V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max, beta — Available now!

On April 29, Chaos Group released a new version of its V-Ray visualizer for 3DS Max.

One of the main innovations that many were waiting for (I certainly was) and because of which some switched to the Corona visualizer is LightMix. This function will allow you to adjust all lighting elements after rendering, which will significantly save time. The UI has also been generally redesigned, which has been a long time coming. Another major change is the appearance of the Asset Browser, which should also reduce the operating time, but for unique visualizations you will still have to tinker with textures. Let's wait for a full release and after several bug fixes we will be able to switch to the new V-Ray 5.20 engine.

The full list of changes and innovations can be found below.

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New features:

(*) VFB2: Add entirely new implementation of VFB with integrated Layers compositing;

(*) LightMix: Add support for lights post-processing in the VFB2;

(*) V-Ray: Support for rendering in ACEScg color space with option to recognize the texture color space from the file name;

(*) V-Ray Asset Browser: A material library browser utility for the V-Ray Material Library;

(*) V-Ray Material Library: Add material library downloader working both standalone and as part of the installation;

(*) V-Ray Material Preview: Render the material previews with a custom .vrscene;

(*) VRayMtl: Add Coat and Sheen layers;

(*) VRayMtl: Add simple presets;

(*) VRayHairNextMtl: Add simple presets;

(*) VRayCarPaintMtl2: Add new car paint material with more precise flakes filtering and reduced memory usage;

(*) VRayUVWRandomizer: Add a texmap that should be used solely with the VRayBitmap's and VRayTriplanarTex's mapping source input with stochastic tiling support;

(*) VRayMultiSubTex: Add randomized hue, saturation and gamma variance options;

(*) VRayMultiSubTex: Add new Random by Face material ID/Object ID/Element modes;

(*) VRayBitmap: Rename VRayHDRI to VRayBitmap;

(*) VRayCompTex: Add new blending modes Color Shift, Color Tint, Blend Alpha Straight, Blend Alpha Premultiplied;

(*) VRayTriplanarTex: Ability to be used as Mapping source for VRayBitmap;

(*) VRayPointCloudColor: Add a map that supports PointCloud Color Channel;

(*) V-Ray: Improve precision when rendering large scenes;

(*) V-Ray: MikkTSpace support for tangent normal maps;

(*) V-Ray: New version notifications in the VFB2 and render settings About section;

(*) V-Ray: Include the V-Ray AppSDK Python binding with the installation;

(*) VRayLightSelect: Support for environment lighting;

(*) Installer: New installer experience with integrated bundled products: Chaos License Server, Chaos Cloud client and V-Ray Material Library;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Add support for Out-of-Core codepath;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for 2D displacement;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Rendering of Phoenix FD Particle Shader in Fog mode;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Add support for OSL shaders;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Add support for Cellular map;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Add support for BerconTiles and Bercon Wood maps;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Implement a per-device GPU memory tracker;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Resumable rendering with progressive sampling;