Monday, March 23rd, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Nvidia launches Iray 2015

150323_Iray2015

An interior image rendered in Maya and Iray, Nvidia’s GPU-based rendering software. In addition to the 2015 release of the renderer, Nvidia has announced its own Maya plugin and a new server-side edition.

Nvidia has launched Iray 2015, the latest version of its GPU-accelerated physically based renderer, adding support for instancing and X-Rite’s AxF format for measured materials.

As well as the versions of the renderer integrated into 3ds Max, CATIA – and recently, DAZ Studio – Nvidia has announced Iray plugins for Maya, Revit and Rhino, and Iray Server, a distributed rendering solution.

Finally, the product seems to have undergone a minor change of branding: its name, formerly written in lower case, now sports a capital ‘I’, while its homepage displays a new, more three-dimensional-looking logo.

Better representation of physically based materials, support for instancing
New features in Iray 2015 include support for X-Rite’s Appearance exchange Format (AxF) for measured real-world materials.

The format combines BRDF and BTF information, with a single file storing the full appearance of a material, including its diffuse color, specularity and bump texture.

The format is designed to represent physically based materials consistently across compatible applications, which also include Autodesk’s VRED visualisation software.

In addition, Iray 2015 supports instancing – although at time of posting, there was no further information about that on the Iray product site.

Available now in DAZ Studio 4.8
Until a new version of 3ds Max incorporating Iray 2015 is released, your first chance to try the new features is in its newest host application: figure-posing and rendering software DAZ Studio Pro.

The current public beta of DAZ Studio Pro 4.8, codenamed ‘Iradium’, incorporates the renderer.

New plugins for Maya, Rhino and Revit; new server-side version
DAZ Studio soon won’t be the only new application to support Iray: Nvidia’s website also lists upcoming plugins for Rhino, Revit and Maya – the latter previously only supported by [0x1]’s third-party add-on.

In addition, Nvidia is working on Iray Server, a new server-side edition of the software, intended to “deliver traditional offline batch rendering and interactive rendering to all Iray plugin products”.

The Server edition will be available for Windows and Linux, and will work with any Iray client machine, including those running on Mac OS X.

The Iray website doesn’t list a release date for the new plugins or Iray Server, beyond “coming soon”, but you can currently apply to take part in the beta programs for all of them.

Read more about the new features in Iray 2015 on the product website

Read more about the new Iray plugins and Iray Server