file formats;
Procedural textures: Checker, Noise, Falloff, Speckle, Cellular, Gradient Ramp, Tiles etc;
Utility textures: Output, Normal bump, Mix, Mask, RGB Multiply, RGB Tint etc;
V-Ray textures: VRayColor, VRayCompTex, VRayEdgesTex, VRayHDRI, VRaySky and VRayBmpFilter;
3rd party textures: the ColorCorrect texture is partially supported (the Gamma and Source parameters).

Illumination
The following methods for illumination are supported by V-Ray RT:

Indirect (global) illumination:
- Progressive path tracing as global illumination solution.
Direct illumination:
- Standard lights: Spot, Omni and Direct;
  - VRayShadow shadow type for hard and soft shadows;
- Photometric lights;
- V-Ray lights: VRayLight (Plane, Sphere and Dome types), VRaySun and VRayIES.
Environment illumination and image-based lighting (IBL):
- Either through GI or
- with a VRayLight in Dome mode with a texture map.

Shading
The following shading effects are supported by V-Ray RT:

Diffuse materials;
Bump and normal mapping;
Transparency;
Clear reflections and refractions;
Blurry reflections/refractions:
- Phong, Blinn and Ward reflection models;
- Anisotropy;
Absorption (fog) for refractive materials;
Layered materials;
Two-sided (translucent) materials;
Self-illuminated materials.

Camera effects
V-Ray RT supports the following camera types and camera effects:

Camera types:
- Perspective views;
- Standard cameras;
- VRayPhysicalCamera.
Camera effects:
- Depth-of-field with bokeh effects;
- Exposure settings and vignetting.
- Camera distortion

Animation
V-Ray RT supports and reacts to the following animation types:

Camera animation;
Object animation (move/rotate/scale; deformations);
Material animation;
Lights animation.

Render settings from V-Ray Production
V-Ray RT takes some of the render settings from the production V-Ray renderer, if present:

Color mapping;
Override material;
Camera settings for depth of field (when using perspective views or standard cameras);
Environment overrides.

Vray 1.5 sp2 - Service Pack 2

Rhys — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:16:18 +0000

Chaos Software announced today the immediate availability of the next version of V-Ray - 1.50.SP2 (1.50 service pack 2)
The V-Ray 1.5 Service Pack 2 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max 2009® and Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009®.

The update also includes several new features, for example VRayIES photometric light; VRaySimbiontMtl material for direct rendering of DarkTree materials; VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard light for reduction of flickering of VRayFur; the VRay_ExtraTex render element for generating ambient occlusion passes, UVW channel passes etc. There are many modifications and improvements of existing features. The complete list with all details can be found in the changelog file, part of the installation and customers can be also referred to the information provided in the V-Ray help index.

Build 1.50.SP2 (11 April 2008)
(cumulative changelog since build 1.50.SP1)
===================

New features:
(*) Compatibility with 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009;
(*) Support for animated deforming meshes to .vrmesh files and the VRayProxy object;
(*) Support for Lighting Analysis Overlay render effect in 3ds Max 2009;
(*) VRayIES light;
(*) VRaySimbiontMtl material (allows rendering of DarkTree materials directly by V-Ray);
(*) Rectangle VRayLights can be mapped with a texture map, similar to dome lights;
(*) VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard lights (useful for reducing flickering of VRayFur in animations; works with all V-Ray geometry objects like proxies, fur etc.);
(*) VRay_Illuminance render element;
(*) VRay_SelfIlluminationMap texture baking element;
(*) VRay_BumpNormals render element and VRayBumpNormalsMap bake render element to extract bump-mapped normals;
(*) VRay_ExtraTex render element to store the result from the calculation of any extra texture map on shaded surfaces without the need to actually apply the map in their materials (can be used with VRayDirt for AO pass, or with Vertex Color map for UVW channels pass, or with Falloff map for custom z-depth pass or top/bottom etc);
(*) VRay_SampleRate render element to show the image sampling rate into a separate element;
(*) The installation includes MAX.vray Defaults profile for 3ds Max;

Modified features:
(*) Added “Preserve tweaks on load” option for VRaySimbiontMtl;
(*) DTE components now included with the installation;
(*) Support for “Show map in viewports” of VRayMtl can be disabled by setting the environment variable VRAY_SHOW_MTL_MAPS to 0;
(*) Added hidden parameter “option_clampTextures” to VRayMtl, which is true by default for newly created materials (old scenes render as before);
(*) Faster and multithreaded preparation of texture-mapped VRayLights;
(*) Improved sampling of texture-mapped VRayLights;
(*) Added more white balance presets to the VRayPhyscal camera (D50, D55, D65 and D75 corresponding to the CIE standard illuminants);
(*) The default white balance preset for the VRayPhsycal camera is now the D65 illuminant;
(*) More reliable memory handling for the V-Ray VFB for large images;
(*) Mapped rectangle lights now use the alpha of the texture map for transparency;
(*) The information in .vrmesh files is now compressed by default (makes newly created proxies incompatible with older versions);
(*) Reduced memory requirements in certain situations;
(*) In RTT (render to texture) mode, V-Ray now always creates floating-point frame buffers for the bake elements;
(*) vrimg2exr tool flushes the standard output more regularly;
(*) Added “Soften” parameter to the BRDF parameters of VRayMtl;
(*) vrimg2exr tool has an option for gamma correction;
(*) vrimg2exr tool can convert non-RGB channels (velocity, zdepth etc) when used with the ‘-channel’ option;
(*) Added a hidden parameter lightcache_minPathsPerSample to control usage of light cache samples during the light cache calculation phase (reduces bias in the light cache when a small number of subdivs are used);
(*) VRaySun target line is now dimmed in the viewports when the sun light is off;
(*) VRayProxy objects have a new “point” display mode;

Bug fixes:
(*) Fixed crash when loading scene in 3ds Max 2009;
(*) VRayFur did not generate velocity channel information;
(*) Fixed misaligned buckets on render slaves with DR;
(*) DR with “Don’t render final image” caused render slaves to drop after the first frame;
(*) VRaySun did not display correctly with viewport shading model set to “Best”;
(*) Fixed crash when cancelling a DR rendering before the actual render has started;
(*) The Tweaks rollout of VRaySimbiontMtl turned blank if other rollouts were opened/closed;
(*) Material editor now updates faster if no license is found;
(*) All parameters of VRayHDRI appeared named as “Spin” in TrackView;
(*) The multipliers of VRayHDRI were not animatable;
(*) Fixed memory leak in the V-Ray license server when the status of the server is requested.
(*) Fixed memory leak in the new sampler for texture-mapped VRayLight’s;
(*) Browsing for a non-animated irradiance map ending with a number caused that number to be truncated;
(*) Problem with VRayIES light with soft shadows in the lighting render elements;
(*) Fixed wrong bounding box of VRayProxy objects;
(*) Issues with SpeedTree texture filtering;
(*) Fixed bright spots on matte objects with irradiance map with low settings;
(*) Fixed problems in VRayMtl with Falloff map and bump map at grazing angles;
(*) Crash when exporting more than 100 objects to one .vrmesh file;
(*) VRayShadowMap did not consider light exclude lists and object “Cast shadows” properties;
(*) Fixed artifacts when rendering dynamic geometry with motion blur;
(*) Different rendering results between Intel/AMD machines with 64-bit V-Ray;
(*) Groups within groups did not work with the V-Ray Override mtl exclusion list, as well as with light exclusion lists;
(*) Exclusion lists for V-Ray lights not imported properly when merging the lights from another file;
(*) Fixed wrong velocity channel for proxies with Scale parameter different than 1.0;
(*) ply2vrmesh failed for .ply files with error “wrong format”;
(*) Fixed problem with transparent VRayLightMtl materials and GI;
(*) Fixed problems in alpha channel when mixing V-Ray and standard 3ds Max materials (e.g. VRayMtl inside a 3ds Max Blend material etc);
(*) Fixed problems with filtering of some procedural textures (e.g. Gradient Ramp);
(*) Fixed problems with Falloff map at grazing angles;
(*) Fixed potential divide-by-zero problems with glossy hilights because of the “Soften” BRDF parameter;
(*) Fixed precision loss when using the V-Ray VFB render region override options;
(*) Fixed problem with Particle Flow freezing in certain cases on object preparation during rendering;
(*) The y-coordinate (green component) of VRayVelocity render element was flipped compared to the 3ds Max one;
(*) The result from the adaptive DMC image sampler could be different with the “Don’t affect colors” option on;
(*) The vrayspawner.exe application will automatically look for a 3dsviz.exe file, if no 3dsmax.exe can be found;
(*) The internal V-Ray replacement material for the 3ds Max multi/subobject material now matches the 3ds Max one when an ID is greater than specified in the material;
(*) MaxScript error using the V-Ray scene converter in 3ds Max 2008;
(*) Fixed crashes with VRayMtl and DirectX with the “Show map in viewport” option on;
(*) Objects with visibility<1.0 rendered brighter with GI than they should be;
(*) Bug with dome lights (from build 1.50.14 only);
(*) Background seen through matte objects not sampled properly for AA (from 1.50.SP1 only);
(*) No reflections on VRayMtl if Fresnel reflections are enabled, the Fresnel IOR is locked to the refractive one, and the material has opacity map;
(*) Dynamic raycaster limit did not work properly for values above 4095;
(*) Issues with VRayDirt when baking very dense meshes;
(*) Incorrect rendering progress bar display in DR mode;
(*) The mesh export to .vrscene file ignored mesh normals;

Chaos Group