Sneak peek: V-Ray Next for Maya

Chaos Group has posted a sneak peek at the new toon shader coming up in V-Ray Next for Maya, the next major version of the Maya edition of the renderer.

The update, which would be V-Ray 4.0 for Maya under the old version numbering scheme, looks set to follow V-Ray Next for 3ds Max, which is now coming up to release.

New toon shader supports sophisticated lighting and material effects
To judge from the video, the new VRayToonMtl material is quite a step forward from the existing VRayToon.

As well as being able to set the diffuse ramp assigned to the model, the demo shows the toon shading effect responding to lighting in the scene, including light colour and various light blending modes.

There is also support for anisotropy, glossy Fresnel effects, and some quite complex highlight shapes.

The demo shows the toon-shaded model interacting with semi-transparent objects in the scene, and a layered texture being used to create hatching effects in the render.

New features from the 3ds Max edition of V-Ray Next?
That’s all the info we have so far, but if V-Ray Next for Maya follows the pattern of previous releases, it will probably also include most, if not all, the new features from the 3ds Max edition of the renderer.

Those announced so far include new ‘smart features‘ like automatic exposure and white balance controls, Nvidia OptiX denoising and a new physically based hair shader, and improvements to GPU rendering.

Pricing and availability
Chaos Group hasn’t announced pricing or a release date for V-Ray Next for Maya yet.

The current release, V-Ray 3.6 for Maya, is available for 64-bit Maya 2015+ on Windows 7+, Linux and Mac OS X 10.9+. New licences start at $1,040 for one floating user licence and one floating render node licence.

Visit the V-Ray for Maya product website
(No details of V-Ray Next for Maya at time of posting)