Chaos recently released V-Ray 6 for Maya, the latest version of its Academy Award/Emmy-winning production renderer. A staple of over 400 major projects, V-Ray has been used across the streaming and feature film world, including recent effects for The Batman, For All Mankind and Stranger Things 4. V-Ray 6 for Maya expands its feature set with geometric tiling, procedural clouds, a new shader profiler and more.
VRayEnmesh is a new system that repeats geometry across the surface of an object in the most memory-efficient way possible. With Enmesh, artists can start treating geometry like a texture, creating patterns like chainmail, car grills and fabrics that are ready for their close-up. Enmesh is so easy on the memory, users can add billions of polygons to a scene without compromise.
Procedural Clouds have been added to the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, removing the need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Artists can now customize their scenes, taking full advantage of ray-traced lighting, ground shadows and volumetric effects as they animate.
Other features in V-Ray 6 for Maya include:
USD Improvements– V-Ray 6 support the latest MayaUSD version and includes new enhancements for OpenVDB volumes and V-Ray material export, promoting an easy exchange with Solaris and USD-powered pipelines.
Performance Improvements– Updates include up to 30 percent faster rendering for Environment Fog, up to 2x faster rendering for the Translucent layer in the V-Ray Material and enhanced memory efficiency for scenes featuring thousands of instances.
Improved Dome Light– A new Finite Dome mode now allows users to control the physical size of their light, according to radius and height. This is especially helpful for rendering objects like cars with proper size and scale in relation to image-based lighting (IBL).
Thin-Film Materials– A new thin-film layer has been added to the V-Ray Material, making it easy to create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.
Chaos Cloud Collaboration– For project reviews, V-Ray 6 for Maya adds push-button cloud collaboration, making it easy to share renders through Chaos Cloud via the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB). Clients/teams can now add comments and annotation, see panorama views and more — from anywhere in the world.
Background Cloud Submissions– Users now have uninterrupted access to Maya whenever they submit to Chaos Cloud Rendering, preserving their iterative cycle.
Decal Displacement– VRayDecal can now add displacement to any surface, bringing even more realism to cracked walls, rocks, embossed lettering and more.
More Accurate Reflections– With the new energy compensation updates, rough metals and surfaces will look even more realistic.
Light Cache in IPR– The output of V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) is identical to the production renderer, so teams can make better decisions at the moment.
V-Ray Frame Buffer Upgrades– A panorama viewer, a Proportion Guides Layer for composition development and a Flip button have all been added to the VFB to help designers make better decisions as they assess their work.
New Chaos Cosmos Assets– In recent months, Chaos Cosmos has exploded across the VFX world for the way it fast tracks previz work. Over 1,500 assets have been added since V-Ray 5, including detailed vegetation, urban textures and photorealistic materials.
V-Ray GPU Improvements– Artists now have support for nearly all of the new V-Ray 6 features. A faster Light Cache and a new Device Selector that allows them to assign devices to tasks are available, as well.
