Is V-Ray for Blender back in active development?
Chaos’s livestream on technologies in development for 2024. Skip to 17:30 for V-Ray for Blender.
Chaos has hinted that V-Ray for Blender, the version of its V-Ray production renderer for the open-source 3D software, is back in active development.
In today’s Chaos Unboxed livestream announcing the company’s product updates for 2024, Chaos CTO Vlado Koylazov said that the company is “bringing V-Ray to … Blender”.
The first update to the V-Ray Blender integration for five years?
V-Ray actually already has an integration for Blender: just not a current one.
The plugin, which exports scenes from Blender to V-Ray Standalone, became an official Chaos product in 2014, but has been in limbo for years.
The last new nightly build came out in 2019, and supports Blender 2.79: 16 releases and four entire release series behind Blender 4.0, the current version of the software.
In 2020, Koylazov posted on Facebook that Chaos was “getting there” with an update, and in 2022, V-Ray for 3ds Max Product Manager Peter Matanov posted on Chaos’s forum that V-Ray for Blender is “still in our plans”, but so far, nothing has been released publicly.
Few other details, though Chaos is ‘working on it right now’
In fact, it’s been so long since V-Ray had an integration for the current version of Blender that the Chaos Unboxed announcement describes it as if it were a new product, with Koylazov commenting that Chaos is “bringing V-Ray to one of the fastest-growing tools available today”.
The description of the video on YouTube adds: “People often ask us if V-Ray for Blender could be a thing, and the answer is yes, it will be! We’re working on it right now.”
That’s pretty much the entire announcement, so we don’t know whether the integration will the a new version of the existing exporter, or a fully fledged Blender integration plugin.
No definite release date was announced, although the livestream is a preview of technologies in development for 2024.
Joining other key production renderers including OctaneRender, Redshift and RenderMan
An integration for the current version of Blender would make V-Ray the latest major production renderer used in entertainment production work to support the open-source software.
Since Chaos’s last update to the exporter, Pixar has released an official RenderMan plugin for Blender, joining existing integrations for OctaneRender and Redshift.
Price, system requirements and release dates
Chaos hasn’t announced system requirements or a release date for a new Blender integration for V-Ray.
V-Ray is rental-only, with node-locked V-Ray Solo subscriptions priced at $466.80/year, and floating V-Ray Premium subscriptions priced at $694.80/year. Find more details in this story.
Visit the V-Ray for Blender website
(No details of a new update at the time of writing)
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