Today, Chaos Group announces the immediate availability of V-Ray 3.1 for Maya. 

Sofia, Bulgaria – July 28, 2015 – Today, Chaos Group announces the immediate availability of V-Ray 3.1 for Maya. V-Ray 3.1 for Maya contains over 100 new and modified features, including Maya 2016 compatibility, numerous V-Ray RT GPU enhancements and two VR cameras. The free update also offers more efficient handling of proxy objects, an improved global illumination algorithm, and faster rendering performance.

“V-Ray 3.1 for Maya is a big release,” said Vladimir Koylazov, Chaos Group Co-founder and Lead Developer of V-Ray. “Our team has been hard at work making sure that the speed, memory and workflow optimizations our community has requested are ready for professional use.” 

For VR projects, V-Ray 3.1 for Maya adds new stereoscopic camera types that will render 6x1 cube maps and spherical images. The introduction of the Shade Map optimizes stereoscopic rendering.

“When I started building out the new VR and VFX division for Legend3D, I knew V-Ray for Maya had to be a part of it,” said Justin Denton, VFX and VR Supervisor at Legend3D. “Working with Chaos Group led to the features we need for our advanced virtual reality projects. V-Ray 3.1 for Maya is a huge update.”

V-Ray RT GPU now supports:

• Hair & fur
• Subsurface scattering
• Displacement & subdivision surfaces
• Light Cache GI
• Anisotropic highlights
• UDIM textures
• Texture baking
• QMC sampling on NVIDIA CUDA devices

Proxy Object improvements:

• Identical proxy objects are now automatically instanced 
• Improved viewport previews with mesh simplification options
• Import multiple proxy objects at once
• Support for hair and particle instances
• Support for instancing Ogawa Alembic files
• Mesh viewer utility – to view proxy objects and Alembic files, including subdivision surfaces, particles, and hair

Additional New Features in V-Ray 3.1:

Maya 2016 support

• Full support for new Hypershade Node Editor, Material Viewer, and Lookdev view
• Enhanced Bifrost support – including rendering liquids as isosurfaces without meshing

Workflow & User Interface

• Quick settings
• Light Lister
• Tooltips
• Updated default render settings

Geometry

• Faster rendering of dynamic meshes, proxy objects, and instances
• Faster rendering of hair and fur
• Intel Embree acceleration for hair and fur
• VRayClipper – for cutaways and sections

Lights

• Light meter – new helper object for lighting analysis

Global Illumination

• Updated Light Cache algorithm removes light leaks and improves animation

Volume rendering

• Probabilistic shading for faster volume rendering

Availability

V-Ray 3.1 for Maya is a free update for all V-Ray 3.0 for Maya customers. Download now at chaosgroup.com. For more information and a complete change log, visit V-Ray.com.