Improved Render Speeds, New Microfacet GTR / GGX BRDF, and Major Advancements in GPU Rendering Now Available

Sofia, Bulgaria – December 11, 2014 – Chaos Group today announced Service Pack 1 for V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max. With further improvements to render speeds, a new Microfacet GTR / GGX BRDF, and major advancements in V-Ray RT GPU, Service Pack 1 is available for immediate download.

New V-Ray RT GPU Features
V-Ray RT GPU now supports rendering hair and subsurface scattering, making it perfect for advanced character work. Improved refresh speeds enable greater interactivity for look development and faster iterations. Light Cache support now makes it possible to render architectural interiors using the GPU.  

New Microfacet GTR / GGX and Shader Improvements
V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max SP1 adds support for Microfacet GTR / GGX BRDF, ideal for hard surfaces such as metal. In addition, many shaders have been refined for faster rendering and added functionality. There are now Clip opacity and Stochastic opacity material options for faster rendering of opacity-mapped trees and vegetation, improved translucency of two-sided materials, and optimized volume rendering with Light Cache support.  

Other new features in Service Pack 1:

Geometry 

• Updated to Embree 2.3; Embree can now accelerate VRayProxy objects, instances and Ornatrix/HairFarm hair
• New VRayInstancer geometric plugin for instancing objects using ParticleFlow systems
• Improved cutaway and section rendering with VRayClipper
• Automatic instancing of identical proxy objects
• Added support for subdivision objects in Alembic files through OpenSubdiv
• Added support for point cloud rendering in 3ds Max 2015
• New vrmesh/Alembic viewer for proxy objects

Lighting

• New disc-shaped area light
• Faster sampling of rectangular area lights
• Ability to control diffuse and specular lighting contributions separately

Render Elements and Compositing

• Support for OpenEXR 2.2 with new DWA compression options
• Render out light contributions into separate components (raw, diffuse, specular, etc.)
• New controls for object visibility in VRayVelocity render elements

V-Ray Frame Buffer

• New dockable history and color correction tools in V-Ray Frame Buffer 
• New Reinhard highlight burn color correction
• Save multi-channel OpenEXR and .vrimg files directly from VFB
• Ability to load background image into VFB
• New option for loading files into VFB for post processing
• Improved anaglyph stereoscopic preview

Availability

V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max Service Pack 1 is a free update for all V-Ray 3.0 customers. It can be downloaded here.