Chaos releases V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini
Chaos has released V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini (V-Ray 7 for Houdini Update 2), the latest version of the Houdini edition of the renderer.
The update adds a procedural night sky system, “completely re-imagines” the volumetric shader for fire and smoke, and adds support for the AI material generator in Chaos Cosmos.
New procedural night sky
V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini introduces several of the new features recently rolled out in the 3ds Max edition of the renderer, including the new procedural night sky system.
Users can generate a night sky matching a specific real-world location, date and time, or adjust the position and brightness of the moon and stars manually.
Access to the AI Material Generator in Chaos Cosmos
Houdini users also get access to the AI Material Generator available in the Chaos Cosmos, the asset library included with all V-Ray subscriptions.
It generates a PBR material and texture maps matching a real-world reference photo.
‘Re-imagined’ Volume Shader for smoke and fire effects
V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini also includes what Chaos describes as a “completely re-imagined” volumetric shader.
The only specific change to the Volume Shader mentioned in the release notes is new Blackbody and Artistic emission models, but Chaos’s blog post also namechecks “deep output support, volumetric holdouts, and enhanced Light Path Expressions”.
Other feature updates
The 3D Gaussian Splatting toolset introduced in V-Ray 7 for Houdini gets the option to clip splats, helping to blend 3DGS scans with conventional 3D assets.
Other changes include support for resolution-independent bump mapping in the V-Ray Material, and support for acceleration blur.
Vantage now also available as a Houdini viewport renderer
In related news, Vantage, Chaos’s path tracing renderer, often used to explore large V-Ray scenes in real time, is now available as a viewport renderer in Houdini.
You can read more about the new Vantage Hydra render delegate in this story.
Price and system requirements
V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini is compatible with Houdini 19.5+, running on Windows 10+, RHEL 6.2 and CentOS 6 Linux, and macOS 10.15+. It is available rental-only.
V-Ray Solo subscriptions now $89.15/month or $540/year, up $25.20/year since the previous release. V-Ray Premium subscriptions cost $119.90/month or $718.80/year.
Read an overview of the new features in V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini on Chaos’s website
Read a full list of new features in V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini in the online release notes
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