New updates add initial support for Pixar’s USD format to V-Ray 5 for Maya, Hydra support to V-Ray 5 for Houdini, plus many more features for easier pipelines.
Chaos introduced the initial USD (Universal Scene Description – the standard for VFX and animation studios) support in Maya and beta Hydra support in Houdini.
V-Ray 5 for Maya, Update 1 includes:
Support for Maya 2022
V-Ray Material Library
Choose from a library of over 500 high-quality materials with 4K textures that you can use on any project.
Masks in the V-Ray Frame Buffer
Fine-tune without re-rendering. Use Cryptomatte*, MultiMatte, or Object/ Render/ Material ID render elements to make pixel-perfect adjustments to your rendered images.
*The Cryptomatte render element is now compatible with progressive rendering.
Fog transparency color
Perfect for underwater scenes, now you can easily tint the transparency color of your volumetric environment fog.
Improved translucent materials
The V-Ray Material has been upgraded by adding new translucency controls and built-in volumetric random walk subsurface scattering. Now it’s easier than ever to render realistic skin, plastic, and wax.
To render translucency on single-sided objects like a soap bubble or sheet of paper, a thin-walled refraction option has been added to the V-Ray Material as well.
Improved GPU rendering
Light Cache global illumination is now GPU-accelerated for faster rendering. And for large scenes that exceed the memory limits of your GPU, out-of-core rendering now supports all the features of V-Ray GPU.
Intel® Open Image Denoise
Excellent for interactive rendering, Intel® Open Image Denoise cleans up noise fast and runs on any machine.
Artist-friendly caustics
Simulate how light interacts with reflective and refractive surfaces, and add a new level of realism to your renders with Progressive Caustics. It’s easy to set up and no longer requires a prepass.
Fast rendering of cutouts†V-Ray can convert opacity-mapped cutouts of objects like tree leaves into geometry for much faster rendering.
Viewport improvements†The Coat and Sheen layers of the V-Ray Material are now visible in the viewport. An initial representation of the VRayLayeredTex is visible in viewport as well.
V-Ray scene material importer
Importing materials from .vrscene files has been vastly improved. Imported shading networks include more native Maya nodes, and we’ve optimized the graph.
V-Ray 5 for Houdini, update 1 additionally includes:
Initial Hydra support
Render your USD data with the new full-featured beta of V-Ray for Solaris.
Simplified texture baking
Texture baking now supports packed geometry.
Phoenix Foam Shader
Render whitewater effects even faster with the help of the Phoenix Foam Shader. Perfect for effects like bubbles, splashes, and foam.
Find out more about what’s new on the Chaos blog.
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