V-Ray 3.0 beta overview

Through extended research and profiling of customer scenes, core ray tracing calculations for brute force and path tracing were optimized. Early comparisons show speed increases from 1.5 to 5 times faster.

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In V-Ray 3.0 Chaos Group implemented a simpler User Interface. V-Ray 3.0 includes 3 UI modes: Basic, Advanced, and Expert. These modes can be toggled at any time to reveal additional controls, but most artists should find the Quick mode effective for their daily production work.

Progressive Rendering

The new version of V-Ray 3.0 comes with a brand new image sampler called Progressive Image Sampler. Instead of creating the image bucket by bucket, it renders the whole output at once and quickly clears the noise in it. It is similar to V-Ray RT as it renders subsurface scattering, V-Ray Environment Fog and uses the Irradiance Map and Light Cache GI solutions. The settings for the Progressive Image Sampler can be found in the Render Settings dialog in the V-Ray Tab under the Image Sampler (Antialiasing) roll out.

Probabilistic Light Sampling

A new option in the Global Switches allows our users to greatly optimize and speed up the rendering of scenes with multiple lights. When this option is disabled (the default setting), V-Ray has to evaluate each light's contribution to direct light and GI for each visible point, and this slows down the rendering process. Enabling the Probablistic Lights allows us to specifiy a number of randomly selected lights that are going to be used in the evaluation of each visible point. Smaller values will speed up the rendering but may produce some noise, while higher values will reduce the noise and add additional calculations.

Quick settings

To speed up artists workflow even further, V-Ray 3.0 introduces Quick Settings and an expanded list of Production Presets to fine-tune quality and speed. With the Quick Settings dialog, artists can render settings using a single slider, and new rendering presets are available based on an artist's needs for a particular scene. Selections include a range of choices for interiors, exteriors, still images, animations, etc.

VrMat and improved shaders

V-Ray 3.0 introduces VRmat functionality to 3ds Max. VRmats (formerly Vismats) are universal V-Ray Shaders for use across multiple applications. For example a VRmat material may be created in V-Ray for 3ds Max and transferred directly to V-Ray for Maya, SketchUp, or Rhino. The functionality of VRmats opens the door to easy asset sharing.

V-Ray 3.0 includes several new and improved shaders, including a new Skin shader, ray-traced SSS, and support for OSL.A dedicated, intuitive Skin shader will make it easier than ever for artists to create complex, layered skin. Rendering SSS is faster in V-Ray 3.0, and a new Ray-traced Skin Shader is under development. Artists looking to write their own shaders may now use Sony's Open Shading Language (OSL) to create custom materials. A new material, VRayOSLMtl, has been added to allow the user to load OSL shaders and render them with V-Ray.

Improved hair

V-Ray 3.0 introduces core ray tracing improvements and shading optimizations for rendering millions of strands of semi-transparent hair. Early tests show rendering performance is 5 to 15 times faster, and we will continue to explore refinements throughout the beta process.

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• V-Ray 3.0 supports the open source Alembic file format (.ABC), and Alembic caches may be loaded using the same procedure as V-Ray Proxies. Consistent color output is essential to artists' workflows.
• V-Ray 3.0 has been expanded to utilize a variety of color definitions including LUTs, ICC Profiles, and OpenColorIO. By default V-Ray 3.0 is set up for linear workflow, making it easier to ensure reliable, accurate colors.
• V-Ray 3.0 supports Deep Data and the OpenEXR 2.0 format. Deep images are capable of storing color values and depth information for each pixel, allowing for Deep Compositing workflows.
• V-Ray 3.0 includes a unique feature to control render regions using an image mask. When rendering an area of interest that is a complex shape, a rectangular region is not the optimal solution. Using the new Render Mask feature in V-Ray 3.0 allows artists to define any shape for efficient rerendering. The render mask allows the user to define which pixels of the image to be calculated. The rest of the pixels are left intact. This feature works best with the V-Ray Frame Buffer and the Fixed or Adaptive image samplers.
• Working with technology partners at NVIDIA, Chaos Group have been able to implement CUDA optimizations, and added support for motion blur, instancing, and now Render Elements in V-Ray 3.0.
• Since its introduction, Distributed Rendering has been a popular V-Ray feature, giving artists the ability to utilize multiple computers to render an image. It's available in the V-Ray Production Renderer, RT, and now the new Progressive Renderer. It can be a challenge to ensure file paths for scene assets are accessible across a variety of network topologies, but in V-Ray 3.0 we've added a feature to collect all the external scene data automatically and use for Distributed Rendering. It's one less variable to think about as a deadline approaches.