v5 Chaos V-Ray for Houdini

Windows

Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray.

• Processor – Intel®64, AMD64, or compatible processor with SSE4.2 support
• RAM – Minimum 8 GB RAM, recommended 64 GB RAM.
  Larger cache memory, higher memory bandwidth and more cores are better.
• TCP/IP – Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported
• Operating System (64-bit only) – Windows^® 8.1 Professional, and Windows^® 10 Professional
• Houdini
  
  • V-Ray Next: Houdini 17.5 and above
  • V-Ray 5: Houdini 18 and above
• GPU Support
  • NVIDIA CUDA: Maxwell-, Pascal-, Volta- and Turing-based NVIDIA card(s) with latest recommended video driver or at least version 441.28;
  • NVIDIA RTX: RTX cards with latest recommended video driver or at least version 441.28;
  • V-Ray Production Denoiser: AMD or NVIDIA GPU supporting OpenCL 1.2;
  • NVIDIA AI Denoiser: Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, or Turing-based NVIDIA card with latest recommended video driver or at least version 441.28The minimum required to compute capability is 5.2¹

* CUDA compute capability and card reference

Houdini Indie is also supported with the following limitations:

• Maximum render size for animations is 4096 x 4096.
• .vrscene export is only supported for Houdini Indie starting with versions 18.5

Linux

Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray.

• Processor – Intel®64, AMD64, or compatible processor with SSE4.2 support
• RAM – Minimum 8 GB RAM, recommended 64 GB RAM.
  Larger cache memory, higher memory bandwidth and more cores are better.
• TCP/IP – Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported
• Operating System (64-bit only) – Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux^® 6.2+ WS, or CentOS 6.2 (64bit)
• Houdini
  • V-Ray Next: Houdini 17.5 and above
  • V-Ray 5: Houdini 18 and above
• GPU Support
  
  • NVIDIA CUDA: Maxwell-, Pascal-, Volta- and Turing-based NVIDIA card(s) with latest recommended video driver or at least 440.36;
  • NVIDIA RTX: RTX cards with the latest recommended video driver or at least version 440.36
  • V-Ray Production Denoiser: AMD or NVIDIA GPU supporting OpenCL 1.2;
  • NVIDIA AI Denoiser: Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, or Turing-based NVIDIA card with latest recommended video driver or at least 440.36
  • The minimum required to compute capability is 5.2¹

* CUDA compute capability and card reference

macOS

Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray.

• Processor – Intel®64, AMD64, or compatible processor with SSE4.2 support
• RAM – Minimum 8 GB RAM, recommended 64 GB RAM.
  Larger cache memory, higher memory bandwidth and more cores are better.
• TCP/IP – Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported
• Operating System (64-bit only) – Apple^® macOS^® X 10.10.2+
• Houdini
  • V-Ray Next: Houdini 17.5 and above
  • V-Ray 5: Houdini 18 and above

Note

V-Ray Next supports Python 2 only. V-Ray 5 supports both Python 2 and Python 3.
Python 2 is supported for Houdini 17.5 and above. Python 3 is supported for Houdini 18.5.351 and above.

Build 5.20.02

Official Release

Date – Dec. 9, 2021

Solaris

V-Ray

• Added support for the Referenced Shader VOP
• Added support for live (in-memory) volumes
• Added “creaseweight” attribute support for V-Ray Subdivision
• Added support for USD Prim Vars for shading (e.g. “Cd”)
• Added support for string USD Prim Vars as part of the Image File VOP File Path (e.g. $HIP/<someAttr>)
• Added Distance Texture support with regex USD primitive selection
• Added native V-Ray AOVs support (i.e. component level outputs)
• Added Sampler AOV support (i.e. ray level outputs
• Added Cryptomatte AOV support
• Added MultiMatte AOV support
• Added Light Path Expression AOV support
• Added Extra Texture (i.e. arbitrary Prim Var) AOV support
• Added “V-Ray Standard Render Vars” LOP
• Added V-Ray Mesh Light parameters to the Light LOP
• Added support for instancing V-Ray Mesh Lights
• Added a “V-Ray Proxy” LOP node for loading VRMesh files
• Added support for the Round Edges material
• Added support for the FallOff texture
• Added Distributed Rendering options in the Render Settings LOP
• Added Linux support for the V-Ray Hydra delegate
• Added Mac OSX support for the V-Ray Hydra delegate
• Added support for rest attributes export (“rest”, “rnml”)
• Added support for instancing of Volume USD primitives
• Cryptomatte AOV is now saved to disk when rendering through Husk
• Fixed black/empty viewport when switching between available delegates
• Added support for additional Render Var data types (half3, half4, etc)
• Updated Multi ID Material/Texture to match V-Ray for Maya
• Fixed Displacement update issues
• Fixed Dome Light texture not matching Solaris viewport
• Fixed Dome Light texture rotation not working
• Fixed crowd import causes a crash
• Fixed material update issues

New features

V-Ray

• Added support for Houdini 19
• Added the V-Ray Decal SOP
• Added support for isolating Convex and Concave values in the Curvature texture
• Added a “V-Ray Aur Convert” ROP for converting VDBs to V-Ray’s native AUR volume format
• Added support for any arbitrary string attribute in an alembic file for use with the Pattern ID VOP
• Alembic face sets (groups) can now be queried with the “set:<name>” syntax for use with the Multi ID Material/Texture
• Added the “Grouped Lights” option to the Light Mix render element
• Added additional material override options under the Renderer ROP’s Options tab
• Added support for loaded image file frame overrides on the Image File VOP allowing looping of texture sequences
• Added support for dynamically reloading the OCIO environment configuration in the “_vfh_ipr” python module
• Added support for time-dependent expressions for the Image Output path on the Renderer ROP
• Added GPU support for rest attributes
• Added the MakeTX utility in the V-Ray for Houdini builds under the appsdk/bin folder
• Added support for Camera and Physical Camera properties on HDAs with a Camera node as the representative node
• Added support for exporting multiple cameras to the VRScene
• Added VRScene Material Import support for remapping the UV Channel Index for scenes coming from 3ds Max
• Added an option to remove the VRIMG file after the rendering has completed
• Added support for the Displacement VOP in the Referenced Shader VOP
• Added VRScene Material Import for custom plugins
• Added support for driving the Image Sampler’s Min/Max Subdivisions parameter with an expression, when exporting to per-frame VRScene files
• Added support for the “N” attribute for particles when rendered as circles
• Added the “Streaks”, “Thin Walled” and “Ignore Bump” options to the V-Ray Dirt texture
• Added the “Composite” texture for VRScene Material Import from Maya
• Added support for rendering Alembic particles using the Phoenix Foam Shader
• Added the “Auto” mode for the selected Transfer Function of textures on the Image File VOP
• Added the “VFH_RGB_COLOR_SPACE” environment variable for selecting the RGB Color Space option on the Renderer ROP
• Added support for “looks” in the OCIO configuration file for the new VFB

 

Modified features

V-Ray

• Updated the Image File “Transfer Function” and “RGB Primaries” parameters
• The Volume Grid Cache SOP can now only be used to load Chaos Phoenix (.aur) cache files
• Pressing the render (teapot) icon on the VFB or the “Render” button on the V-Ray shelf will only start a single frame render, regardless of ROP “Frame Range” settings
• Updated the installer to use the “houdini_version” and “houdini_python” keywords in the JSON package file to simplify deployment
• The V-Ray GUI license is now released when no V-Ray nodes are present in the scene
• The Chaos Cloud client app is now always installed when using the default/quick installation process
• Probabilistic Volumetrics are now enabled by default on the Renderer ROP
• Updated the V-Ray logo in all relevant title bars inside the V-Ray Installer and the Houdini GUI
• Removed the “Global Settings” entry in the V-Ray menu
• Reduced the font size for the Installer
• Light Mix AOV elements are now sorted by name
• Updated the V-Ray TOP’s Output Path parameter value for the ROP Fetch TOP node inside the HDA
• Updated the V-Ray Log messages when .VDBs are missing on disk
• Added support for the “Override Frame Number” on the Image File VOP when inside a locked HDA
• Added the “Opacity Source” parameter
• Added a warning when a render is started that would require baking a large volume into the generated VRScene
• Light Lister entries are now sorted by name
• Added support for Cryptomatte by Material Name for materials inside HDAs

Export

• Significantly sped up the VRScene export when cached volumes are present in the scene
• Sped up the VRScene export for instanced mesh lights holding cached alembic sequences
• Changed the UV mapping for procedural textures when no UV generator is attached to ensure GPU support

VRScene

• Updated VRScene Unpack and Material Import UI

V-Ray Fur

• Added missing tessellation and distribution options

V-Ray Deadline

• Added “Advanced” tab for exporting key/value pairs as environment variables for the Deadline job

 

Bug Fixes

V-Ray

• Fixed the VFB History’s “Use Project Path” option not working
• Fixed a crash on missing license
• Fixed a hang when exiting Houdini on Mac OSX
• Fixed an issue causing V-Ray to fail loading due to wrong default packages location
• Fixed an issue with the silent install option causing V-Ray to fail the installation when providing a config.xml file
• Fixed a Mac OS 11.2 crash on render
• Fixed a crash when exporting a VRScene sequence with a Python 3 Houdini build
• Material Library download fails if the provided path on disk does not exist
• Added the EULA file to the ZIP builds and Installer
• Light Lister’s Refresh button is not working on Python 3 Houdini builds
• Fixed a crash when closing the Houdini GUI on Linux
• Fixed wrong UV mapping for unpacked VRScenes
• Fixed wrong output piping for the Remap texture when importing from a VRScene
• Fixed Distributed Rendering not starting due to a missing library
• Fixed an installer issue causing the GUI installation to fail
• Fixed Multi ID Material not imported for VRScenes coming from Maya

Export

• Fixed instanced subnetwork is always visible
• Fixed the “Override Settings Globally” toggle for Displacement not behaving as expected
• Fixed V-Ray Environment Fog not visible in the rendered image
• Fixed wrong image output path due to wrong forward slash replacement at export time
• Fixed wrong image output name when generated through an expression querying a string point attribute
• Transform is ignored when rendering multiple Dome Lights pointing to the same texture file because a single texture is exported for the shared image file path
• Wrong export for “abcframe” primitive intrinsic when rendering a sequence
• Fixed an issue with VRScenes submitted to the V-Ray Cloud that caused an error message related to the output file path format
• Fixed “abcframe” intrinsic ignored for alembics used as the source geometry for a V-Ray Mesh Light
• Fixed lights in the Renderer ROP’s “Forced Lights” list ignored when rendering a sequence
• Fixed “$F” always evaluated to “10” for texture file paths in the Image File VOP
• Fixed multiple camera export issue after rendering with IPR
• Fixed wrong AOV tag export causing wrong output image file naming
• Extra Texture AOV in animation renders black after first frame
• Wrong material assignment when bypassed nodes are present in the Material Builder when using the “Forced Materials” list on the Renderer ROP
• Fixed crash after rendering of packed geometry or when exporting to a VRScene
• Fixed doubled Motion Blur effect for V-Ray Mesh Lights using Alembics as source geometry

OSL

• Parameter values and connections are missing on scene re-open when using the OSL texture and/or material
• Changing OSL code wipes all parameter values
• Fixed float input errors when other nodes are attached
• Fixed float output from shaders not exposed
• Fixed surface derivatives not working
• Fixed absorption and ray depth not exposed for refraction
• Fixed user attributes not exposed for texture binding
• Fixed emissive surfaces not emitting light

Rendering

• Fixed a bug causing no anti-aliasing for Cryptomatte in Material mode due to a missing parameter export for live geometry
• Non-cached (in-memory) volumes would occasionally fail to render due to size limitations
• Fixed wrong illumination over instanced geometry when using the Rayserver Instancer
• Sped up rendering for instanced geometry when using the Rayserver Instancer
• Fixed a crash when rendering volumetrics in a specific scene
• Fixed an issue causing light links to fail for alembic sequences
• The “Zero Infinity Depth” option was not working when “Filtering” was enabled for the Z-Depth render element
• Fixed a rendering slowdown when using the TexOCIO VOP
• Baking a single UDIM tile has no UDIM tag in the name of output image
• Baking to UDIMs bakes the specified UV range for every tile, even when disabled
• Enabling “Specify UV Range” caused the “UDIMs” option to stop working
• Added support for baking a UV range without using the UDIM workflow so baking to a single texture is possible
• Fixed an issue causing significant slowdown when rendering Alembic files on NUMA machines
• Fixed an issue causing the V-Ray Log to fail updating during IPR sessions
• The “Save Deep Data to Separate Files” toggle was causing a crash
• Setting the number of Render Threads to a value higher than the hardware threads caused a crash
• Fixed a crash related to the stored ROP settings on a particular scene
• Fixed the TriPlanar texture “Random by User Attribute” option not working
• Fixed texture baking using packed Alembics not working
• Pattern ID texture does not work with delayed load Alembics
• Fixed a crash when rendering groomed fur/hair
• Fixed a random error related to volume rendering on NUMA machines on Linux
• Fixed artifacts on packed Alembics containing degenerate primitives when texture filtering type is any other but “None” or “Nearest”
• Fixed “-parameterOverride” flag not working for VRScenes exported from V-Ray for Houdini when using vray.exe
• Fixed a crash with Denoiser and the Volume Grid Shader with the “Volumetric Z-Depth” option set to “Separate V-Ray Element”
• Fixed a crash after rendering with IPR after production render with LightMix in the scene
• Fixed V-Ray Fur not rendered when more than one texture attribute is used
• Fixed an edge-case crash when rendering a volume with an assigned material that is not the Volume Grid Shader
• Fixed a volumetrics related crash at render time with a specific setup
• Fixed a crash with Light Mix after rendering if the name of a light is changed and the render repeated
• Fixed a crash when rendering an Alembic file containing single-vertex polygons
• Fixed non-default “Screen Window Size” camera values doubled if Motion Blur is enabled or a Velocity AOV is present in the scene

IPR

• Fixed a bug preventing an IPR update when changing any of the Fields tab options on the Volume Grid Shader
• Fixed a crash when starting IPR with a wrong COP network image path in the Image File VOP
• Fixed a crash when using the Renderer ROP’s Clear Cache button when texture caching is enabled with a tiled EXR texture
• Fixed a crash on Mac OSX when stopping IPR
• Fixed a problem causing slow IPR update when simultaneously assigning a single material to multiple objects while IPR is running
• Fixed a crash when quickly undo-ing and redo-ing an object delete operation
• Fixed no Volume Shader updates when the render flag is set over a Null SOP for a Packed Disk Primitive VDB loaded through a File SOP
• Fixed an IPR update problem causing the camera position to refresh with a one-step delay
• Fixed an IPR crash when changing the Motion Blur settings on the Renderer ROP during IPR
• Fixed an IPR crash when changing the frame when using the Phoenix Foam Shader assigned to particles
• Fixed Debug flag not working when a VOP node inside a material builder is assigned to the geometry
• Fixed a crash when changing the timeline frame when using the “Override Frame Number” option on Image File VOP
• Fixed no GI during IPR regression
• Fixed empty render and wrong export after running IPR

GPU

• Fixed a crash with a particular scene containing point particles
• Fixed “v” not used for motion blur in specific scene when rendering with CUDA
• Fixed a crash when rendering the V-Ray Toon material
• Fixed a crash when enabling the Matte/Shadow object properties while IPR is running with GPU
• Fixed a “Default Color” difference between CPU and GPU for missing textures, if the File Path field is empty
• Wrong render for the Image File VOP’s color output when used as a float input for the V-Ray Material’s opacity socket
• Point attributes from alembic files are not used at render time when rendering with GPU
• Fixed an Opacity issue related to the MultiID Material when rendering with GPU
• Fixed a crash when rendering volumes on the GPU, with CPU Light Cache enabled and Volume Light Cache disabled
• Fixed a GPU crash with a specific setup utilising the UV Explicit VOP and the Bercon Noise VOP

UI

• Fixed duplicate parameter labels on the VRScans material
• Fixed a UI issue with the Color Constant VOP causing errors in the Houdini Console
• Fixed VFB “Source” layer string empty if Light Mix is selected

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Build 5.10.20

Official Release
Date – June 17, 2021

New features

V-Ray

• Added support for Solaris
• Added support Houdini 18.5.532
• Added support Houdini 18.5.563
• Added support Houdini 18.5.596
• Added support for the “Texture” mode Render Mask option on the Renderer ROP
• Added the “Absorption Color” option for the Volume Grid shader
• Updated the V-Ray Material’s “Translucency” modes
• Added the “Occlude Other Lights” option for Rect, Disk, Mesh and Sphere lights
• Added “rest” attribute support for the TriPlanar texture for Alembic files (specified in the V-Ray Object Properties)
• Added support for specifying any arbitrary string attribute stored in the Alembic file for the PatternID Texture VOP
• Added support for the Cryptomatte “Per Attribute Value” mode for V-Ray Scene Ref primitive types, when “Rayserver Instancer” is enabled (specified in the V-Ray Object Properties)
• The V-Ray GUI License is now released when no V-Ray Renderer ROPs are present in the Houdini scene

Modified features

V-Ray

• The VFB is now cleared on render start if the “Render Mask” option on the Renderer ROP is enabled

Textures

• Added support for the Image File VOP’s frame overrides allowing linear/loop/ping-pong/hold playback of texture sequences
• Changed the Default Color parameter of the Image File VOP to black instead of gray

Export

• Fixed a bug causing a significant slowdown of VRScene export of instanced volumes
• Added support for animated Physical Camera parameters
• The “Hair Width Multiplier” option is now always exported for Alembic files, even when the V-Ray Object Properties are not present on the parent node
• Geometry/Subnetwork node transform samples for Motion Blur are now exported even when “Velocity Blur” is enabled on the Sampling tab

Rendering

• The “N” attribute is now respected when rendering points as circles

OSL

• Updated the OSL Material and OSL Texture due to various issues

UI

• The V-Ray Displacement’s generation method now defaults to “Pre-Tesselated” instead of “On the Fly”
• Deprecated the “Log Window” option on the Renderer ROP in favor of the new VFB’s Log icon (bottom right corner)

 

Bug fixes

V-Ray

• Fixed a bug causing the VFB to disappear when selected, in Houdini Python 3 versions only
• Fixed a bug causing V-Ray to fail loading if first used in the /stage context
• Swimming texture coordinates with TriPlanar when using rest attributes with an Alembic file

V-Ray GPU

• Crash on render start with the V-Ray Toon material
• Crash on render start with Matte geometry

IPR

• Crash when deleting a Subnetwork or HDA during IPR with the debug flag enabled on the node
• The IPR refresh was always one step behind the user input

Install

• The V-Ray Installer selects the Python 2 version of V-Ray instead of the Python 3 one when the Advanced mode is used
• Fixed various issues with the Silent Install option

Export

• Alembic files loaded through the MOPs instanced cause a crash on render start
• Using V-Ray Subdivision on MOPs instances causes a crash on render start
• The “UV Channel Name” VOP was not working after a Solaris related change
• Hidden forced objects in the light’s Illumination Mask are not illuminated at all
• The “Skin” material’s “Primary Reflection” and “Secondary Reflection” options were not exported
• Fixed a regression with the “Bercon Noise” VOP
• The $F4 tag is evaluated incorrectly when rendering in a Subnetwork/HDA in TOPs
• Fixed wrong forward slash replacement for network paths
• Fixed a crash when rendering a Geo node with Object Merge SOP pointing to an Alembic file
• Fixed wrong export of Alembic’s “abcframe” primitive intrinsic attribute when rendering an animation
• No motion blur for per-frame alembic files containing multiple frame samples

• The Physical Camera “Exposure Value” parameter was always exported as thirteen

V-Ray Proxy

• Crash on export with Houdini 18.5.462

Chaos Cloud

• Cloud ROP fails silently if wrong ROP is connected

VRScene

• Incorrect import of reMap value from a .vrscene file, exported from Maya
• Incorrect import of volumeNoise (3D noise) from a .vrscene file, exported from Maya

Chaos Cosmos

• Texture assets from Cosmos using the “.tx” format were failing to load

AOVs

• Node names are always used as AOV names for the Light Select element
• The Light Select RE was not working due to a missing parameter export
• Empty Light Select after the first frame, when rendering a sequence

OSX

• Fixed a crash on render start with MacOS Big Sur 11.2

 

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Build 5.00.50

Official Release

Date – Nov. 17, 2020

New features

---

V-Ray

• Support for rendering in ACEScg color space with option to recognize the texture color space from the file name
• Updated the V-Ray for Houdini installer so the V-Ray Material Library can be automatically set up in Houdini
• Added the V-Ray Material Library (Windows only)
• Added support for Post-Translate scripts in V-Ray 5 for Houdini
• Simplified Renderer ROP UI
• Added support for the V-Ray Memory Tracker

V-Ray GPU

• Add support for Out-of-Core codepath
• Support for 2D displacement
• Add support for OSL shaders
• Add support for the Cellular map
• Add support for the Bercon Tiles and Bercon Wood maps

VFB

• Add entirely new implementation of the VFB with integrated Layers compositing
• Added support for the Light Mix Render Element

Materials

• Added Coat and Sheen layers for the V-Ray Material
• Added a new car paint material with more precise flakes filtering and reduced memory usage

Textures

• Add a UVW Randomizer that should be used solely as Image File and Triplanar VOPs’ uvwgen input with stochastic tiling support
• Added randomization options for the Multi ID texture
• Added a “Same Object Mode” option for the V-Ray Dirt texture

Lights

• Added an Illumination Mask option to the V-Ray Lights

Modified features

---

V-Ray

• The “Light Path Expression” option under the Light Select element is now always available regardless of presence of the VFH_LPE_ENABLE environment variable
• V-Ray shading VOPs are no longer visible in the Material Builder context of 3rd party render engines
• Dropped support for Houdini versions below 18.0

V-Ray Proxy

• Updated the Proxy Export Simplification Type drop-down

Materials

• The Gallery files for the V-Ray Material Library now ship with the V-Ray for Houdini installation

Textures

• The Color Space parameter for files loaded in the Image File VOP is now automatically set up based on the file’s name
• Added support for the “Reference Space” and “Reference Transform” options for the TriPlanar texture for world-space projections
• Added the “Random” and “Pattern ID” textures for V-Ray 5

Rendering

• Light Select elements with a Lights list pointing to non-existent scene lights will be ignored

Export

• Optimized scene export for scenes containing large numbers of lights in multiple subnetwork levels
• Added support for expressions in the Renderer ROP’s Objects lists
• Added support for selecting subnetwork in the Light Select’s “Lights” list
• Improved export time for instances with motion blur
• Added support for V-Ray Object Properties placed over a Geometry node holding a VRScene SOP
• Added support for exporting UV sets from unpacked alembic files even if the attribute type info is not “texturecoord”

Baking

• Added support for named UV sets for the Renderer ROP’s UV Mapping type

Material Library

• Updated the material library

 

Bug fixes

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V-Ray

• Fixed a bug preventing V-Ray from loading on OSX
• Fixed a bug causing the Standalone V-Ray executable to fail on Windows
• Fixed V-Ray not loading on Linux
• Fixed a crash when rendering using Light Select Light Path Expressions
• Fixed a crash when closing the Volume Grid Shader custom ramps on OSX
• Fixed a bug causing textures with $F in the file name to not be evaluated correctly for production rendering
• Fixed a crash when the License Server is not installed and rendering is attempted

 

V-Ray GPU

• Fixed an ‘Exception in Core’ crash with CUDA and RTX
• Fixed a bug causing incorrect evaluation of attributes in the texture’s path when rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Removed legacy message “Unsupported 2D Type for Displacement” printed in log when using V-Ray GPU
• Fixed a CUDA crash on Linux
• Fixed a bug causing displacement to fail when rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Fixed a bug causing attributes on particles to be ignored for shading

IPR

• The Subdivision toggle under the Displacement Properties does not update the IPR
• Changing any of the OCIO Texture’s parameters does not update the IPR
• The Illumination Mask parameter is not updated in IPR
• Fixed an IPR crash after production rendering
• Fixed an IPR crash when starting IPR on frames other than 1
• Fixed an IPR crash when changing the timeline frame during IPR
• Fixed a bug causing IPR to halt when changing a parameter on the new Car Paint 2 material

VFB

• Fixed a crash on second render after adding a new layer in the compositor
• Fixed a bug causing inaccurate Render Region in production rendering
• Fixed a bug causing production renders to disable the history and clear the set up History folder path
• Fixed “Use VFB Background Image” option under the Renderer ROP not working with the new VFB

V-Ray Proxy

• Fixed crash on export with Proxy Export SOP

Export

• Fixed bad parsing for quotes in Light Select’s Light Path Expression
• The Illumination Mask parameter does not behave correctly when the same light is present
• Fixed an incorrect export for the OSL Texture and OSL Material
• Fixed Exposure Value of Physical Camera is not exported
• Fixed Hair Properties’ Render as Smooth Curves toggle breaks material assignments with Multi Material for hair
• Fixed a Deadline issue causing wrong export path for VRScenes in a specific case
• The Material ID VOP’s “lpe_label” parameter was set up to export incorrect data type which caused wrong LPE output
• Some animated Renderer ROP parameters are ignored when the render camera is also animated
• Fixed a bug causing the V-Ray UVW Randomizer VOP to behave incorrectly when used with the V-Ray Triplanar texture
• Fixed a bug causing double export for the lights in the Light Select element producing incorrect results
• Fixed wrong parsing for Image File node’s File Path parameter

Rendering

• Fixed VFB Render Region is discarded on render or IPR start
• Fixed UI locked after render is done or stopped when the Renderer ROP is connected to another node
• Fixed Bezier Curve texture produces values beyond 1 even if Extrapolate Beyond End Points is OFF

UI

• The “Pack Scene” button causes an error when looking for the V-Ray Log if the relevant environment variables are not present and the log file is missing
• Set Light Select default “Lights” parameter to “*” instead of empty string
• Added additional Sun Light options to the V-Ray Light Lister

VRScene

• Fixed a bug causing the “Unpack to Polygons” option to occasionally cause a crash
• Fixed a crash when creating a VRScene SOP if V-Ray is not initialized by creating a Renderer ROP
• Fixed a crash when creating a VRScans VOP if V-Ray is not initialized by creating a Renderer ROP

Cloud

• Fixed an issue causing upload of multiple jobs from multiple Renderer ROPs connected to the Chaos Cloud ROP to fail

Installer

• Updated the V-Ray Installer for OSX and Linux

Build 5.00.30

Beta Release

Date – Sept. 16, 2020

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V-Ray Next, Update 1

Date – May 13, 2020
Build 4.30.03

New Features

V-Ray

• Added a V-Ray for Houdini installer – a custom JSON file is placed in $HFS/packages with the environment variables required by Houdini to find and load V-Ray
• Significantly optimized rendering startup speed and VRScene size by implementing a smart export algorithm which ignores geometry attributes not utilized during rendering
• Added support for the VOP Debug flag – it works similarly as an isolate select for the flagged node
• Added support for custom V-Ray plugins
• Added support for Python Post-Translate scripts on the V-Ray Renderer ROP
• Added support for V-Ray Object Properties on custom HDAs
• Integrated the OCIO texture in the Image File VOP
• Added Renderer selection menus to the V-Ray Shelf’s “Render”, “ROP Parm”, “IPR(VFB)” and “IPR ROP Parm” invoked by Shift+LMB clicking the icon.
• Added support for environment variables in the Renderer’s Image and VRScene output file paths
• Added “Forced Attributes” list to the V-Ray Renderer’s Objects tab and the V-Ray Object Properties

Chaos Cloud

• Added a Chaos Cloud ROP used for submitting jobs to the Chaos Cloud

Rendering

• Added the option to change the rendering color space to “ACEScg” from the Color Mapping tab of the Renderer ROP
• Added support for resumable rendering
• Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP’s Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the “v” velocity attribute instead of transformations or deformations
• Skip ray-geometry intersections for hair if “Primary Visibility” is disabled under the Object Properties or Render Stats material to speed up rendering

GPU

• Added CUDA support for custom attributes when shading particles

IPR

• Modifying Motion Blur parameters on the V-Ray Renderer ROP or the Physical Camera parameters will now update IPR
• Modifying the lists under the V-Ray Renderer ROP’s Objects tab will now update IPR
• Custom AOVs created by the Material Output VOP are now updated in IPR
• Added a “Start IPR” button to the V-Ray Shelf

Texture Baking

• Added a “V-Ray Baker Tool” SOP node with support for common texture baking workflows

AOVs

• Added support for custom AOVs created from the Material Output VOP
• Added support for forcing the “Extra Texture” Render Element output to 32-bit when rendering 16-bit Multi-Channel EXRs
• Added the “Indirect”, “Indirect Diffuse” and “Indirect Specular” modes to the Light Select element
• Added the “Object Select” render element which allows isolating specific objects in a separate render channel
• V-Ray Light material with “Direct Illumination” enabled can now be specified under the Light Select render element’s “Lights” list
• Restored the “Zero Infinity Depth” toggle to force a black background color for the Z-Depth element

Instancing

• Added support for ‘@instance’ point attribute which functions the same as the ‘@instancepath’ attribute
• Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP’s Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the “v” velocity attribute of points when instancing packed geometry

V-Ray Scene

• Added support for unpacking the VRScene into live polygon geometry under the “Import” tab of the VRScene SOP
• Enabled VRScene export from Houdini Indie
• Added initial support for importing VRScene geometry as regular polygons in the Houdini scene through the “Expand Primitives” -> “Allow Unpacking to Polygons (WIP)” toggle
• Added support for importing VRScene materials through Python under the _vfh_ipr module using vrsceneGetMaterials() and vrsceneImportMaterial()
• Registered additional MODO-specific V-Ray nodes for VRScene Material Import compatibility

Export

• Added support for the Display toggle under the Render tab of the Geometry node

Deadline

• Added a custom V-Ray Deadline ROP for Standalone job submission
• Added support for partitioning the submission into frame chunks for the Houdini VRScene export job
• Added support for partitioning the submission into individual tasks for the V-Ray Standalone job

Alembics

• Added support for Delayed Load Alembic material assignments through the “@shop_materialpath” attribute baked into the Alembic file
• Added support for hair material assignment when using “@shop_materialpath” with Delayed Load Alembics

Volumes

• Added support for the ‘unexpandedfilename’ intrinsic primitive attribute for VDBs loaded as Packed Disk Primitives for volume instancing
• Added support for packed volume instancing

Displacement

• Added support for the “@creaseweight” vertex attribute when rendering with Displacement Subdivision or Open Subdiv
• Added support for render-time baking of subdivision and displacement into a *.vrmesh file from the V-Ray Object Properties “Bake Geometry” tab

Hair

• Added “ACEScg” color space support for the Hair material

V-Ray Proxy

• Added support for unpacking the *.vrmesh geometry into live Houdini geometry

Textures

• Added support for user attributes in the Image File VOP’s File Path to support per primitive texture overrides

Lights

• Added new light instance toggle on the Object Properties to significantly reduce export time and VRScene size when working with a large number of instanced lights
• Added support for non-uniform U/V Size values for Rectangle Light when in Disk mode
• Added “Direct Illumination” option on the Light material which generates a V-Ray Mesh Light and added support for Alembic files and custom attributes for the V-Ray Mesh Light
• Added the “Light Reflection Mask” and “Light Refraction Mask” parameters under the V-Ray Object Properties which now work separately from the option on the Render -> Shading tab of the Geometry node

V-Ray Fur

• Added support for unpacking fur into polygon geometry

VFB

• Added a Right-Click menu to the Frame Buffer’s Teapot icons allowing Render Camera selection
• Added support for sharing the Frame Buffer History settings between different Renderer nodes using the V-Ray Menu’s Global Settings.
• Added “Use VFB Background Image” parameter under the Renderer ROP’s Images tab that overrides the Frame Buffer background image and supports image sequences using $F notation
• Added an option to ignore V-Ray Frame Buffer settings when rendering a hip file in batch

UI

• Added the “Sharp Mip-Map” option on the Image File VOP
• Updated all V-Ray for Houdini node icons
• Added a V-Ray menu in the main toolbar
• Added V-Ray in the list of registered rendering engines for the Edit – Preferences – Rendering dialog
• Added OpenGL properties to the V-Ray Material Output VOP
• Added a “Reset VFB Position” button under the Images tab of the Renderer ROP
• Added the “Max. MipMap Resolution” parameter under the Options -> Textures tab of the Renderer ROP
• VOP node parameters are now disabled when an input connection is present
• Added a Default Color option to the Image File VOP
• Added support for storing the “VFH_BUILD” and “VFH_VRAY” variables in the *.hip file
• Added a Color parameter to the OCIO Texture

Improved Features

V-Ray

• Changed “uvwgen” type to int to allow promotion as input parameter on Sub-network VOPs and HDAs
• Added the “SSS ID” option to the V-Ray Object Properties
• Added Volume input slot to Material Output VOP to allow support for Environment Fog as a material
• Use a V-Ray Light Material instead of a diffuse V-Ray Standard Material for debug shading

VRScans

• Removed the “Color Space” parameter from the VRScans material – this is automatically handled by the Color Space parameter on the Renderer ROP

GPU

• Exported Bucket Sampler settings for CUDA and RTX are now completely identical to the values set in the UI
• Updated default mapping for textures with no uvwgen input

IPR

• Added IPR support for the Physical Camera and Renderer ROP motion blur settings when rendering geometry instanced on points with the “@v” present and Velocity Blur enabled
• Added separate Bundle Size and Samples Per Pixel options for Production and IPR rendering

Texture Baking

• Added the option to explicitly specify the UDIMs to bake in the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP
• Disabled the export of splines and particles when baking textures with the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP

AOVs

• Added support for specifying a list of Render Elements ROPs instead of a single node
• Added an Exclude list option to the V-Ray Extra Texture Render Element
• Added the “Force Lossless Compression” toggle on the Material Output VOP
• Added “Invert Depth” toggle to the Z-Depth render element
• Added “Deep Output” toggle to the Z-Depth render element
• Added support for the Volume Grid shader

Instancing

• Sped up Rayserver Instancer when rendering single-level hierarchies of instances

V-Ray Scene

• Sped up the preview when loading VRScenes containing V-Ray Proxies
• Sped up loading of VRScenes containing thousands of individual objects
• Sped up preview of VRScenes containing large numbers of V-Ray Proxies
• Sped preview for meshes with a large numbers of faces

Export

• All scene nodes are cooked when IPR or Production rendering is started, regardless of their render visibility
• CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18 was not supported
• Added the “Strip Paths” VRScene export option

Deadline

• Export a single Houdini job with sub-tasks when the Mode is set to “Render Job”

Alembics

• Added support for reading float and integer attributes at render time

Volumes

• Removed the “*.vdb” file extension filter from the Volume Grid Cache SOP’s File Browser dialog
• Removed the GI Bounces parameter from the Volume Grid Shader because it has not been supported for a long time
• Added support for channel remapping of Phoenix FD Aur cache files using the string parameters under the Fields tab of the Volume Grid shader
• Volumes are no longer baked when a Volume Visualization SOP is present in the node graph after a File SOP
• Added a “Use Opacity Ramp” toggle that allows switching between Simple Smoke Opacity and the Opacity Ramp
• Skip baking of volumes to VRScene when using File Cache, Null, Transform or Switch SOP
• Exposed the “Backward Trace” motion blur method on the Volume Grid shader
• Exposed the Volumetric Render Elements options on the Volume Grid shader
• Exposed additional Fire Opacity modulation options when the Volume Grid shader’s Opacity Mode is set to “Use Own Opacity”

Displacement

• Added the option to disable Displacement but keep Subdivision enabled

Hair

• Added “Displacement”, “Subdivision”, “Hair”, “Proxy”, “Particles” toggles in the V-Ray Renderer ROP’s Options tab

Textures

• Added “Horizontal Rotation” and “Vertical Rotation” options to the UV Environment VOP
• The color of input texture to the Dirt Texture’s Radius parameter is now multiplied by the parameter’s numerical value
• Exposed the Tri-Planar texture Size parameter as an input socket of the VOP node
• Exposed the “Default Color” option for Image File VOP – used when no UVs are present or a UDIM tile texture is missing
• Distance Texture’s Objects are now always exported, regardless of their visibility
• Added dynamic IN/OUT menus for the OCIO Texture
• Reduced the TriPlanar Texture’s default Blend amount to 0.1 from 1.0
• Added a “UV Bercon” mapping VOP used when driving the parameters of a “Bercon Noise” VOP with the output of another “Bercon Noise”

Lights

• Enabled export of “Double-Sided” for Mesh Lights generated by the Light material when in “Direct Illumination” mode
• Added support for exporting textures connected to the BRDF Light’s color input when “Direct Illumination” is enabled

V-Ray Clipper

• Added support for capping-off the clipped mesh with a render-time generated surface

UI

• Updated the default Alpha Contribution parameter range to (-1, 1) for the Wrapper Material and Matte Object Properties
• Removed the Proxy Export and Proxy Import shelf buttons
• Renamed “Import Aura cache” shelf button to “Import AUR Cache”
• Lowered the default Shadow Bias to 0.0002 from 0.002 for all V-Ray Lights
• Updated the parameter names of the SSS2 Complex material to be consistent with the naming convention used in V-Ray for Maya
• Hid the “Channel Data Ranges” parameter on the Volume Grid Shader and added a callback script to find the dependent node instead
• Updated the default parameter values of the ColorCorrection VOP
• Set the default Maximum Render Time for the Progressive Sampler to 0 instead of 1 for both CPU and GPU rendering
• Unregistered the V-Ray Sphere Fade VOP so it is not present in the /mat network
• Changed the default Opacity Mode of the V-Ray Material to “Stochastic”
• Added the *.tx and *.tex extension to the list of displayed formats in the V-Ray Image File VOP’s File Browser dialog
• Updated the Material Output VOP’s OpenGL parameters
• Added Phoenix FD Fire/Smoke render presets to the Volume Grid shader
• Moved the Volume Grid debug messages to log level “Debug” – those will only show when the hidden Renderer ROP parameter “exporter_log_level” is set to “Debug”
• Updated the Render Elements template generation script
• Changed the Multi-Matte Render Element “Affect Matte Objects” parameter name to “Include Matte Objects”
• Updated the Color Correct (Max) texture’s default values
• Updated the default values for all UV Mapping VOPs
• Show the “Digital Assets” tab for the Tab menu when inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP
• Added viewport preview for the “Directional” parameter of the V-Ray Rect Light
• Renamed Scatter Radius to Scatter Color for the SSS Material

Fixed Bugs

V-Ray

• AlSurface material’s SSS is ignored when the SSS object is placed behind a refractive V-Ray Material with Refraction Depth higher than 1
• Fixed an error thrown by Houdini when attempting to create an HDA within a V-Ray Material Builder VOP
• Removing the OSL code from the OSL Texture or OSL Material would not remove the spare parameters

Chaos Cloud

• VRScene exported for Chaos Cloud contains more data than required

VRScans

• Updated the VRScans VOP UI

Rendering

• The V-Ray Sun was missing from the V-Ray Aerial Perspective
• Crash on render end when rendering with HBatch or Hython
• Fixed a crash when using per-primitive string attributes in the Image File VOP’s File path
• Fixed a crash with Single VOP
• Screen Window X/Y options are ignored if “V-Ray Physical Camera” properties are not present on the camera
• Fixed a crash when using Distributed Rendering to render scene consisting of a single spline only
• Fixed a render-time crash in specific cases when the Log Window option on the V-Ray Renderer ROP is enabled
• Fixed a bug causing the Light Cache calculation to get stuck when rendering with Displacement and a Color to Float texture
• V-Ray Material’s Refraction IOR used to affect Reflections even when “Lock Fresnel IOR to Refraction IOR” is disabled
• Wrong normals for manually transformed Agent primitives at the SOP level
• Fixed a crash when rendering a degenerate 2-vertex primitive
• No image output when rendering a scene which is not saved to disk and uses ${HIP} in the output path
• If Distributed Rendering’s “Use Local Machine” option is disabled, rendering locally does not work even when DR is disabled
• Crash with OSL Material when GGX Roughness is higher than 0.0
• Crash to desktop if the render camera position is changed during rendering an Agent Crowd Source SOP with Motion Blur enabled

GPU

• Hang after rendering a volumetric on the GPU and trying to close Houdini or open new file
• Crash when opening a new scene after rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Fixed a render-time crash when switching between CUDA and RTX
• The unsupported Volume Grid Shader Emission “Enabled” toggle is now correctly ignored when rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Empty Production render when Motion Blur is enabled on the V-Ray Physical Camera
• Materials part of a “Multi ID Material” are swapped when rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Noise COP in Sparse convolution mode, plugged in a V-Ray Image File VOP with op:/path causes a crash when rendering with CUDA or RTX
• Normal maps are not rendered with V-Ray GPU
• Tiled EXRs are not rendered with V-Ray GPU
• Crash when starting a Bucket Sampler Production render of a scene containing a volume primitive, stopping the render and starting IPR
• Hair is ignored by all scene lights if a Rectangle, Sphere, Spot or Mesh light is present in the scene

IPR

• IPR is not updated for volumes when the Renderer’s Sampler type is set to “Bucket”
• Hooking/unhooking nodes under a File SOP used for loading VDBs (e.g. Transform SOP) did not update IPR
• Changing the visibility flag on a piece of geometry would occasionally cause the entire geometry to disappear
• Creating a node inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP used to restart the IPR even if that node is not a part of the shading network attached to the rendered geometry
• Adding or removing an input connection to a VOP node would occasionally fail to update IPR
• Pressing the “X” button on the VFB to close the window would not stop the IPR
• When Motion Blur is enabled, objects with velocity blur used to have wrong motion blur after changing the Timeline frame
• Reducing the number of instanced volumes will now update IPR
• Wrong motion blur for objects instanced over points with velocity “v” attribute when changing the timeline frame
• Fixed a bug causing the Houdini UI to become sluggish once the IPR Noise Threshold value is reached
• Fixed a crash when changing attribute values during an IPR session with Motion Blur enabled
• Fixed a bug causing the render region in the VFB to be ignored during IPR under specific circumstances
• Fixed a bug causing IPR to update unnecessarily when changing the name of a material
• Camera selection is ignored, Renderer ROP’s camera is used instead in the Render View window
• Fixed a bug causing IPR to occasionally stop updating when changing the topology or the timeline frame with heavy geometry
• Fixed a Viewport IPR render region issue causing the rendered region to be offset if the camera is selected in the Network View after IPR was started
• Fixed a Viewport IPR render region bug causing the image to be rendered with incorrect focal length
• Nodes disconnected from the shading tree no longer will update IPR on parameter changes
• Shift+LMB clicking on the shelf’s IPR icon does not bring up a menu
• The Volume Grid Shader’s “Use Opacity Ramp” parameter does not update in IPR
• The visibility of the source object for instancing is modified when changing the timeline frame
• The IPR randomly does not update when the point count of the rendered geometry changes in large increments
• Per-primitives displacement affects different primitives for each IPR refresh, if V-Ray Displacement properties are not applied to the Geometry node
• Can not start IPR if a Render View panel is not present in the Houdini UI
• Disabling the visibility of Geometry node holding a VRScene SOP while IPR is running causes a crash if there is a material override assigned to it
• Objects imported into a sub-network disappear when changing settings on their assigned materials
• Changing the visibility of a Geometry node during an IPR session has no effect
• IPR used to discard a light if the Intensity parameter is animated and it reaches zero during the animation
• Changing Volume Grid Shader parameters during IPR would occasionally cause incorrect scaling of the volume
• Removing the file path from a Light’s Emission Color or Shadow Color texture parameter does not update IPR
• Crash when starting a VFB IPR session with a V-Ray Renderer ROP inside an HDA
• The Ignore flag of VOP nodes does not update IPR when a material is assigned through a Material Output VOP
• Empty Render View IPR and Viewport IPR when both “Use Denoiser” and “Use Render Elements” (with a RE:Denoiser) is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP
• Crash with CUDA CPU IPR and BRDF Stochastic Flakes because object level scale is ignored by the BRDF
• CUDA IPR errors and crash when changing Volume Grid shader options while IPR is running
• Start Offset option of the V-Ray Proxy is not updated in IPR
• Connecting a Displacement VOP to a Material Output VOP assigned through a Stylesheet while IPR is running causes a crash
• Repeatedly starting and stopping the IPR fills up RAM and does not release it

Texture Baking

• Automatically recalculate invalid normals on Mesh export to resolve empty AOV output for geometry with (0, 0, 0) normals
• Fixed a bug causing baked geometry to export as invisible
• Adding an object to the Target Objects list caused it to become un-renderable in regular Production rendering

AOVs

• BRDFs hooked up to a Blend material had wrong output for the Material Select element
• NaN pixel values for Normals element when “Filtering” and Motion Blur with Shutter Efficiency of 0.5 are enabled
• Wrong export for frame samples when Velocity element is present produces wrong output for static frames
• Incorrect Cryptomatte render element for volumes in Volumetric Geometry mode
• Wrong Light Select output when rendering volumes with Light Cache enabled
• Added a missing parameter export causing wrong Light Select output when rendering in Volumetric Mode
• Added missing “Color Mapping”, “Consider for AA” and “Denoise” options to the Light Select render element
• The “Denoise” option on Color Channel render elements had no effect
• No Anti-Aliasing for Cryptomatte element in Material mode because of missing face_mtlIDs parameter on GeomStaticMesh
• Presence of “Reflection Alpha” element causes wrong Reflection output
• Light Select output for volumetric effects was wrong due to a missing parameter output

Instancing

• Material assignments are lost for instances using @instance or @instancepath when Rayserver Instancer is enabled
• Fixed a difference in Motion Blur when using the “v” attribute if Rayserver Instancer is enabled
• Wrong fields loaded for rendering of fire and smoke in specific cases with volume instancing
• Iterating over a large number of instances with a Post-Translate script causes a crash
• Fixed wrong export for instanced volumes when using ‘unexpandedfilename’ intrinsic attribute
• Mesh Material assignments to a V-Ray Proxy are not preserved when using the Rayserver Instancer

V-Ray Scene

• Fixed a bug causing materials imported from a 3ds Max generated VRScene to lack bump mapping
• Flip Axis toggle produces normals with flipped Y/Z components for geometry imported from 3ds Max
• Viewport preview is missing objects when “Expand Primitives” is toggled between “on” and “off”
• Crash when changing the Viewport Preview mode of the VRScene Import SOP
• Materials imported from the VRScene have invalid name if the VRScene is exported from a DCC application that uses ‘#’ signs as part of the naming convention
• Preview of geometry stored in the VRScene file does not work

Export

• Geometry with no animation keyframes disappears when using Rayserver Instancer with Motion Blur enabled
• V-Ray Frame Buffer settings are not exported when generating per-frame VRScenes
• Point velocity attribute “v” is not exported for packed fragments for rendering with Velocity Blur
• VRScene export for cameras when rendering a frame sequence was missing a parameter which produced a wrong message for the currently rendered frame’s number
• Per-frame Camera transforms are not exported when “Use Camera Path” for Light Cache is enabled
• Overscan is ignored when rendering through batch with “Ignore VFB Settings” enabled
• The “creaseweight” attribute is not exported when using V-Ray Subdivision
• Transform SOP over packed unconnected points has no effect
• Lights in sub-networks are exported and rendered when the V-Ray Renderer ROP’s Candidate Lights list is empty
• Wrong export for custom attributes on Packed Fragment primitives
• Wrong “Cd” attribute export for instanced lights
• Missing V-Ray Frame Buffer parameters when rendering in batch
• Wrong parsing of system environment variables specified in the Image Output Path of a Renderer ROP when the variable starts with “F”, e.g. “${FNAME}”
• Specifying an object which is a child of a sub-network in the Renderer’s Force Objects list forces the entire parent sub-network
• An object which is a child of a sub-network specified in the Renderer’s Exclude Objects list is still rendered
• A Candidate Object is rendered even when the node Display flag is disabled if the Display parameter on the node is enabled and set to 1
• Objects in multiple sub-network levels are not rendered
• Material Builder VOP assigned to a Mesh material is not exported
• Objects specified for instancing using the “@instancepath” attribute are not exported if their name is “inst2”
• Remap textures’s “value” output used to output type color instead of type float
• Added support for instancing Mesh Lights inside sub-networks when the entire parent sub-network is specified for instancing
• Renderer ROP outputs all render elements from all Render Elements ROPs in the scene when Forced Materials is set to wildcard
• Empty hair animation export after the first animation frame when exporting to a single *.vrscene file
• No hair UVs when rendering with CUDA and using UV Channel Name VOP
• Missing padding when evaluating “$F*” variable in the image Output Path of the Renderer
• Wrong transformations of Packed Fragments when the “Rayserver Instancer” option in the V-Ray Object Properties is enabled
• String attributes on Packed objects are not exported
• Wrong parsing of string parameters which reference nodes inside HDAs
• Crash when instancing objects from a SOP-level Sub-network whose Display and Render flags are mis-matched
• The “Visible Children” parameter on Sub-network acts as a “Force Objects” list instead of a “Candidate Objects” list
• Material SOP overrides are not handled
• Per-frame transformation of geometry are not exported causing incorrect motion blur
• Geometry nodes with disabled display flag are not rendered when specified in the “Force Objects” list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP

Deadline

• Job is set to Deadline for rendering even if a camera is missing
• Selecting slaves for the Machine List adds a “Qt: Untested Windows version 10.0 detected!” message to the list

Alembics

• Empty render when the Geometry node holding the Alembic file is inside a Forced Matte Subnet node
• Exporting float attributes added to packed alembic primitives caused unexpected behavior with the Triplanar texture
• Forced material assignments from an Alembic baked shop_materialpath would not be registered for Cryptomatte in “Material Name” mode
• Fixed a bug causing double export for Alembic primitives when the Alembic SOP “Create Primitives For” is set to “Shape and Transform Nodes”
• Fixed a bug causing incorrect frame pattern export for per-frame Alembic files
• No UVs are loaded for alembics with changing topology and “abcframe” offset
• Rendering per-frame alembic files with multiple frames and velocity blur disabled used to cause stretching at first and final frame of animation
• Invalid motion blur bounding box used to cause clipping in specific setup
• Crash when rendering an *.abc file with baked “@shop_materialpath” if the materials are assigned to individual faces
• Material Builder VOP and Material Output VOP assignments to Delayed Load Alembics with baked shop_materialpath attribute are ignored
• Fixed a crash with Alembic files and invalid hair data
• Fixed a crash with Delayed Load Alembic primitives and Motion Blur enabled with specific scene

Volumes

• Phoenix FD “.aur” cache files produced wrong emission results
• Preserve environment variables functionality on the ROP was working incorrectly for volumes
• VDBs loaded as Packed Disk primitives are baked into the VRScene when copied using the CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18
• VDBs in a sub-network specified under the “Forced Objects” list on the Renderer ROP are not exported
• Fixed a bug causing ch() and chs() expressions to be evaluated incorrectly on the File SOP’s File parameter when exporting VDBs
• Fixed incorrect cache path export when Motion Blur is enabled
• Material ID option has no effect
• Wrong transform export for VDBs imported with File SOP
• Geometry nodes with disabled visibility which contain a volume are not rendered when specified in the “Force Objects” list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP
• Crash when rendering live volumes
• Providing the same name for Fire Volume and Smoke Volume on the Volume Grid shader breaks the data ranges of the Fire Luminance, Smoke Color and Smoke Opacity ramps

Displacement

• File sequence textures with an e.g. <frame4> token in the file path would not be loaded when specified directly under the Displacement VOP’s Texture parameter
• The “Render as Subdivision” toggle on the V-Ray Object Properties used to also enable Displacement
• Texture is not exported when provided directly inside the Displacement Properties or the Texture parameter of the Displacement VOP
• Preserve Map Borders option does not work when “Render As Subdivision” is enabled

Hair

• Wrong velocity interpolation for deforming splines
• Fixed a crash with packed hair geometry
• UV attribute is ignored when Hair Properties are missing from the rendered splines
• Crash when using the ‘distance_along_strand_normalized’ output of the Hair Sampler as the Diffuse color of a V-Ray Material
• Wrong attribute export for hair when a mismatch between the number of points and number of vertices is present
• Only vector attributes are exported

V-Ray Proxy

• Proxy created from Packed Geometry has wrong Viewport preview when imported back into the scene
• Changing the “Preview Type” parameter causes a crash when loading hair
• The ply2vrmesh tool produced wrong preview for a large number of hair strands
• The geometry preview of a V-Ray Proxy is forced to a bounding box when the *.vrmesh has more faces than the specified number in the “Max Preview Faces” parameter
• Frame tag $F is not parsed correctly for both preview and render
• The V-Ray Proxy ROP exports empty *.vrmesh files when placed inside a sub-network

Textures

• Object level transformations were not considered by the V-Ray Distance Texture for geometry in the “Objects” list
• Fixed a bug preventing the re-loading of an OSL file in the OSL texture
• Added some missing UV Bercon parameters
• Updated OCIO texture dynamic menus so that reverting the drop-down to its default will correctly export the first menu entry instead of an empty string
• Particles specified under the Distance texture’s Objects list are ignored at render-time
• First animation frame only is exported for objects with disabled visibility flag specified under the Distance texture’s Objects lists
• Remap Texture outputs black color when in RGB or HSV modes
• V-Ray Distance Texture ignores the world-space transformation of the specified objects
• Bezier Curve texture present in the shading network causes a crash
• Animated default color values are not updated when rendering an animation
• Layered Texture does not work with input COP images
• Layered Texture input textures are exported in reversed order
• Crash when “Cache Bitmaps Between Renders” is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP and a tiled EXR texture is used for rendering
• Export pixels data for all rendered frames if the COP network node is Time Dependent to support animated COP textures such as the Ocean Evaluate SOP’s output
• COP image assigned as a Dome Light texture uses Spherical Environment mapping
• COP image is now updated in IPR
• Export “A” image plane when referencing a COP image to support Ocean Evaluate SOP Cusp values
• Shape COP referenced as texture produces wrong results
• COP image used as a texture for the Physical Camera’s Bitmap Aperture produces wrong results
• Fixed wrong gamma export for COPs images

Lights

• All lights are exported regardless for the Geometry node’s Render -> Shading -> Reflection/Refraction Mask parameters making disabling reflections or refractions of specific lights for the given object impossible
• Light linking for V-Ray Environment fog is not working
• Light links are not updated when reopening a *.hip file which is not handled correctly by V-Ray
• Animated Mesh Light geometry is not updated when rendering an animation
• Crash when rendering Mesh Lights
• Image File VOP assigned as Dome Light texture is not updated in IPR

V-Ray Fur

• Fur attributes are not exported unless specified in the Force Attributes list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP
• Wrong Fur preview when the input geometry is scaled from the Transform tab of the parent Geometry node

V-Ray Clipper

• Default clipper would not fill holes of the clipped geometry
• Clip mesh is visible in the final render

Installer

• Updated the json environment setup due to a QT libraries conflict causing the Houdini Help Browser to stop working
• V-Ray for Houdini builds are now always installed in the default HFS path for the selected V-Ray version
• License server settings from previous installations were not automatically filled for new installations
• Fixed an issue causing corrupt builds for OSX
• Canceling installation on OSX does not stop Chaos Cloud Client installation
• Chaos Cloud Client installation fails on OSX

VFB

• The “Render Last” camera is now reset when starting a Production render from the Renderer ROP’s “Render to Disk” button
• V-Ray Frame Buffer “Stop” button does not interrupt network location requests for files
• Fixed an occasional bucket draw issue when the VFB is not the focused window starting with Houdini 18.0.391
• Render region toggle is stuck and can not be disabled
• Fixed a bug causing wrong Frame Buffer region settings on scene file reopen
• Render region is ignored
• Frame Buffer size is reduced every time it is reopened

UI

• Added an output socket to the Color Correct (Maya) VOP
• Fixed “Parameter stepped on” errors caused by duplicate parameter imports
• Disabled the visibility of the Bump Delta Scale option when the Render engine is set to CUDA
• Printing of Console messages is not filtered
• Physical Camera’s F-Stop, ISO and Shutter Speed should not be disabled when Exposure is disabled
• Override material had wrong disable condition for the “Environment” parameter
• Added missing Stereoscopic camera “Output Layout” parameter
• The Physical Camera “Rolling Shutter” parameter had an unreasonable default value
• The V-Ray Bump material is present twice in the VOP menu with the copy causing a UI error
• 2D displacement settings stay hidden when displacement type is set to 2D

Removed Features

UI

• Removed the “Reflection Alpha” option from the Color Channel (RE) node
• Removed default “/obj/cam1” string from the UV Projection VOP’s Projection Camera parameter because it was causing errors when creating HDAs
• Disabled the visibility of the UV Channel Name VOP’s Channel Index parameter
• Removed the “Probabilistic Rendering” option from the Volume Grid shader
• Removed the “Reflection Alpha” element from the Render Elements “Generate” button on the Renderer ROP
• Removed the “Visible in GI” toggle from the Render Stats material
• Removed the “Use Particle Color” parameter on BSDF Point Particle material because it’s redundant with the User Color VOP available

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What’s new in V-Ray Next for Houdini (build 4.12.03)

New features

V-RayFur

• Added V-RayFur SOP

V-Ray

• Added Bercon Maps
• Rayserver Instancer, Implement plugin for massive instancing (> 1M instances)
• $AOV and $F4 supported in render filename
• Per primitive displacement

Modified features

V-Ray IPR

• IPR dependency manager

V-Ray

• Direct velocity interpolation
• Added flip and rotate options for Environment mapping
• Export lights list for EnvironmentFog

Bug fixes

V-Ray IPR

• IPR memory leak
• Ignore flag of VOP nodes does not update IPR
• Slow material assignment
• CUDA IPR crash when changing Volume Grid Shader options

V-Ray

• Crash when vrmesh file is missing
• Crash with CUDA CPU IPR and BRDFStochasticFlakes
• TexSky sun parameter is not exported
• Exception in Core error when rendering volumes in batch with python
• Normals are not updated for copied packed disk primitives
• Rayserver Instancer for Packed Fragments – no transform info is exported
• Double transform for double packed disk primitives

• Which 3D renderer should I choose?
• In Depth: Why Should I Use V-Ray?