Chaos Group has released V-Ray 2.4 for 3ds Max. The update is compatible with other plugins, adding support for Cyber Radiance’s Hair Farm 2.0 and V-Ray RT support for iToo Software’s Forest Pack.
In addition, the V-Ray RT interactive preview now supports instancing, geometry can be imported in Alembic’s .abc format via VRayProxy, and there are new speed optimisations for V-Ray RT GPU running under CUDA.
V-Ray 2.4 for 3ds Max is a free update for registered users of V-Ray 2.0. New licences have a SRP of $1,350.
New features:
- VRayHairFarmMod: Added support for rendering HairFarm 2.0 with V-Ray;
- VRayProxy: Support for Alembic .abc files;
- VRay RT: Support for instancing;
- VRay RT: Support for Forest Pro instancing;
- VRay RT CPU: Faster update when adjusting VRayLights;
- VRay RT GPU: CUDA speed optimizations and optimizations for GK110 cards;
- VRay RT GPU: Support for the ColorCorrection texture;
- Modified features:
- VRay: Added include/exclude object lists for different color channels to the MultiMatte render element;
- VRay: Added option to the VRayExtraTex render element to avoid auto-renaming the element when the texture is changed;
- VRay: Default memory limit for dynamic geometry changed to 4000 MB for x64 versions;
- VRay: Fixed issue that was slowing down multi-core rendering for VRayProxy objects;
- VRay: Optimized multi-core rendering for OpenEXR textures;
- V-Ray: Optimized unnecessary velocity calculations when no velocity channel is needed;
- V-Ray: V-Ray components now register in the respective menus across different language 3ds Max builds;
- V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayHairMtl;
- V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayFur;
- V-Ray scene converter: Added mr_Sun/mr_Sky lights in export to VRaySun/VRaySky respectively;
- V-Ray scene exporter: Added subdivided geometry export;
- VRayEdgesTex: Improved the round corners algorithm;
- VRayAmbientLight: Made some of the parameters animated;
- VRayFur: Added “Level Of Detail” option to reduce geometry along the distance from the camera;
- VRayHDRI: Added “Color space” section and moved the “Gamma” option there;
- VRayIESLight: Added an option to override the IES shape;
- VRayIESLight: Made selecting both the light and it’s target when clicking on the line between them;
- VRayLight: Added a preview of the “directionality” parameter of VRayLights in the viewports;
- VRayLight: Added “targeted” option for rectangle VRayLights;
- VRayLight/VRayIESLight: Added textured lighting in Nitrous viewport, for Dome light enabled by an environment variable VRAY_DOME_VIEWPORT=1;
- VRayMeshGeom: The sample plugin was extended to create V-Ray Standalone shaders on the fly;
- VRayMtl: Made “Fog color” mappable;
- VRayMtl: Made reflections to affect the alpha of matte objects;
- VRayMtlGLSL: Added ability to save and load compiled shaders;
- VRayMtlGLSL: Added cubemap texture support;
- VRayMtlGLSL: Added viewport color parameter;
- VRayMtlGLSL: Added vr_brdf_light builtin BRDF support;
- VRayProxy: Support for flipping of Z/Y axis;
- VRayProxy: Support for visibility lists for .vrmesh and .abc files;
- VRaySphereFade: Added support for box and cylinder gizmos;
- ply2vrmesh: Added option to specify the name of the velocity attribute (-velocityAttrName);
- ply2vrmesh: Added support for .hclassic and .bhclassic files produced by Houdini 12;
- ply2vrmesh: Added support for color sets from .bgeo files;
- ply2vrmesh: Added support for exporting the face and vertex normals in .geo and .bgeo files;
- ply2vrmesh: Added ability to store the V-Ray user attributes when creating a proxy;