February 15, 2024 (local time) – Chaos announces the release of V-Ray 6 Update 2 for Maya & Houdini.
New feature highlights
V-Ray 6 Update 2 for Maya and Houdini adds support for MaterialX and expanded USD compatibility to ensure continuity of work and smooth collaboration between departments, studios, and digital content creation tools. Transferring assets is now easier.
■MaterialX support
Added support for MaterialX to enable seamless shader exchange between teams and tools. You can create and render MaterialX (MtlX) shaders or convert existing V-Ray materials to MtlX. Maya also has initial support for LookDevX, allowing you to work with MtlX shading graphs and preview changes in IPR.
■Extended USD support
V-Ray currently supports the latest official version of MayaUSD 0.26.0. The updated USD Translator layer ensures full parity with Houdini and introduces enhancements for a smoother workflow. Additionally, you can now render USD scenes with the Chaos Cloud rendering service.
Other new features have also been added, including:
V-Ray 6 for Maya
New scattering customization options
Chaos Scatter’s new customization options give you more scattering flexibility than ever before.
■Edge trimming
You can now easily and neatly cut the edges of scattered objects. No more grass growing on the edge of the curb or spilling pebbles on the sidewalk. Objects fit within defined boundaries for a cleaner, more natural look.
■Inclusion list and exclusion list
With Chaos Scatter’s new Include and Exclude lists, you can now create paths in a meadow, walkways in a flower garden, and a variety of other effects. Easily specify where objects are scattered using curves and meshes, eliminating the need for custom maps.
■Light instance
Added lights to Chaos Scatter’s instantiable object list. You can now create a galaxy full of stars, light up a concert hall, or scatter many lights as instances.
■Group instance
You can now quickly create complex environments while keeping complex scenes organized and easier to work with. Group instantiation allows you to scatter a collection of objects as one rather than a list of individual objects.
New creative controls
Added new options for more granular creative control such as camera effects, light and shadows, and surface details.
■Shadow Select
Shadow Select gives you even more control over your compositing workflow. Select your lights and easily adjust the brightness, darkness, and tint of the shadows they cast.
■V-Ray decal cylindrical projection
Easily add stickers, labels, and textures to bottles, jars, cups, cans, rockets, tanks, fire hydrants, and other cylindrical objects. With just a few clicks, you can match the projection of your decal to the curves of your object’s surface.
■Strength of light directionality
A new Directionality Strength option gives you precise control over the spread of a light’s directional strength.
■Chromatic aberration
You can now quickly add chromatic aberration post effects from the V-Ray framebuffer without launching a third-party application.
GPU rendering enhancements
New features enable faster, more memory-efficient rendering.
■V-Ray Enmesh
Easily tile 3D geometry patterns across objects to quickly create highly detailed surfaces. Enmesh is perfect for creating chainmail, textiles, pebble walkways, fences, and more. Additionally, memory usage is significantly reduced compared to manual shifting and copying.
■Speed up animation rendering
You can now render image sequences up to 4x faster on V-Ray GPUs. V-Ray now caches bitmaps between animation frames, eliminating the need for reloading and leading to much faster rendering speeds.
■System memory for textures
GPU memory limitations are now gone with the click of a button. With the addition of the option to use system memory for textures, you can now render detailed, high-resolution textures with confidence.
Other updates
- Volumetric rendering enhancements: You can now render within objects that have volumetrics in their shading groups without the hassle of creating gizmos and other complex settings. Rendering scenes with volumetric effects has never been easier.
- Viewport Enhancements: Experience better viewport representation with improved usability of Blend materials and memory efficiency of Alembic proxies.
To check all other updates,From here
V-Ray 6 for Houdini
■Compatible with Houdini 20.0
V-Ray supports the latest versions of Houdini and can benefit from many important features introduced by Houdini. Render Hydra Ocean and Feather procedurals, or add light textures and shading networks with Light Filters to get the effect you want.
■Enhanced V-Ray Hydra Delegate
- With enhancements to the V-Ray Hydra Delegate, you can now do even more with V-Ray for Solaris.
- Added support for V-Ray Environment Fog and V-Ray Toon, and also powered up light path expressions with chaining and multiple light tags.
- Supports V-Ray post-translate scripts for more advanced pipelines.
■Enhanced V-Ray Fur
- By applying V-Ray Fur to Alembic files, you can now utilize procedurally generated fur for detailed grooming.
- By leveraging asset caching to speed up interactive rendering, you can bring your iterations as close to real-time as possible.
- V-Ray Fur now supports displacement and motion blur, making it easy to create realistic peach fur.
■Material override for volumetric effects
V-Ray now allows material overrides for volumetric effects, allowing you to quickly and universally replace or change materials in your scene. This feature allows you to make consistent changes throughout your scene, allowing you to test and iterate more efficiently.
■Smoother installation experience
The installation process has been simplified by introducing a single V-Ray build that is compatible with all major Houdini versions released by SideFX. This saves you time searching for the correct build when a new version is released.
■All other updates
- Light Directionality Strength: A new Directionality Strength option now provides precise control over a light’s directional strength spread.
- Chromatic Aberration: You can now add chromatic aberration post effects from the V-Ray framebuffer.
- User interface enhancements: Streamline asset creation by integrating complex shading networks into V-Ray Material Builder. Control Tri-Planar texture projection with new Cubic projection options. Plus improved scaling of bump maps at high resolutions, improved grouping of light mix outputs, and more.
To check all other updates,From here
Pricing and system requirements
Click here to check the system requirements ( Maya / Houdini ）
V-Ray 6 for Maya and V-Ray 6 for Houdini can be used under the same license. Prices for V-Ray Solo with a single node-locked license are 10,900 yen/month, 64,800 yen/year, and 165,600 yen/3 years.
It is also available as part of the 97,200 yen/year V-Ray Premium, which includes all Chaos products.
To check the priceFrom here
Redefine connectivity with V-Ray 6, update 2 for Maya and Houdini
