Chaos Group releases Beta 2 of V-Ray Next for Maya
V-Ray Next for Maya’s new IPR architecture promises faster feedback on complex scenes and support for animation. IPR stability has been further improved in Beta 2 of the software, released last week.
Chaos Group has released Beta 2 of V-Ray Next for Maya, the next major update to the Maya edition of the renderer, updating the new IPR architecture and further extending the new toon and hair shaders.
The update also adds a new GPU-aware interface for V-Ray GPU, the software’s GPU render engine.
New scene intelligence and GPU rendering features from V-Ray Next for 3ds Max
First announced earlier this year with a teaser video of the toon shader, V-Ray Next for Maya also introduces many of the new features originally rolled out in V-Ray Next for 3ds Max earlier this year.
That includes the new ‘scene intelligence’ tools like automatic exposure and white balance and the new V-Ray GPU architecture – which, among other things, makes it possible to render volumetrics on the GPU.
Other features previously debuted in the 3ds Max edition include a new physically based hair shader and the integration of Nvidia’s AI-based OptiX render denoising technology.
Beta 1 of V-Ray Next for Maya also introduced support for layered Alembic files, and a new IPR architecture designed to give faster feedback on complex scenes and to provide support for animation.
New in Beta 2: new GPU-aware UI, improvements to the hair and toon shaders and IPR
Beta 2 is more of an iterative improvement, but it does add a few important new features: notably the GPU-aware interface for V-Ray GPU.
That automatically hides features that are still only supported in the CPU render engine, making it easier to set up scenes for rendering without running into nasty surprises further down the line.
The update also improves the stability of the new IPR architecture; adds a glint control to the new hair material; and adds a toon texture highlight option and per-material control of outlines during toon shading.
Pricing and availability
V-Ray Next for Maya is available in open beta for Maya 2015+ running on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. You can see the full list of operating systems supported here.
Chaos Group hasn’t announced pricing or a date for the commercial release, but the current stable version, V-Ray 3.6 for Maya, starts at $1,040 for one floating user licence and one floating render node licence.
Read an overview of V-Ray Next for Maya on Chaos Group’s website
(Includes link to register for the open beta)
Read a full list of new features in Beta 2 of V-Ray for Maya in the online changelog