Today, Chaos releases V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max, bringing Gaussian Splat support, new ways to create interactive virtual tours and more to the most complete rendering solution in the world. V-Ray 7 comes packed with more than 20 new features and improvements, covering everything from creative scatter options to firefly removal, so users can meet deadlines and impress clients faster than ever before.Version 7 continues V-Ray's leadership in both visualisation and visual effects, with innovations that accelerate and extend what's possible for creative professionals, said Phillip Miller, VP Product, Solutions for Artists at Chaos. V-Ray 7 also improves extensibility for custom pipelines while further cementing the Chaos ecosystem with design workflows from Enscape, previsualisation with Chaos Vantage and virtual production with Project Arena.
One immersive technique, 3D Gaussian Splats, has been gaining popularity throughout creative industries as a rapid way to create realistic 3D environments from photos or videos. V-Ray 7 now offers the first native support for Gaussian Splats with ray-traced rendering, so users can easily include their scenes within rich, detailed environments with accurate reflections and shadows greatly reducing the effort to place projects in context or on location.
Immersive, interactive virtual tours can now be quickly uploaded from V-Ray 7 and assembled in Chaos Collaboration, allowing designers to effortlessly create panoramic experiences with automatic hotspot generation. Each tour can be easily customised by adding floor plans, personalising hotspots and transitions or including contextual details/design elements along the way.
The V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB) has been expanded to help users do more in one place. New custom-shaped render regions enable artists to render just one or many parts of their frame with custom-drawn shapes. A vignette layer camera effect is now included that can also be customised by shape. The VFB also gains new colour-correction presets that help users quickly explore different looks as they refine their design.
Additional features and improvements include:
Chaos Scatter Aids
Instance Brush The new Chaos Scatter Brush can easily populate instances within a scene with more precision than ever before. Whether they're looking to fine-tune edges or apply a final artistic touch, users will be able to add extra details or quickly remove unwanted areas with ease.
Distribution Maps Users can now switch between different density styles using the new Chaos Scatter distribution maps library, helping designers add realistic looks and experiment with instance distribution at unprecedented speeds.
Faster Scatter-Heavy Exports Chaos Scatter is now handled procedurally by V-Ray 7 Standalone, enabling massive scattering results to export in minimal time when network rendering or submitting to Chaos Cloud.
Better Lighting
Firefly Removal V-Ray 7's new algorithm automatically detects and finishes unresolved pixels, known as fireflies, during bucket rendering, greatly reducing the time needed to produce final images.
Enhanced V-Ray Sun & Sky For designers looking to create nautical twilight looks, V-Ray 7 offers an improved PRG sky model that can create more realistic images and immersive animations. V-Ray Sky can also now render various observer altitudes up to several kilometres.
Chaos Cosmos Upgrades
V-Ray Luminaires The ever-expanding Chaos Cosmos asset library, which comes with V-Ray, now brings more speed and accuracy to lighting fixtures, accurately distributing their light and properly illuminating the fixtures themselves. Most of the light fixtures within Chaos Cosmos are now all Luminaires in V-Ray 7, making it easier to populate scenes with realistic lighting while also rendering final results more quickly.
Asset Variants Support Chaos Cosmos now has more asset variations to choose from, such as seasonal options for 3D vegetation models (ex: summer or autumn leaves). Users can select their desired variant and just drag and drop it into their scene or even alter it freely after import.
Accelerated Workflows
V-Ray Profiler Users can now learn how much time V-Ray spends calculating shaders and volumes, exporting scenes, compiling geometry and displacement, loading bitmaps and more. Once all hotspots are located, users can then optimise their pipelines for faster rendering. The Profiler can also be paired with the Memory Tracker for more data/insights.
V-Ray Lister Geometry Tab V-Ray Lister gains a new tab for managing and tweaking V-Ray geometry objects including V-Ray Proxy, Fur, Decal, Clipper and more. With advanced filtering options, artists can easily navigate and manage settings, controlling multiple geometry objects directly from the Lister's UI.
GPU Boosts
Faster Time to First Pixel New optimisations for scatter rendering, texture heavy scenes, data uploads and geometry compilations offer better production/interactive rendering experiences, as well as a faster time to first pixel for speed-conscious users.
Caustics Support V-Ray GPU now supports caustics, enabling realistic surface reflections and refractions in both production and interactive rendering. Based on photon mapping, the new Caustics solver is also optimised to fully utilise GPU hardware, delivering significantly faster results than a CPU.
Out-of-Core Textures Texture-heavy scenes can be rendered even more efficiently, helping artists add incredible detail to their scenes without sacrificing shading quality.
Other Updates
Selective V-Ray Scene Conversion Users can now convert selected objects, update materials with a new Material Process, or convert textures to .TX files for smoother use and better performance all using the same toolset.
Extended USD Support V-Ray 7 now supports the latest version
