Monday, September 17th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

Chaos Group releases Beta 3 of V-Ray Next for Maya


Render denoising in V-Ray for Maya. Beta 3 of V-Ray Next for Maya, the next major update to the renderer, adds support for Nvidia’s AI-based OptiX denoiser in Viewport IPR previews as well as final renders.


Chaos Group has released Beta 3 of V-Ray Next for Maya, the next major update to the Maya edition of the renderer, adding a new texture layering system and support for bucket rendering on the GPU.

The update also makes Nvidia’s OptiX denoiser available in Viewport IPR previews as well as final renders.

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 3: GPU bucket rendering, new layered texture node, extensions to V-Ray IPR
Changes in Beta 3 include bucket rendering on the GPU – now including Cryptomatte render elements.

The release also adds VRayLayeredTex, a new node for layering 2D textures with 25 blending modes.

Viewport IPR previews now support OptiX denoising – previously only available for final renders – plus a new option to isolate and override materials with debug shading when troubleshooting shader networks.

There are also a number of smaller changes, which you can find via the link below.

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.

Assuming that Chaos Group follows the same release schedule as V-Ray Next for 3ds Max, this should be the final release of V-Ray Next for Maya, with a commercial release following in a month or so.

Chaos Group hasn’t announced pricing 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 3 of V-Ray for Maya in the online changelog