V-Ray 3.3 for Maya is out!

[Mihail.Djurev]

Hello,

V-Ray 3.3 for Maya is now available. This is a free update for V-Ray 3.X. Most scenes render 20-50% faster, and this release introduces final frame rendering on the GPU with the updated V-Ray RT. We've also updated V-Ray.com and the Docs page. Thanks to everyone for their input on this release!

Here's a quick video overview of what's new:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P3pHrqJTDE

The changelog is below.

New features:
(*) V-Ray: New adaptive sampling algorithm for better detection and clean-up of noise in the image;
(*) V-Ray: Added option for automatic subdivs calculations for materials and lights;
(*) V-Ray: Better GI distribution (more robust handling of reflective GI caustics) for interior scenes;
(*) V-Ray: Better sub-pixel filtering for the progressive sampler;
(*) V-Ray: Dynamic noise threshold for the progressive sampler for more even noise distribution;
(*) V-Ray: Internal spectral color space switched from CIE RGB to sRGB;
(*) V-Ray: General speed improvements;
(*) V-Ray: Ability to use the GPU for production rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Support for Ornatrix beta;
(*) V-Ray: Implemented raytraced rounded corners that work also at intersections of different meshes;
(*) V-Ray: New Multi Matte ID render element;
(*) V-Ray: Material select render element works with volume shaders assigned to shading groups;
(*) V-Ray: Write the VFB stamp information in the OpenEXR metadata;
(*) V-Ray: Support the standard Scene Assembly options in the Render Settings;
(*) V-Ray: Batch Render supports -iip (ignore image planes) flag;
(*) V-Ray: Support for animation (bezier) curves as remap texture nodes;
(*) VFB: Ability to load color corrections from VFB history;
(*) VFB: Ability to export the color corrections settings as single LUT (.cube) file;
(*) VRayScene: New Maya node that allows import of an entire .vrscene file as one object with a viewport preview;
(*) VRaySun/VRaySky: New sky model (Hosek et al);
(*) VRaySun/VRaySky: Added ground color parameter;
(*) VRayAerialPerspective: New aerial perspective atmospheric effect;
(*) VRayFalloff: New texture that creates a falloff gradient based on the viewing direction, Fresnel effect, etc;
(*) VRayTriplanar: New texture for triplanar mapping;
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: New stochastic flakes material for car-paint like materials;
(*) XGen: Added support for displacement, subdivision and VRayUserColor;
(*) XGen: Added support for frame animation of archive;
(*) XGen: Added the ability to cache XGen collections to .vrscene and general export performance improvements;
(*) Instancer: Ability to override the visibility, object id, frame, user float/color of the instanced objects using per particle attributes;
(*) VRayClipper: Ability to clip against arbitrary meshes;
(*) VRayProxy: Added a GPU preview mode for faster viewport performance and less memory consumption.
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added a viewport preview of the grid content;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added ability to customize the import of the native vdb/f3d channels.
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Implement support for nameless VDB channels;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added support for importing VDB caches from FumeFX 4;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added options for probabilistic volume sampling;
(*) SynColor: Enabled support for sRGB and gamma correction profiles;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Added support for Hair, Cook-Torrance, GGX and subsurface BRDFs;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: GLSL shaders are now compiled to binary code through LLVM for increased render speed;
(*) Support for the new Look Development shading nodes and simplexNoise in Maya 2016 Ext1;
(*) Texture Baking: The Ptex texture baking now works with V-Ray proxy objects;
(*) Texture Baking: Ability to bake objects as a particle cloud to a .vrmesh file;
(*) File node: Implemented support for signed integer TIFF images;
(*) samplerInfo node: Added new output that returns random color per instance;
(*) Added the lens effects filter generator tool in the installation;

(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Support for Projection node;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Support for VRay User Scalar/Color;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Support for bitmap aperture to the physical camera;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Support for VRaySwitchMtl;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Initial support for GLSL texture shaders;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Support for hair and particles from VRayProxy objects;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Speed up loading of resized textures to the GPU;

Modified features:
(*) V-Ray: Optimized UI and new default Render Settings options;
(*) V-Ray: Faster rendering of particle system with sphere/point rendering mode;
(*) V-Ray: Ability to handle more than 1000 UDIM tiles per UDIM texture;
(*) V-Ray: Improved multi-threaded performance for UDIM textures;
(*) V-Ray: Better management of many tiled OpenEXR and TIFF files;
(*) V-Ray: Faster activation of the mouse tracking with the progressive sampler and RT;
(*) V-Ray: Updated the OpenSubdiv library to version 3.0 with faster subdivision performance;
(*) V-Ray: VRayLightMesh now supports OpenSubdiv subdivision;
(*) V-Ray: Object select render element can work with more than one object ID;
(*) V-Ray: Support for per instance unshared UV sets;
(*) V-Ray: VRAY_TERMINATE_ON_SEQUENCE_END environment variable that terminates the process after a sequence has finished rendering;
(*) VRayMesh: Support for more than two motion blur samples with Alembic files;
(*) VRayMesh: Faster point cloud rendering;
(*) VRayMesh: Ignore the subdivision attributes of Alembic files when making a Maya mesh;
(*) VRayFur: Added a global "scale" parameter that affects the length, the thickness, the gravity and the density of the fur;
(*) Texture Baking: Added a "Browse" button in the baking options window/AE;
(*) Texture Baking: Optimized the Ptex baking window UI;
(*) Texture Baking: Ptex baking now skips invisible surfaces;
(*) Texture Baking: Added an option to bake reflections from a specific scene camera;
(*) Increased the VRayRectlight texture size limit to 8192;
(*) Added the "Quick Settings" and the "Light Lister" to the V-Ray menu;
(*) VRayDisplacement\Subdivision: The "Static geometry" attribute was renamed to "Geometry generation";
(*) Render Settings: The translator default path now doesn't expand the layout;
(*) Render Settings: Added an option to globally turn on/off subdivision surfaces, hair, proxies, particles and plugin geometry;
(*) Support the viewport wireframe color object override for V-Ray lights;
(*) Made it easier to call V-Ray MEL commands from Python;
(*) Added UI options for creating empty sets for all V-Ray object properties in the Create/V-Ray menu and in the V-Ray shelf buttons;
(*) VFB: Added new options to the vfbControl command to fully control the VFB window form MEL;
(*) VFB: Use Maya's native open/save dialogs in the VFB;
(*) VFB: Added tooltip with the image comment to the images in the VFB history;
(*) VFB: Adding/removing render elements will not delete the contents of the frame buffer;
(*) VRayIESLight: Support for IES files with the latest format LM-63-2002;
(*) VRayMtl/VRayBumpMtl: Added new "local space bump map" mode;
(*) VRayMtl: The refraction now terminates rays based on the "Max transparency levels" option (it was hard-coded limit previously);
(*) VRayRectLight: Added a disk shape option for the rectangle light;
(*) VRayTexOCIO: Apply the OCIO correction to its output color attribute;
(*) Support for intensity curves with the Maya standard lights;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Introduced -mergeShaders switch to merge shaders from different files with equal names;

(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Improved AMD GPUs support;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Optimized bitmap memory management;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Improved light cache with support for motion blurred hairs;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Optimized the "Compiling geometry..." phase on scenes with many nodes;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Optimized material rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Print warning for unsupported textures;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU CUDA: Prevent kernel recompilations while RT is running;

Bug fixes continue in next post....

-The Chaos team

[vlado]

Bug fixes:
(*) V-Ray: Rendering .vrscene files over 4 GB with DR was not working correctly;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed infinite "Render interrupted" messages when rendering with IPR and no render machines are available;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed difference in rendering with motion blur, geometry samples > 2 in DR;
(*) V-Ray: The VRAY_TERMINATE_ON_FRAME_END environment variable now terminates the application properly with exit code 0;
(*) V-Ray: Improve the precision of mapping for 3D textures;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed rare crash when computing mip-map levels for non-square textures;
(*) V-Ray: Missing error when parting vrscene with missing include file;
(*) V-Ray: OpenSubdiv was not working with color sets;
(*) V-Ray: OpenSubdiv was crashing when subdividing faces with holes;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed random OpenSubdiv results with non-manifold geometry;
(*) V-Ray: Crash with OpenEXR files using custom data window;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed UI issues with V-Ray windows on high resolution monitors;
(*) V-Ray: Support for the "Local" attribute of the place3dTexture;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed crash with NURBS when rendering with changing FormU/V;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed texturing with NURBS;
(*) V-Ray: The ramp texture didn't export proper .vrscene with mixed number/texture positions;
(*) V-Ray: Running vrend always printed "Error Cannot get the object for the current render layer", even if there is no error;
(*) V-Ray: Maya's particle "Tail Fade" parameter is not respected when rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed the "Multi Matte" RE when used with blend material, the two sided material or renderable curves material;
(*) V-Ray: The Material ID of the base material was ignored when used in VRayMtlWrapper and VRayMtlRenderStats;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed the -crop option of the stand-alone;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed incorrect deep images when EXR Compression is None;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed "Affect Swatches" to not apply gamma when SynColor is on in Maya 2016;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed an issue with the Bifrost export when using network install;
(*) V-Ray: Opening a scene with material select render element was crashing sometimes;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed slow rendering with mb embree hair on Linux;
(*) Texture Baking: Artifacts with baking of large scale scenes;
(*) Texture Baking: Loading the default VRay settings in Maya does not reset the baking engine;
(*) Texture Baking: Ptex baking surfaces with bump maps produced shading artifacts;
(*) Texture Baking: The baking engine controls were not updated when a preset is loaded;
(*) VrayLighMesh was not rendered without an assigned material;
(*) VrayLighMesh was not working with VRayVertexColor;
(*) VRayLightMtl: The "Direct illumination" option didn't work with mapped "Light multiplier";
(*) VRayMesh: Added velocity multiplier parameter for alembic proxies;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed a crash when exporting a scene with a lot of objects;
(*) VRayMesh: Selecting both the transform and shape node of an object and exporting to proxy was making a duplicate of all the faces within the proxy file;
(*) VRayMesh: Shape nodes were not correctly numbered when importing multiple proxies;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed slow OpenSubdiv subdivision with many voxels;
(*) VRayMesh: The proxy import window didn't detect sequences with the <frameNN> token;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed crash with displacement on proxy that does not have smooth vertex normals;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed crash with motion blur and VRayVertexColor texture used as a texture for a mesh light based on a proxy;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed double illumination on SSS material covered by a transparent material when both are applied on the same proxy object;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed crash with alembic hair when colors are missing and the uvs doesn't match the number of vertices;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed crash with alembic file if it fails to load normally;
(*) VRayMesh: Fixed slow change of the scene time for static meshes with "Geometry to load" set to "Maya mesh";
(*) VRayMeshMaterial: Fixed various issues with the shader list update;
(*) VRayTexOSL: Export a proper uvw generator instead of the default one;
(*) VRayToon: The texture for the line width was clamped to 1.0 internally causing different results compared to V-Ray 3.0;
(*) VFB: Fixed crash if you save a comment with more than 1024 symbols in the VFB history;
(*) VFB: Fixed crash with huge font sizes for the frame stamp;
(*) VFB: The history was not properly refreshed after autosave from IPR;
(*) Render Settings: Fixed issues with the order of the render element list;
(*) Render Settings: Light cache didn't add automatically extension to the cache file;
(*) The "Enable Overrides" Maya attribute from "Drawing Overrides" was ignored;
(*) VRayHairMtl: Fixed slow rendering with Transmission Glossiness Length and Width set to 1;
(*) Fixed incorrect undo/redo with the "Color Mode" of the VRay lights;
(*) XGen: Fixed issue when rendering in batch mode XGen collections inside a namespace;
(*) XGen: Fixed render canceling when there is XGen collection in the scene;
(*) VRayMtl: Fixed wrong reflection filter render element with GGX BRDF;
(*) VRayMtl: Black Diffuse color broke the Affect Channels for Refractions;
(*) VRayFlakesMtl: Fixed crash in some cases;
(*) Surface luminance node was causing wrong lighting render elements;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: the normals render element didn't work with the trunc sampler or probabilistic sampling;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Incorrect rendering of Maya fluids and VRayVolumeGrid with big step size;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed incorrect position changes with animated .vdb caches;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed rendering of speed channel from .f3d/.vdb caches;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed artifacts with grid-based self-illumination with DR;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Field3D caches over 4GB were not loaded;
(*) VRayDisplacement: Displacement was not applied to the entire object when it has multiple shaders assigned;
(*) VRayDisplacement: Fixed crash with VRay Edges used as displacement and "Show Subtriangles" option is ON;
(*) VRaFastSSS2: Splotches with GI when SSS2 is layered with a reflective BRDF;
(*) VRaySoftBox: Wrong rendering when using more then 3 colors in the gradient;
(*) The viewport color attribute of some V-Ray nodes didn't work in viewport 2.0;
(*) If Maya is loaded from arbitrary location, clicking the folder icon (browse dialog) of the AE for V-Ray nodes, didn't work;
(*) Fixed the V-Ray shelf creation issue on some systems caused by XGen;
(*) Fixed various small issues with the Light Lister;
(*) Fixed crash with Yeti and velocity render element;
(*) Fixed rendering issue with Yeti and primary visibility turned off;
(*) The image plane was rendered even if it is not part of the current render layer;
(*) VRayDistanceTex: Fixed artifacs with particular geometry;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: VRayUserColor with UV set names didn't work;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Fixed crash when a compile error message size exceeds 512;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: GLSL had access only to the first texture map;
(*) OSX: Fixed issues with the installer when setting environment variables;
(*) OSX: The vrayRenderer.xml file is installed on wrong location under OSX;
(*) OSX: Fixed the GUI installer mode on OS X 10.11;
(*) OSX: Artifacts from the bucket brackets in VFB on Retina displays;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Fixed the velocity channel with json bgeo files;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Fixed missing error message when a bgeo file fails to load;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Fixed issues when reading some obj files;
(*) vrimg2exr: Fixed broken files when converting with data window to 16-bit;

(*) V-Ray RT: The SSS prepass was rendered after the frame is done destroying the image, if the object-based illumination map is used;
(*) V-Ray RT: The stereoscopic camera was rendered wrong;
(*) V-Ray RT: The "Post Render Frame MEL" was not called, which caused issues with other plugins that are expecting it;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed slow refreshing with large resolutions;
(*) V-Ray RT Viewport: Disable writing the output image;
(*) V-Ray RT Viewport: Disable the gamma correction if running in Viewport 2.0 and the gamma correction there is turned on;
(*) V-Ray RT Viewport: Fixed registering as a viewport renderer in Maya when the OpenGL core profile is used;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: VRayFlakesMtl was rendered black in some cases;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: "Cast shadows" was not working;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: UDIM textures were not transferred for DR when using the GPU;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed wrong results with textured VRayLights;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Texture baking could produce incorrect results after a regular render;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Removed artifacts caused by overlapping faces on VRayProxy objects with motion blur;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: MultiMatte render element was not working when rendering with motion blur;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Displaced geometry was not included in the light cache;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Incorrect render result on machines with more than one GPU when Maya Gamma correct node is used;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: The decay rates of the point light was not supported;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed different results compared to CPU with refraction colours larger than 1.0;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed darkening in corners when using the light cache with "retrace" option;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: VRayFur didn't render with textures in the material;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Portal lights blocked shadows from other lights;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Scenes with very large light cache were rendered slow;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Subdivision and displacement normals were flipped with negative scaling;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Unsupported procedural textures were not baked into bitmaps;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU CUDA: Optimized memory allocation when loading scenes with many textures;

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

Solid release, really impressive new features with the always welcome speed increases!

Good luck coming up with new features/optimizations for VRay 4!

[lcrivell]

The video you have released with VRay 3.3 improvements is really great. Can you share the Maya scene files used ?

[vlado]

Yes, we can probably do that... there was an idea to put them on the docs site, so we'll see.

Best regards,
Vlado

[francomanko]

Hi, just a request, but I was trying to figure out how to use the 'random by id'. No results came up when i did a search in help docs, the video wasn't clear and i had to dig into the forum to find your scene file which helped me figure out the main issue why I wasn't getting any result. It was because i was rendering in cuda IPR. When i changed to cpu it worked. Either way would it be possible to at least make a clear entry into the help file about the feature as i've been going around in circles for a bit. Also I was getting confused by the 'random by ID' name as i presumed wrongly that it would be connected to an object id

OR

tell me my search abilities suck.

(Great update though much appreciated.)

[yolov]

Here's a thread where this was discussed and also an example scene was posted:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...638#post678638

[Mihail.Djurev]

V-Ray 3.30.02 for maya is now available for download.
The update contains the following bug fixes:

Bug fixes:
(*) V-Ray: Fixed OpenSubdiv slow-down with meshes missing uv/color data in some areas;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed invalid colors produced by the subdivision for meshes with zero-length normals.
(*) V-Ray: Layer overrides were not working on the "Renderable Camera" option;
(*) V-Ray: The GUI license was not released immediately after .vrscene export without rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Renderable curves now don't impose 2000 segments limit;
(*) V-Ray: The progressive sampler didn't change the AA type in baking for big textures to preserve memory;
(*) V-Ray: Local subdivs have been disabled for swatch rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed a crash with tiled OpenEXR and TIFF files on linux;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed a crash when exporting vrscene file on linux;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed undo not working after vrayUpdateVRayCommonGlobalsTab command;
(*) Installation: Previous versions of V-Ray could not be uninstalled properly on OSX.
(*) VFB: The color corrections were always applied to single channel EXR;
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed a crash in batch on Linux when the proxy file fails to load;
(*) VRayProxy: The proxy material was not changing the current material connection properly;
(*) VRayProxy: The shader names in the proxy material were not always set correctly with "use full names";
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed slowdown with alembic in a specific scene;
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed a crash with alembic particles when scrubbing in viewport 2.0;
(*) VRayScene: The .vrscene file was not released after loading;
(*) VRayScene: The viewport preview was not updated for animated scenes;
(*) Geometry: Animating transform will not trigger geometry export in Maya 2016;
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: Fixed missing subdivs slider;
(*) VRaFastSSS2: Fixed invalid colors produced in some rare cases;
(*) VRayMtl2Sided: Fixed slow rendering with GI;
(*) VRaySwitchMtl: Fixed wrong rendering if there are empty sub-material slots;
(*) VRayTriplanar: Fixed artifacts with the "Random..." options on Linux/OSX;
(*) VRayTriplanar: Fixed slow rendering when used for displacement;
(*) VRayTriplanar: Fixed texture offset and rotation now work;
(*) VRayCurvature: Fixed issue causing the usage of geometry normals instead of smooth normals for opaque objects;
(*) VRayLightDome: Fixed error message appearing when assigning texure to VRayLightDome;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed the registering in the Maya's File Path Editor;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed random artifacts with the heat haze render mode;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed the heat haze render mode to work with the probabilistic rendering option;
(*) Quick Settings: The sampling values were not matching the the new V-Ray defaults;
(*) The Windows installer was missing vraymayaspawner.exe in standalone install mode;

(*) V-Ray RT Viewport: Fixed issues with the camera pan and zoom;
(*) V-Ray RT/GPU: Fixed a crash with the GPU production render;