Archexteriors vol. 1 for Cinema4D and V-Ray

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Evermotion's Archexteriors vol. 1 is now available in a Cinema 4D version. The DVD contains 10 textured and ready to render scenes using the VRaySun, VRaySky and the VRayPhysicalCam. Requires Cinema4D 10 or higher and Vray 1.08 http://evermotion.org/shop_display_item.php?item=289

HDRI-locations released

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Thomas Suurland has released a new collection of hires HDRIs + matching backplates for virtual car photography. All HDRi maps are in 11500x5750 and all backplates are in 4368x2912. All hdri-locations comes with 1 HDRi map and several backplates so multiple images can be produced from each location. Each location sells for �120 Check out the examples on the site: http://www.hdri-locations.com/

Making of Pontiac SpyHunter

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Leo Burnett have put together a behind the scenes/making of video of SWAY's Pontiac SpyHunter spot. See the video here: http://jalopnik.com/386152/the-making-of-the-pontiac-g8-spy-hunter-commercial-or Previous news about the commercial spots here: http://vray.info/news/n0228.asp

VRay 1.5 SP2 released

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Service Pack 2 for VRay 1.50 is now available for download. Log in to your account at http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/downloads.html?s=v-ray to download. Build 1.50.SP2 (11 April 2008 ) (cumulative changelog since build 1.50.SP1) =================== New features: (*) Compatibility with 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009; (*) Support for animated deforming meshes to .vrmesh files and the VRayProxy object; (*) Support for Lighting Analysis Overlay render effect in 3ds Max 2009; (*) VRayIES light; (*) VRaySimbiontMtl material (allows rendering of DarkTree materials directly by V-Ray); (*) Rectangle VRayLights can be mapped with a texture map, similar to dome lights; (*) VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard lights (useful for reducing flickering of VRayFur in animations; works with all V-Ray geometry objects like proxies, fur etc.); (*) VRay_Illuminance render element; (*) VRay_SelfIlluminationMap texture baking element; (*) VRay_BumpNormals render element and VRayBumpNormalsMap bake render element to extract bump-mapped normals; (*) VRay_ExtraTex render element to store the result from the calculation of any extra texture map on shaded surfaces without the need to actually apply the map in their materials (can be used with VRayDirt for AO pass, or with Vertex Color map for UVW channels pass, or with Falloff map for custom z-depth pass or top/bottom etc); (*) VRay_SampleRate render element to show the image sampling rate into a separate element; (*) The installation includes MAX.vray Defaults profile for 3ds Max; Modified features: (*) Added "Preserve tweaks on load" option for VRaySimbiontMtl; (*) DTE components now included with the installation; (*) Support for "Show map in viewports" of VRayMtl can be disabled by setting the environment variable VRAY_SHOW_MTL_MAPS to 0; (*) Added hidden parameter "option_clampTextures" to VRayMtl, which is true by default for newly created materials (old scenes render as before); (*) Faster and multithreaded preparation of texture-mapped VRayLights; (*) Improved sampling of texture-mapped VRayLights; (*) Added more white balance presets to the VRayPhyscal camera (D50, D55, D65 and D75 corresponding to the CIE standard illuminants); (*) The default white balance preset for the VRayPhsycal camera is now the D65 illuminant; (*) More reliable memory handling for the V-Ray VFB for large images; (*) Mapped rectangle lights now use the alpha of the texture map for transparency; (*) The information in .vrmesh files is now compressed by default (makes newly created proxies incompatible with older versions); (*) Reduced memory requirements in certain situations; (*) In RTT (render to texture) mode, V-Ray now always creates floating-point frame buffers for the bake elements; (*) vrimg2exr tool flushes the standard output more regularly; (*) Added "Soften" parameter to the BRDF parameters of VRayMtl; (*) vrimg2exr tool has an option for gamma correction; (*) vrimg2exr tool can convert non-RGB channels (velocity, zdepth etc) when used with the '-channel' option; (*) Added a hidden parameter lightcache_minPathsPerSample to control usage of light cache samples during the light cache calculation phase (reduces bias in the light cache when a small number of subdivs are used); (*) VRaySun target line is now dimmed in the viewports when the sun light is off; (*) VRayProxy objects have a new "point" display mode; Bug fixes: (*) Fixed crash when loading scene in 3ds Max 2009; (*) VRayFur did not generate velocity channel information; (*) Fixed misaligned buckets on render slaves with DR; (*) DR with "Don't render final image" caused render slaves to drop after the first frame; (*) VRaySun did not display correctly with viewport shading model set to "Best"; (*) Fixed crash when cancelling a DR rendering before the actual render has started; (*) The Tweaks rollout of VRaySimbiontMtl turned blank if other rollouts were opened/closed; (*) Material editor now updates faster if no license is found; (*) All parameters of VRayHDRI appeared named as "Spin" in TrackView; (*) The multipliers of VRayHDRI were not animatable; (*) Fixed memory leak in the V-Ray license server when the status of the server is requested. (*) Fixed memory leak in the new sampler for texture-mapped VRayLight's; (*) Browsing for a non-animated irradiance map ending with a number caused that number to be truncated; (*) Problem with VRayIES light with soft shadows in the lighting render elements; (*) Fixed wrong bounding box of VRayProxy objects; (*) Issues with SpeedTree texture filtering; (*) Fixed bright spots on matte objects with irradiance map with low settings; (*) Fixed problems in VRayMtl with Falloff map and bump map at grazing angles; (*) Crash when exporting more than 100 objects to one .vrmesh file; (*) VRayShadowMap did not consider light exclude lists and object "Cast shadows" properties; (*) Fixed artifacts when rendering dynamic geometry with motion blur; (*) Different rendering results between Intel/AMD machines with 64-bit V-Ray; (*) Groups within groups did not work with the V-Ray Override mtl exclusion list, as well as with light exclusion lists; (*) Exclusion lists for V-Ray lights not imported properly when merging the lights from another file; (*) Fixed wrong velocity channel for proxies with Scale parameter different than 1.0; (*) ply2vrmesh failed for .ply files with error "wrong format"; (*) Fixed problem with transparent VRayLightMtl materials and GI; (*) Fixed problems in alpha channel when mixing V-Ray and standard 3ds Max materials (e.g. VRayMtl inside a 3ds Max Blend material etc); (*) Fixed problems with filtering of some procedural textures (e.g. Gradient Ramp); (*) Fixed problems with Falloff map at grazing angles; (*) Fixed potential divide-by-zero problems with glossy hilights because of the "Soften" BRDF parameter; (*) Fixed precision loss when using the V-Ray VFB render region override options; (*) Fixed problem with Particle Flow freezing in certain cases on object preparation during rendering; (*) The y-coordinate (green component) of VRayVelocity render element was flipped compared to the 3ds Max one; (*) The result from the adaptive DMC image sampler could be different with the "Don't affect colors" option on; (*) The vrayspawner.exe application will automatically look for a 3dsviz.exe file, if no 3dsmax.exe can be found; (*) The internal V-Ray replacement material for the 3ds Max multi/subobject material now matches the 3ds Max one when an ID is greater than specified in the material; (*) MaxScript error using the V-Ray scene converter in 3ds Max 2008; (*) Fixed crashes with VRayMtl and DirectX with the "Show map in viewport" option on; (*) Objects with visibility<1.0 rendered brighter with GI than they should be; (*) Bug with dome lights (from build 1.50.14 only); (*) Background seen through matte objects not sampled properly for AA (from 1.50.SP1 only); (*) No reflections on VRayMtl if Fresnel reflections are enabled, the Fresnel IOR is locked to the refractive one, and the material has opacity map; (*) Dynamic raycaster limit did not work properly for values above 4095; (*) Issues with VRayDirt when baking very dense meshes; (*) Incorrect rendering progress bar display in DR mode; (*) The mesh export to .vrscene file ignored mesh normals;

Dmitry Vinnik - Showreel

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

The technical director Dmitry Vinnik has posted his reel, showing some very impressive lighting and rendering work. A lot of the shots were rendered with VRay for Max or VRay for Maya. Shot Breakdown Click below to download the showreel: SD QUICKTIME 50 MB SD XVID AVI 127MB HIGHRES SD XVID AVI 50MB LOWRES

Redesigned Chaos Group site

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Chaos Group have released their redesigned website. The image gallery will have its own site and will be released at a later date. www.chaosgroup.com

3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009 are shipping

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Autodesk has started shipping the latest version(s) of 3ds Max. For a list of new features: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5659451 Feature videos: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11007364 Chaos Group will have a 3ds Max 2009 build of VRay available for download shortly (within about a week ).

Motorstorm 2 Debut Trailer

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Realtime:uk recently did all the the race footage in the Motorstorm 2 Debut Trailer. All the race footage shots were rendered in VRay using the sun/sky system and physical cameras for motion blur. The trees close to the track are VRay proxies, while distant trees are billboards. View the trailer here: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31751.html Source and more images: Chaos Group forum thread

VRay / Blender integration

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

A Blender/VRay intergration is currently in development by Andrey M. Izrantsev. This is a two phase project, with the first, and current, phase being a python based VRay scene exporter, and the second phase being a C based full integration. For more details and downloads see the project website: http://blender.lugr.ru/

New MBM Training modules: VRay Overview Series

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 CDT

The team at Mentalboutmax have released the first Modules in their NEW Vray Overview Series. Following the success of their Video Training Modules for Mental Ray, the team at MBM have added the brand new �Overview Series� for the VRay Rendering engine. As with their Mental Ray and 3Ds Max General modules, the concept is to build a progressive library of knowledge that will help open up the power of the software in our hands. Modules 1 & 2 of the new series are available now http://www.mentalboutmax.co.uk/vray/index.html

News from VRay.info

Archexteriors vol. 1 for Cinema4D and V-Ray

HDRI-locations released

Making of Pontiac SpyHunter

VRay 1.5 SP2 released

Dmitry Vinnik - Showreel

Redesigned Chaos Group site

3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009 are shipping

Motorstorm 2 Debut Trailer

VRay / Blender integration

New MBM Training modules: VRay Overview Series