V-Ray – A Chaos Group Product

The VRay render engine is an award-winning solution for CGI that was developed by the Chaos Group. V-Ray is capable of advanced visual effects such as caustics and refraction, making it particularly popular with artists and designers who need to create and render complex illustrative models and make photo-realistic visualisations. Many studios across the world use V-Ray for rendering including Method Studios, Scanline VFX and Pixomondo.

V-Ray is compatible with Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. The V-Ray rendering plugin works with most recognised 3D modelling applications. This includes Maya, 3ds Max, and Cinema 4D (C4D). More information on these is listed below.

V-Ray Next

VRay Next is the first hybrid rendering engine that uses both CPU and GPU to process renders as fast as possible. This smart technology is available in different modelling softwares. For 3ds Max, it has features that include:

GPU-accelerated Volume Rendering
V-Ray GPU supports blazing fast rendering of volumetric effects like smoke, fire and fog.
Interactive AI Denoiser
Remove noise instantly using the NVIDIA AI-accelerated denoiser.
Lighting Analysis Tools
Accurately measure light levels and render false colour heat maps or light value overlays.
Adaptive Dome Light
Image-based environment lighting is two times faster on average and up to seven times faster in some scenes.
Point & Shoot Camera
The redesigned V-Ray Physical Camera sets exposure and white balance automatically.
Faster GPU Rendering
V-Ray GPU is ideal for high-end production scenes with a new rendering architecture that’s twice as fast.

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V-Ray Compatibility with Modelling Software

V-RAY FOR MAYA

V-Ray for Cinema 4D

V-Ray for 3ds Max

V-Ray for Maya

Maya is a professional modelling software for visual special effects (VFX). V-Ray Next for Maya’s powerful CPU & GPU renderer can create photoreal visual effects for film, television and Virtual Reality or VR, and is now compatible with Maya 2019. Older popular versions of V-Ray such as 3.4 and 3.6 are also compatible.

V-Ray for Cinema 4D (C4D)

V-Ray for Cinema 4D is a rendering engine which allows tight control of lighting and shading. There are a number of supported features including VRayFur and VRayHairMtl which allow the creation of hyper-realistic fur and hair shading.

V-Ray for 3ds Max

V-Ray for 3ds Max offers high-end CPU and GPU rendering for visual artists with faster ray tracing, cleaner sampling and more accurate rendering. This software is commonly used in the architectural visualisation industry.

V-Ray for Houdini

V-Ray for Houdini is a more recent release. Houdini is a SideFX modelling software and is a widely popular procedural content creation tool for film, TV, and Game Development (Gamedev).

Flicker Free V-Ray Rendering – Video Tutorial

This video tutorial is for V-Ray 3.6 and helps to demonstrate how to render an animation or fly-through and avoid flickering in V-Ray scenes.

It covers all of the basics of global illumination (GI) settings. It also explores advanced settings for irradiance maps and light cache settings for animations.

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How to Speed Up V-Ray Renders

Step 1) Optimise render settings and ensure that on-premise or local hardware is also optimised to perform well when rendering.

Step 2) If using additional render nodes locally, ensure that sufficient render node licenses are available from Chaos Group.

Step 3) Use render farms or cloud rendering to scale available render infrastructure for rendering. YellowDog is a multi-cloud render platform that studios use to speed up their animation and visual effects.

Learn More about YellowDog

V-Ray Case Studies

Cloud Rendering with YellowDog

Ambassadors used V-Ray, Maya, Yeti, and YellowDog’s Cloud Render platform to produce the animated television commercial series: ‘Antibiotics: Use Wisely, Take Precisely’ for the Federal Office of Public Health.

Ambassadors are a leading creative production studio with teams in Amsterdam, Netherlands and New York, USA.

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Why Should Studios Choose V-Ray?

There are a number reasons why a studio might use V-Ray. It could be due to existing expertise with the studio’s 3D artists, because the features of V-Ray lend themselves to a particular production, or because of the relationship between look development and final delivery capability.

PriestmanGoode is a V-Ray based studio. Using 3ds Max and V-Ray with YellowDog, they state their reason for choosing V-Ray in this case study which is also below.

“V-Ray’s versatility is what makes it perfect for our productions. We need a tool that is as comfortable rendering interior as it is exterior with occasionally massive data sets. It needs to handle materials with accuracy but at the same time scale up for overview shots. We have to treat a single stitch on a seat with the same love and attention to detail as a high speed train travelling through kilometres of landscapes or a plane thousands of feet in the sky, flying over a mountain range. V-Ray seems to thrive on that stress testing.”

Rob Walsh Head of Visualisation, PriestmanGoode

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V-Ray Render Engine | Chaos Group Rendering