Posted by Torgeir Holm on 9.8.2007 | Category: V-Ray news
VRay 1.5 for 3ds Max is now available as a free update to all registered VRay for 3ds Max users. The build is downloadable from the support section of www.chaosgroup.com.
Note: VRay 1.5 reqires a dongle to run!
Build 1.50.00 final
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New features:
New render elements: VRayMatteShadow, VRayTotalLighting, VRayRawTotalLighting;
Added exporter script to the .vrscene file format supported by the standalone version of V-Ray;
Animation modes for the irradiance map (added two new modes "Animation (prepass)" and "Animation (rendering)" along with a paramter to control the blend between frames;
Modified features:
=== Core engine
Increased rendering speed for some types of scenes;
By default V-Ray no longer uses rQMC sampling; instead, a modified version of Schlick sampling is used (noise is reduced in certain situations);
=== Installation
Updated WIBU-key drivers for 32- and 64-bit Windows* (including Windows* Vista*) are included with the installation;
The uninstaller will unregister any V-Ray services as well (DR spawner, license server etc.);
The installation has three options for the type of installation (full workstation installation; render slave installation; and license server only);
=== Lights and cameras
New photometric models for VRaySun, VRaySky, VRayPhysicalCamera and VRayLights;
Global option to work in the system lighting units of 3dsmax for consistent results with 3dsmax photometric lights;
VRayLight has a "Cutoff threshold" parameter, which allows to reduce render times in scenes with many weak lights;
VRayLight has an "Affect reflections" option to control reflection visibility separately from speculars;
VRayLight has a "Simple portal" option that speeds up the rendering by considering environment color only (rather than tracing behind the portal);
VRayLight has a "Cast shadows" option;
VRayLight objects now produce accurate motion blur when animated;
VRaySun is now compatible with the 3dsmax Daylight system and can be selected as a sun type;
VRaySky will now pick the first VRaySun light in the scene that is enabled (rather than the first one at all);
VRayPhysicalCamera supports horizon line in the viewports, clipping and environment near and far ranges;
VRayPhysicalCamera has a parameter for controlling the amount of vignetting;
=== Disributed rendering (DR)
DR is now supported for Render-to-texture;
DR can now be started as a BackBurner job;
Render slaves can be added on the fly to the distributed rendering;
(note: the servers must still first be added as DR servers list in the DR settings);
(note: if more than 1 network adapters are installed on the slave, set the VRAY_DR_SUBNET env. variable);
If "Check for missing files" option is checked, DR will now fail on the render slaves if some maps cannot be found, instead or rendering wrong buckets;
=== Geometry
New default "Auto" mode for the "Default geometry" parameter automatically detects heavy meshes and instances and renders them as dynamic geometry to save RAM;
The ply2vrmesh converter now supports .obj files and has some .obj-specific options;
VRayProxy objects display faster in the viewports;
VRayProxy will now re-link the .vrmesh file at each frame, rather than only at the render start;
VRayProxy objects now produce motion blur when the proxy transformation is animated;
VRayProxy objects now generate velocity information for image motion blur when their transformation is animated;
VRayProxy objects now declare the .vrmesh files to the Asset Tracker in 3ds Max 9;
=== Materials and textures
Added exclude list for material override in the Global Switches rollout;
Matte objects with the "Shadows" option checked will now generate VRayRawLighting, VRayRawShadow and VRayMatteShadow elements;
VRayDirt has an option "Work with transparency", which causes it to take into account the transparency of occluding objects;
VRayHDRI has a "Render multiplier" parameter, which additionally modifies the map only at render time;
VRayHDRI maps now declare their files to the Asset Tracker in 3ds Max 9;
VRayMtl has a new "hybrid" SSS model;
VRayMtl now has an "Envrionment priority" option to control environment override behaviour between different materials;
VRayMtl now has a "Roughness" parameter that allows to produce effects close to dusty surfaces (like skin or the surface of the Moon);
VRayColor texture has an option to apply gamma correction to the displayed color in the UI;
VRayFastSSS material has been reworked to use the irradiance map interpolation mechanism for faster and smoother results;
VRayEdgesTex can now be used as a bump map to produce a rounded-corners effect on triangle meshes;
VRayMtlWrapper has the options "No GI on other mattes" and "GI surface ID" added to it;
VRayOverrideMtl has a shadow override option;
=== GI solutions
The irradiance map viewer will print out the progress of merging irradiance maps;
The autosave file names for irradiance/light cache/photon/caustics maps are now updated at each frame, rather than only at the render start;
The irradiance/light cache/photon/caustics maps are auto-saved as soon as they are computed, rather than at the end of the frame/rendering;
The "Save maps per frame" option has been removed from the GI rollout;
=== Render output
"Don't affect colors" option for color mapping; useful if you only need the sampling adaptation to be performed;
"Clamp Level" option for color mapping (specifies the level at which colors are clamped, if clamping is on);
Options for directly controlling the render mode (region, crop etc) of the V-Ray VFB;
When rendering to texture (RTT) the 3dsmax VFB is now always generated, regardless of whether the V-Ray VFB is on or off;
V-Ray will write a tiled OpenEXR file directly to disk, similar to a raw .vrimg file, if the raw file name ends in ".exr";
=== Others
VRayDisplacementMod now supports high-dynamic range textures for displacement in "2d landscape" mode;
V-Ray will now force multithreading when 3dsmax is in slave mode, regardless of the 3dsmax multithreading option;
Added "Affect alpha" option to VRaySphereFade;
VRaySphereFade works correctly with transparent objects;
VRayFur can now generate motion blur with more than 2 geometry samples;
The default value for the number of light cache passes is now 8;
The parameters of the renderer have been split into several tabs in the Render Scene dialog for 3ds Max 9 and later;
Known issues:
When rendering a 3dsmax Raytrace material applied on VRayProxy objects, V-Ray will crash; removing the Raytrace material prevents the crash;
Instancing a group inside a ParticleFlow system may cause a crash, if the original group is rendered as well; hiding the instanced group prevents the crash;
Bug fixes:
"Affect shadows" and "Affect alpha" options did not work for VRayMtls inside a Multi/subobject material (RC3 bug);
Moving VRayPhysicalCamera caused spurious MacroRecorder events about the target distance changing;
Problems with 2D displacement (RC3 bug);
Automatically created VRaySky did not have a name;
Horizontal scrolling problems with the V-Ray messages window;
VRayOverrideMtl could cause 3dsmax to crash;
Multi/subobject material inside a VRayBlendMtl etc. did not render;
64-bit V-Ray could fall into an infinite cycle when rendering 2d displacement;
Some rare raycaster precision errors were fixed;
Starting/finishing rendering could be extremely slow in 3dsmax R9;
VRayHDRI always took at least 10 MB of memory, regardless of actual image size (RC3 bug);
Incorrect irradiance map density and texture sharpness when using camera clipping planes;
Missing files (textures/VRayProxies etc) were not always detected correctly;
Distributed rendering between mixed 32/64-bit V-Ray versions did not work properly;
Standard materials with transparency did not render properly (RC3 bug);
No motion blur for ParticleFlow on 64-bit 3dsmax;
Color corrections from the V-Ray VFB were applied to the alpha channel when splitting the render channels to files;
Crash with the "Show map in viewport" option for VRayMtl when using Direct3D (RC3 bug);
Textures with mapping channels greater than 1 are now correctly shown in the Material Editor;
The "Global light level" options from the Environment dialog now affect the color of VRayLights and standard 3dsmax lights;
VRayBlendMtl did not list the blend textures as sub-anims;
If "Render to raw image file" option for the V-Ray VFB was ON, but the file name is empty, V-Ray would freeze while rendering;
The parameters of VRayMtlWrapper did not have proper names in Track View;
If the primary GI engine was light cache or photon map but GI is turned off, standard materials would render black;
VRayMtl materials with low glossiness inside a VRayBlendMtl could produce polygonal artifacts on shadow/light boundaries;
The pixel aspect ratio from the Render Scene dialog was ignored when rendering with DR to the 3dsmax VFB;
A low-dynamic range 3dsmax frame buffer was used even when saving to a high-dynamic range file format (.exr, .hdr etc);
Problems when rendering animations in DR mode with light cache as both primary and secondary engine;
Small rectangle area lights could produce artifacts for points lying close to the light plane;
Somewhat better memory management for proxies and dynamic meshes;
Crashes with VRayFur on animated objects when using motion blur;
Incorrect environment color with several VRayLights in "dome" mode;
"Crop" render mode with the V-Ray VFB did not work for animations;
Sporadic crashes when using the "Camera Map Per Pixel" texture inside V-Ray materials (VRayMtl, VRayLightMtl etc);
VRayBmpFilter did not always display its bitmap texture successfully;
VRayBmpFilter could produce invalid colors;
Photon mapping could produce wrong GI on transparent surfaces;
Crashes with interpolated glossy reflections/refractions if there is only 1 sample in the interpolation map;
Irradiance map produced incorrect results when used with VRayLight in "Light portal" mode;
Faceting on low-poly geometry when using anisotropic reflections with UV-channel mapping;
Incorrect sampling with gamma color correction when some of the pixel RGB components is zero;
In 3dsmax 9, VRayMtlWrapper, VRay2SidedMtl, VRayOverrideMtl could crash when reset from the Material Editor;
Some V-Ray materials (e.g. VRayMtl) did not reset when the "Reset" button from the Material Editor was used;
The contents of the V-Ray VFB was not cleared regardless of the "Previous render" option in the System rollout;
V-Ray sun could produce brighter highlights than is correct when its size multiplier is much greater than 1.0;
Banding with very small spherical VRayLights;
SSS with VRayMtl did not work properly with intersecting refractive objects;
Problems with dome light and matte/shadow materials with GI on;
VRayBlendMtl in additive mode produced incorrect alpha channel;
VRayHDRI did not free is memory with the freeSceneBitmaps() MaxScript command;
Crash when rendering disconnected Particle Flow events;
In 3dsmax 9, clearing a texture in VRayMtl could cause a crash, if the texture is visible in the viewport;
In 64-bit 3dsmax, the Dynamic raycaster memory spinner was still limited to 4096 MB;
In some cases VRayFur did not render properly;
Wrong mapping coordinates for VRayFur when motion blur was enabled;
Incorrect velocity G-Buffer channel due to camera movement for scaled cameras;
Distortion map for VRayToon had no effect;
Light cache prefiltering ignored GI surface IDs;
VRayLight's appeared in reflections for objects excluded from the lights;
Light cache files saved on 32-bit machines did not load properly on 64-bit machines and vice-versa;
When rendering a high-resolution image with the "Hilbert" region sequence, V-Ray could crash;
A light which had "Affect diffuse" option off still contributed to the diffuse lighting channels;
When mass-editing V-Ray object or light properties, greyed out properties with different values across the nodes were incorrecly applied to the nodes;
Area VRayShadows with Box type did not respect the rotation of the light;
DR render slaves crashed when photometric Linear or Area lights were contained in the scene;
VRayFastSSS displayed black in the viewports;
VRImg2Exr tool gave error when converting large .vrimg files rendered in "region" mode;
MaxScript error when adding VRayCausticsMap to the RTT bake elements;
When rendering animations with DR, slaves faster than the client machine could fail to contribute to some of the frames;
Using RoyalRender client as a service caused a wxWidgets error when no-one is logged on the machine;
