Chaos ships V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max Update 2
Chaos has released V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max Update 2, the latest version of the production renderer.
The update adds native MaterialX support, a new bridge to Chaos’s Enscape real-time renderer, a unified light and camera lister, and updates to Chaos Scatter and V-Ray GPU.
Native support for MaterialX and better support for OpenUSD
For entertainment artists, a key change in Update 2 is native support for MaterialX, the open standard for look dev and material data now being adopted in visual effects software.
Users can import materials in .mtlx format via the VRayVRmatMtl material.
The update also expands support for another industry standard, Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), with support for USD for 3ds Max 0.6, the latest version of 3ds Max’s USD plugin.
Import geometry, cameras and (most) lights from Enscape
Architectural visualization professionals get a bridge to V-Ray’s sibling application Enscape: something already available in the SketchUp edition of the renderer.
The Enscape .vrscene importer lets users import .vrscene files exported from Enscape.
The feature is currently still in beta, and supports “environments, materials and nearly all Enscape assets”: in the initial release, lights are only partially supported.
Exporting .vrscene files from V-Ray itself is “up to 20x” faster, with “far smaller” file sizes for scenes with “immense” scattering data.
New control options in Chaos Scatter
The release also updates V-Ray’s scattering tools, with Chaos Scatter – the new scattering tool introduced in V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max – now updated to Chaos Scatter 4.
New features include new options to organize scatter objects into hierarchies, to control distribution according to terrain height, and to rotate scatter objects towards a selected object.
Speed boosts and support for V-Ray Enmesh in V-Ray GPU
Updates to existing features include support for V-Ray Enmesh, V-Ray’s system for generating repeating surface geometry, in V-Ray GPU, the software’s GPU/CPU render engine.
V-Ray GPU also now caches bitmaps between frames, speeding up rendering of animations and image sequences by “up to 4x”.
In addition, V-Ray GPU now supports the 3ds Max Standard light projection map, and the MultiMatte and VRayCryptomatte render elements on the V-Ray GPU grid volume shader.
New unified light lister and updates to the V-Ray Frame Buffer
The old V-Ray Lights Lister and V-Ray Camera Lister have been merged into a single unified light lister, making it possible to manage lights and cameras from a single location in the UI.
Updates to the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB) include support for chromatic aberration, and the option to use a solid color as the background layer.
Other changes include support for denoising when rendering to texture, support for upscaling in the standalone Denoiser Tool, and support for color management in OSL.
Updates to Chaos Cosmos and Chaos Cloud
Outside the core application, new IES light models have been added to Chaos Cosmos, the online asset library included with all V-Ray subscriptions.
Users can also now submit render jobs to cloud rendering platform Chaos Cloud, available as a paid service, “in a [single] click”.
Price and system requirements
V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max Update 2 is compatible with 3ds Max 2019+ on Windows 10+. It is available rental-only via Chaos’s subscription plans.
V-Ray Solo subscriptions cost $77.90/month or $466.80/year, V-Ray Premium costs $144.90/month or $694.80/year, and V-Ray Enterprise costs $598.80/year.
Read an overview of the new features in V-Ray for 3ds Max on Chaos Group’s website
Read a full list of new features in V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max Update 2 in the online release notes
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