New V-Ray updates include a host of new features and functionality that aim to accelerate playblasts, previs, and lookdev for professional VFX and animation teams.
Chaos has announced a set of substantial updates to its flagship V-Ray program for Maya, Houdini and Blender.Chaos has connected Maya and Houdini to Chaos Vantage’s real-time path tracer, which allows artists to assess 3D assets at production quality throughout the layout, lookdev, and previs process.
V-Ray for Blender, update 2 has also been released, which gives users access to Chaos’ latest AI-powered tools for image enhancement, material generation, and upscaling.A new standalone Chaos Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini plugin streams fully path-traced pixels directly into the Houdini viewport; an Enhanced Live Link lets Maya users access a similar viewport experience inside Maya.With recent support for USD and MaterialX scenes in Vantage, artists can also use the same assets and shaders from throughout the production.
Available in the latest Chaos Vantage 3 update, these features also coincide with updates to V-Ray 7 for Houdini, Maya, and Blender.Top features include: V-Ray 7 for Maya, update 2: V-Ray Displacement Material — Artists can create more complex surfaces, blend them across materials, apply them to individual V-Ray Proxy objects.Night Sky — Allows users to create realistic night sky setups without HDRIs.
AI Tools (Beta) — Artists can experiment with Chaos’ evolving AI tools to generate PBR materials; automatically enhance details in supporting elements like foliage, people and terrain; and upscale low-resolution renders into photoreal, presentation-ready visuals (up to 16K).Real-time Fluid Simulation — Users can simulate smoke and fire with ease, opening up quick lookdev explosions, exhaust trails and fog-like effects for volumetric playblasts.Gaussian Splats Clipping — Gaussian splats can be customized directly without regenerating data.
Also in V-Ray 7 for Houdini.V-Ray 7 for Houdini, update 2: Volume Shader Enhancements — For compositors, the volume shader now comes with deep output support, the ability to render volumetrics as mattes, and enhanced Light Path Expressions.Pyro-ready Volume Shader — A re-imagined volumetric shader for fire, smoke, and explosion effects has been added.
Enhanced Feather Procedural Support — V-Ray for Solaris delivers consistent results when rendering Houdini’s procedural hair.A new Cubic Samples option allows finer control over hair tessellation.Resolution-independent Bump Mapping — Bump effects will appear consistent across test and final renders.
Acceleration Blur Support — Natural-looking motion blur effects can be added that will follow the non-linear trajectories of an object’s movement.AI Material Generator (Beta) — Creators can upload their photo of a real-world surface and it will turn the image into a tileable, render-ready PBR, with all the necessary maps.V-Ray for Blender, update 2: AI Enhancer — Adds details and realism to supporting elements like foliage, people, and terrain.
AI Material Generator — Turns any photo of a real-world surface into a render-ready, PBR material with all the necessary maps.AI Upscaler — Artists can turn low-resolution images into high-quality, presentation-ready visuals.Updates are available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Vantage 3.1 and the Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini are also available.To use the Hydra Delegate, artists will need a Vantage license and to download a special build from the website.This Delegate does not require a V-Ray license or V-Ray to operate.
Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.
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