V-Ray 3.4 for Maya is out!

[Mihail.Djurev]

The new version for Maya is now available for download on the Chaosgroup website!

The official announcement will be next week.

V-Ray 3.4 for Maya will bring Maya 2016 Ext 2 support and many new features and bug fixes.

Here's the full change log:

New features:
(*) Support for Maya 2016 ext 2 (2016.5);
(*) V-Ray: Add V-Ray Denoiser render element;
(*) V-Ray: ExtraTexInt/ExtraTexFloat render element similar to ExtraTex, but for integer/float textures;
(*) V-Ray: Support for integer user attributes;
(*) V-Ray: Add another deep fragment merge mode, "None", where fragments are not merged at all;
(*) V-Ray: VRayMultiSubTex texture like in 3ds Max;
(*) V-Ray: Add a section in the render settings for controlling the cache size for tiled textures;
(*) samplerInfo node: Added new float output that returns a random number by geometry shell for meshes;
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: Support for colored flakes texture;
(*) VRayAerialPerspective: Filter color for the VRayAerialPerspective;
(*) Rendering support for PartIO Visualizer (see http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/partio.html);
(*) Added support for spriteNumPP parameter of particle systems;
(*) Support for animating the "Eye Distance" and "Focus Distance" parameters of the V-Ray Stereoscopic Camera;
(*) XGen: Per spline texture mapping;
(*) Bifrost: Support for foam particles in Maya 2016;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Initial support for bump mapping with procedural textures;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Orthogonal camera support;

Modified features:
(*) V-Ray: Faster rendering with the light cache;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Faster light updates;
(*) V-Ray IPR: More responsive updates;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Region changes without restarting the render are now possible;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Decreased the initial resolution for undersampling;
(*) V-Ray: Faster rendering of objects visible behind multiple panes of glass;
(*) V-Ray: Enabled support for processor groups by default;
(*) File node: Added elliptical filtering options;
(*) V-Ray: Support for the -rep option of Maya batch rendering command;
(*) V-Ray: Made the 2016 Material Viewer to use low thread priority;
(*) V-Ray: The default tessellation mode for displacement/subdivision is now "pre-tessellated";
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: Improved importance sampling algorithm, removed the "texture subdivs" parameter;
(*) VRayProxy: Try to preserve already attached materials when changing the proxy file;
(*) VRayScene: Hair preview;
(*) VRayScene: Support for visibility overrides;
(*) VRayScene: Support for render layer material overrides;
(*) VraySunSky: Added attribute for ground blending;
(*) VraySunSky: Added vertical offset for the sky texture;
(*) Texture Baking: Added dropdown for selecting UV set in V-Ray baking options;
(*) VRayFur: Faster strand generation for fur;
(*) Maya hair: Added a parameter to limit the minimum width of hair strands;
(*) VRayFur styler: Added option for symmetric painting;
(*) VRayMtl: Improved sampling for GGX BRDF;
(*) VRayMtl: Exposed the opacity for VRayMtl for lookDev view in the Property Editor;
(*) V-Ray Object Properties: Warnings related to visibility lists now print more information;
(*) V-Ray shelf: Extended the Create V-Ray toon button to allow VRayToon node selections;
(*) Material Viewer: Added support for the new "tumbling camera" in Maya 2016.5;
(*) Added support for the Light Editor in Maya 2016.5;
(*) V-Ray: Better warning messages when unsupported texture is connected to some plug;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Improved auto texture resizing for better memory usage and quality;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for the Bias attributes for VRayDirt;

(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Implemented auto-reduction of the VRayVolumeGrid preview;

Bug fixes:
(*) VRayMeshMtl: Fixed issues with the Maya attribute editor;
(*) VRayFastSSS2: Scene renders differently with render elements enabled vs disabled;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed negative pixel values in specific scenes;
(*) Fixed Material override extra attributes not updating properly in a specific case;
(*) Fixed Material override extra attributes not refreshing when accessed from VRaySwitchMtl;
(*) Maya batch: Fixed wrong exit code when VRAY_TERMINATE_ON_FRAME_END is enabled and a license error occurs;
(*) VRayAerialPerspective: Now shows up in the Atmospheric render element;
(*) VRayScene: Fixed VRayScene node randomly failing to load IES files;
(*) VRayScene: Node visibility was not handled properly;
(*) VRayScene: Fixed error when loading files with "." in the name;
(*) VRayScene: VRayScene node was deleted with the Delete History command;
(*) Bifrost: Fixed crash when trying to render as VRayMetaball;
(*) Bifrost: Better support for Bifrost Aero;
(*) VRayLight: Multiply by light color doesn't work in temperature mode;
(*) VRayLight: Multiply by the light color option always renders green light;
(*) Maya batch: Command-line width/height override flags were not taken into account;
(*) Fixed wrong Instancer primary visibility per particle override with specific scene;
(*) Fixed invalid colors with the Cook-Torrance BRDF;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Using GPU as production with DR will print a warning;
(*) VRayScene: Relative paths are only resolved for the first loaded .vrscene;
(*) VRayMeshMtl: Fixed not refreshing connections when a material is drag-and-dropped from Hypershade in 2016;
(*) VRayMeshMtl: Fixed material connections not refreshing with Copy Tab;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed random render results on a specific scene with Embree enabled;
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed slow rendering for Alembic files with motion blur enabled (specific scene only);
(*) XGen: Animated Alembic archives were always looped;
(*) VRayProxy: The GPU preview didn't work properly with instancing;
(*) VRayProxy: The GPU Mesh preview should disable the Alembic subdivision;
(*) VRayFur: Fixed very high memory usage while rendering in V-Ray IPR viewport;
(*) VRayFur: Fixed crash when deleting VrayFur properties node while rendering in IPR;
(*) VRayScene: Fixed fatal error with imported .vrscene files and Render Stats;
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: Fixed wrong result with mapped Hilight Glossiness;
(*) VRayProxy: Added support for V-Ray user attributes when displaced/subdivided;
(*) VRayTriplanar: The VRayTriplanar texture doesn't properly show it's UV placement attribute;
(*) VRayFalloff: Fixed issue with multiple VRayFalloff textures attached to a material;
(*) VRayProxy: The shader names were not always set correctly with "use full names";
(*) V-Ray: Fixed differently colored surface patches with 2D displacement mapping in specific scene;
(*) V-Ray: *.exr image files were saved with incorrect pixel aspect ratio metadata;
(*) VRayFastSSS2: Fixed infinite recursion with SSS2, raytraced single scatter and surfaceLuminance;
(*) V-Ray: The default OpenSubdiv depth is now 2;
(*) V-Ray: The Renderable camera list is not refreshed;
(*) V-Ray IPR viewport: Fixed V-Ray IPR viewport rendering only a region in the lower left corner;
(*) VFB: Bucket rendering with Fixed/Adaptive sampler was very slow in MacOS ElCapitan;
(*) VRaySky: Fixed wrong parameter label in the VRaySky texture;
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed wrong hair vertices in GPU preview;

(*) VRayVolumeGrid: The voxel preview did not update when changing loadNearest and flipUpAxis;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Frame blending did not work properly with VRayVolumeGrid grid that changes size;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed animation rendering garbage after the cache sequence ends;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed wrong shading with Geometry Volumetric render mode in MultiMatte render element;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Two VRayVolumeGrid in a vrscene sharing a cache with offset animation rendered the same frame;

(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed wrong shading for light cache with displacement, subdivision and VRayProxy;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed slow rendering of motion-blurred hair with light cache;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed high memory usage with proxies, hair, particles, displacement and subdivision in animation;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed crashes and leaks with displacement, subdivision and proxy;

Best regards,
Mihail Djurev,
V-Ray for Maya Team Lead

[jasonhuang1115]

Awesome! Noticed the 3.4 was on the nightly yesterday. Surprised it's almost the same time with Max's 3.4 release. Will new SP release between Max and maya out the same time from now on?

[Mihail.Djurev]

Well, it's something new for us too, and if it turns out to be successful, we may do it again. But still, I can't promise anything about future releases.

[hsz]

Great Stuff guys, Looking forward to try the Denoiser.

[sharktacos]

Excited to see the Denoiser is working with Maya now. The manual states that "Currently, the main RGB channel is the only one that is affected. Future versions of V-Ray will allow the same denoising to be applied to other render elements as well." Our typical workflow is to render multiple render elements which are then modified in comp (color grades etc) and then combined. I think that's a pretty standard animation production approach.

I'm wondering how that could work with the Denoiser on the beauty pass only? Has there been any discussion on workarounds to use the Denoiser with render passes? Have folks tried things like extracting a spec pass from a denoised beauty pass (Nuke: merge-difference)?

[pechart]

I think we will have to wait for the version that denoises the elements accordingly. And it would be super-awesome to get a raodmap for that feature, as it will have a pretty big influence on upcoming productions.

But: Nice update! The bugfix/improvements list is impressive and the new features like foam in BF, per shell random ID and the multiSubTex look very handy, too. Also the fast release is great. Thanks a lot to all @chaosgroup!

[sharktacos]

But: Nice update! The bugfix/improvements list is impressive and the new features like foam in BF, per shell random ID and the multiSubTex look very handy, too. Also the fast release is great. Thanks a lot to all @chaosgroup!

Yes indeed! Also the xGen per spline texture sounds great.

@Chaos: I don't see xGen in the Maya 3.4 docs (just a link back to the 3.3 docs). So there is nothing about the new xGen feature I could find. Is that still being updated in the docs?

[yolov]

Yes indeed! Also the xGen per spline texture sounds great.

@Chaos: I don't see xGen in the Maya 3.4 docs (just a link back to the 3.3 docs). So there is nothing about the new xGen feature I could find. Is that still being updated in the docs?

Seems like there's no docs about this. I'll make a note to add some documentation on this.

[yolov]

In the meantime, here's how to set it up:
* you need to add a custom shader parameter in the preview/output tab of the xgen window. You can use the paint option to add the color you want. I think there's also a way to load a bitmap for this.
* the added param is then read with vrayUserColor texture
In some of our tests, we used vrayUserColor plugged to a ramp, where the ramp's coordinates are driven by the distanceAlongStrand output of the vrayHairSampler.
Let me know if I should add something to the above. We could also make some sort of a quick tutorial on this.
Here's an example: xgenPerSplineMapping.zip

[snivlem]

Good stuff Chaos Devs, the denoiser is terrific! Much better than using PS's RAW filter to remove noise or other such plugins! Also a proper solution to random colours in Maya which was so difficult until now.

All in all, very cool features that should save a lot of time in future.

[ricoholmes]

Sweet baby jesus I love the Denoiser.

Was healthily sceptical about how good it could be, but surprised on every level here. It's unbelieveably good, thank you Chaos Group, thank you thank you thank you! It's already cut down production time and it's already proving invaluable.

[vlado]

Sweet baby jesus I love the Denoiser. Was healthily sceptical about how good it could be, but surprised on every level here. It's unbelieveably good, thank you Chaos Group, thank you thank you thank you! It's already cut down production time and it's already proving invaluable.

Excellent! I hope that you will continue to find it useful.

Best regards,
Vlado

[sharktacos]

In the meantime, here's how to set it up:
* you need to add a custom shader parameter in the preview/output tab of the xgen window. You can use the paint option to add the color you want. I think there's also a way to load a bitmap for this.
* the added param is then read with vrayUserColor texture
In some of our tests, we used vrayUserColor plugged to a ramp, where the ramp's coordinates are driven by the distanceAlongStrand output of the vrayHairSampler.
Let me know if I should add something to the above. We could also make some sort of a quick tutorial on this.
Here's an example: [ATTACH]30712[/ATTACH]

Thanks so much! I'll take a look

[sharktacos]

The denoiser has the mode "generate render elements only" which I assume are used in a compositing program like Nuke to apply the denoise to the render. The manual however does not describe the comp workflow to do this. Could someone explain what the comp for this should do, or link to another thread where this is explained? Thanks.

[vlado]

The denoiser has the mode "generate render elements only" which I assume are used in a compositing program like Nuke to apply the denoise to the render.

It is intended to be used with the vdenoise tool to denoise a sequence of images outside of Maya. We will work on a Nuke node a bit later on. The vdenoise tool itself is in the nightly builds, and will make into the official builds at the end of the week.

Best regards,
Vlado