Chaos V-Ray for 3ds Max

Overview

V-Ray is the renderer that a very large share of finished architectural and product imagery goes through, and the reason is consistency rather than novelty. It gives a predictable result from physically sensible inputs, it handles enormous scenes without falling over, and it has been in production long enough that every material, every light type and every strange edge case has been hit by somebody before you and documented.

This build installs into 3ds Max across the versions listed in its compatibility set and carries the licensing already applied. There is no license server to configure, no dongle, no watermark on the render and no node limit, so distributed rendering across several machines works with nothing further to add. The material library is installed locally rather than streamed.

Two render engines in one plug-in

The processor engine is the one to trust for a final frame. It is the older path, the more thoroughly tested one, and on a machine with a high core count it remains extremely competitive on anything involving heavy displacement or very large scenes that will not fit in graphics memory.

The graphics engine is where interactive work happens. Changes to a light, a material or the camera update in the viewport in near real time, which changes how a scene is developed: you look at the actual render while you adjust rather than committing to a test and waiting. Both engines share the same materials and settings, so a scene developed interactively renders identically on the processor path.

Materials, lights and the library

The material system is physically based with a single primary material covering most surfaces through its layers, plus dedicated materials for the things that need them: car paint, skin, hair, thin film and glass with proper absorption. The bundled library is several hundred ready materials which are useful as they are and more useful taken apart to see how they were built.

Lighting covers area lights, mesh lights, dome lighting from an environment image, sun and sky, and photometric fixtures from manufacturer data files. The sun and sky model produces a believable exterior with almost no setup, which is why so many architectural stills start there and adjust from it.

Scene scale, proxies and output

Proxy objects keep an enormous scene manageable by holding heavy geometry outside the scene file and loading it only at render time. A forest, a crowd or a full furniture library becomes a set of lightweight stand ins in the viewport that resolve to full detail in the frame. Fur, scattering and instancing all work against the same mechanism.

Output includes the render elements needed for compositing, so a frame arrives at the compositor split into its lighting, reflection, refraction and utility passes rather than as a flat image. Denoising is available on both engines, and the frame buffer carries its own colour correction and layer compositing so a look can be adjusted after the render finishes rather than by rendering again.

What you get

• Processor and graphics render engines sharing one set of materials and settings
• Interactive rendering in the viewport with near real time updates
• Physically based material system with dedicated car paint, skin, hair and glass materials
• Bundled library of several hundred ready materials, installed locally
• Area, mesh, dome, sun and sky and photometric lighting
• Proxy geometry, scattering and instancing for very large scenes
• Full render element set for compositing handoff
• Denoising on both engines with a frame buffer that corrects after the render
• Unlimited distributed rendering nodes with no license server

Inside the archive

• V-Ray for 3ds Max installer covering the supported host versions
• Material library, installed locally
• Environment images for dome lighting
• Distributed rendering component for additional machines
• Notes on the host version compatibility set

System requirements

Installing it

1. Close 3ds Max completely before starting.
2. Suspend real time protection for the install.
3. Run the installer as administrator and tick the host versions you have.
4. Do not configure a license server afterwards. The licensing is applied in the build.
5. Install the distributed rendering component on any additional machines that will contribute frames.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

Comments

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