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v5 Chaos V-Ray for Houdini

Chaos V-Ray for Houdini
   

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Chaos V-Ray

Super-fast production rendering for VFX artists

V-Ray for Houdini is a production-proven CPU & GPU rendering software ≈. It comes with all the tools artists need to render amazing-looking procedural effects. Seamlessly integrated in Houdini, it enables smooth scene exchange and iterations between Houdini and other DCC applications.

Academy Award-Winning Ray Tracing Technology in Chaos V-Ray for Houdini

V-Ray’s performance is production-proven. It’s been used by the world’s leading studios to render over 300 television series and feature films. In 2017, V-Ray received a Sci-Tech Academy Award for its contribution to photorealistic visual effects.

Fast and scalable to help you meet tight deadlines.

V-Ray’s adaptive ray tracing is highly optimized for superior speed and scalability. You can take full advantage of your hardware rendering on multiple CPUs, & GPUs, or both. With V-Ray’s distributed rendering, you can render a single image across multiple machines.

Smart integration for a smooth workflow.

V-Ray works seamlessly with Houdini and enables smooth scene exchange with other DCC applications. ACEScg support is new in V-Ray 5, joining other industry standards like Alembic, OpenVDB, and OpenColorIO.

Creative control to render anything imaginable.

Bring your projects to life with the right tools for the job. V-Ray equips you with a complete set of lighting, shading, and rendering tools. It’s the most full-featured 3D rendering software available.

What’s new in V-Ray 5 for Houdini, Update 1

 

What’s new in Chaos V-Ray 5 for Houdini

V-Ray 5 brings a redesigned V-Ray Frame Buffer to Houdini with tools for basic compositing. The new, streamlined UI, ACEScg color space implementation, and Light Path Expressions speed up your rendering and optimize your workflow for faster results.

cg Chaos V-Ray for Houdini light mixLight Mix

Easily create different lighting scenarios without having to render again. When you have the look you want, you can save your light mix setup, send the layers to comp, and update the lights in the scene.

cg vray houdini compositorNew Layer Compositor

We’ve expanded the capabilities of the VFB. With the VFB’s new Layer Compositor you can
fine-tune your images — combine render passes, set blending modes, and adjust colors all within V-Ray.

 

vray houdini libraryLight Path Expressions

For better control in compositing, construct your own render passes with Light Path Expressions. Output specific light contributions with timesaving presets or by writing custom expressions.

 

cg vray houdini workflowSimplified acesCG workflow

Enable ACEScg so V-Ray 5 can automatically convert the colors of textures, light temperatures, etc. to the correct color space, without the need of additional nodes.

 

Powerful features in V-Ray for Houdini which save you time

V-Ray Material Library

Efficiently browse from a library of over 500 render-ready materials including metals, glass, wood, and more.

Coat Layer

Add reflective coatings directly in V-Ray Material so you can render faster and more efficiently.

Sheen Layer

Render soft microfiber fabrics like velvet, satin, and silk with new V-Ray Material sheen options.

Randomized Textures and Colors

For more realistic textures and materials, add variety and subtle imperfections with the new VRayUVWRandomizer map and improved VRayMultiSubTex controls.

Stochastic Texture Tiling

Automatically remove texture tiling artifacts with the new Stochastic tiling option on the VRayUVWRandomizer.

Dirt and Weathering

Give surfaces a weathered look. With the improved V-Ray Dirt texture, you can add dirt to cracks and crevices, create procedural streaks, or cover an entire surface.

New Sun and Sky Model

A new Sun & Sky analytical model is more accurate and improves lighting at sunrise and sunset.

And more

Streamlined UI

The latest updates to V-Ray 5’s UI significantly improve your rendering workflow. Focus on your designs and achieve faster results with fewer tweaks and less clicks using V-Ray’s automatic settings.

Powerful GPU Rendering

Give your production renders a GPU speed boost. V-Ray GPU supports all the new features in V-Ray 5, as well as 2D displacement, OSL textures, and memory tracking. For scenes that are too big for your GPU RAM, initial support for out-of-core geometry has also been added.

Blue-noise Sampling

Blue-noise shows less noise but with the same amount of samples. As your render resolves, depth of field and motion blur will appear smoother with less samples.

Volume Grid Texture

Added the V-Ray Volume Grid texture to provide tighter integration between V-Ray and Houdini’s native Ocean toolset down the line. Native ocean rendering is still being developed.

Key Features in V-Ray for Houdini

Rendering

High-performance ray tracing.

Powerful CPU and GPU-accelerated rendering built for the demands of high-end production.

 

vray houdini rendering

Interactive rendering.

Interactive look development supported in the Houdini render view.

vray houdini volumeVolume rendering.

Fast and accurate rendering of native Houdini volumes and OpenVDB caches.

Multi-GPU production rendering.

GPU bucket rendering with fast multi-GPU performance and support for Cryptomattes.

 

Unified Workflow for Custom Attributes.

Control custom attributes of geometry (including splines and particles) with the User Color node.

Debug Shading

Isolate selected textures and materials to help debug large shading networks in IPR.

Chaos Cloud rendering

Simple, one-click solution to submit jobs to render on the Chaos Cloud.

 

Lighting

Adaptive Lights.

Unique method for the ultrafast rendering of scenes with hundreds or even thousands of lights.

 

Global illumination.

Highly optimized indirect lighting with V-Ray’s proprietary Light Cache and brute force GI methods.

 

Light instances.

Instance lights with full control over per-instance light parameters, without affecting light link settings.

 

Materials in V-Ray for Houdini

vray houdini libraryV-Ray Material Library

Efficiently browse from a library of over 500 render-ready materials including metals, glass, wood, and more.

 

Material stylesheets.

Support for material overrides* based on groups, bundles, and attributes.

*VEX and per-primitive string overrides such as texture randomization are not yet supported.

 

V-Ray scene material overrides.

Automatically import material node hierarchies from V-Ray scene files and make changes in Houdini.

 

vray houdini hairPhysical hair.

Create realistic-looking hair* with accurate highlights using the V-Ray Physical Hair material.

*Currently supports hair as SOP geometry

 

PBR materials.

The standard V-Ray Material supports Metalness reflection values for PBR shader workflows.

 

ALSurface material.

Physically-based shader with built-in SSS controls, popular for rendering realistic skin.

 

GPU material assignments.

Per-Primitive Material Assignment is now supported on the GPU, allowing artists to utilize Stylesheets and the Material SOP.

 

VRscans material library support.

1000+ ultra-realistic physically scanned materials ready to import and render.

 

Textures in V-Ray for Houdini

Texture Baking

Create texture maps with all the lighting and material information for game assets and real-time environments.

Randomized Textures and Colors

For more realistic textures and materials, add variety and subtle imperfections with the new VRayUVWRandomizer map and improved VRayMultiSubTex controls.

Custom Attribute Texture Paths

Simpler randomization of textures with support for per-face and per-primitive string attributes.

 

Geometry

vray houdini scene exchangeV-Ray Scene exchange.

Transfer and override the properties of V-Ray scenes from other apps like Maya and 3ds Max.

Instancing.

Instance any object type (including volumes) using Packed Primitives, Instancer and “instancepath” attributes.

vray houdini primativesPacked primitives.

Efficient handling of Houdini’s native packed primitives for instancing at render time.

 

Alembic support.

Support for Houdini’s native Alembic layering, transformations, instancing and per-object material overrides.

 

vray houdini particlesParticles.

Drive shader parameters such as color, alpha and particle size through custom per-point attributes.

V-Ray Fur.

Fast rendering of realistic fur and hair with V-Ray Fur.

VRscene Unpacking

Directly import assets from other DCC tools without the need to rebuild materials.

Faster Time to First Pixel

Faster geometry export for quick render startup.

Massive Instancing

Memory efficient instancing of large hierarchies of objects.

 

Atmospheric & volumetric effects

Environment fog

Quickly simulate the effects of participating media such as fog and atmospheric dust.

Aerial perspective

Create natural-looking atmospheric depth as objects fade into the distance.

Volume Instancing

Added support for instancing volumetric effects.

 

Geometry management

Render Elements

Render any set of lights (including wildcard selections) as separate render elements.

Light Select Render Element

Render a wide variety of beauty, utility and matte passes for complete control in compositing.

Custom AOVs

Smoother export of textures and procedural maps to custom render elements.

Light Path Expressions

For better control in compositing, construct your own render passes. Output specific light contributions with timesaving presets or by writing custom expressions.

 

V-Ray for Houdini Licensing Policy

To summarize, V-Ray for Houdini is offered as a rental license only (annual and monthly). In fact, V-Ray for Houdini supports only the Online Licensing System (OLS) and does not support the USB dongle.

Online licensing requires a stable, uninterrupted internet connection. It is possible to borrow licenses and use them completely offline for a limited time – 14 days. When this period is over, an internet connection is required to renew offline usage of the licenses.

 

Description

System Requirements

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

* 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
 

V-Ray GPU

V-Ray GPU works only with C++/CPU devices under macOS. V-Ray GPU can still be used in distributed rendering where a macOS machine runs the CUDA engine on a CPU device together with Windows/Linux machine(s) running CUDA engine on GPU device(s).

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.

Change Log

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

 

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

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

New features

New VFB

  • Add entirely new implementation of VFB with integrated Layers compositing

V-Ray

  • Support for rendering in ACEScg color space with option to recognize the texture color space from the file name
  • Simplified Renderer ROP UI

V-Ray Library

  • A material library browser utility for the V-Ray Material Library

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

GPU

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

Known Issues

  • No Post Translate support yet
  • The Light Mix element is not yet available
  • VFB Render Region is ignored for Production rendering and IPR
  • Physical Camera’s Exposure Value parameter does not work as intended
  • PatternID and Random textures are not yet implemented for V-Ray 5
  • Displacement from VOP network does not behave correctly when applied with a Material SOP to Merged meshes – only if some of the faces do not have a material with displacement assigned to them
  • Incorrect message “Unsupported 2D Type for Displacement” printed when rendering with V-Ray 5 GPU

V-Ray 5

Build 5.00.50
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

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

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

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 primitive

Tutorials

Why V-Ray 5 Removes the Challenges of Creating Materials

Christopher Nichols explains the process of quickly creating materials with the new simplified Asset Browser and material presets in V-Ray 5.

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In Depth: Why Should I Use V-Ray?

V-Ray is a powerful 3D rendering system that was built for designers, architects, and jack-of-all-trades. Learn about how artists use V-Ray.

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Introduction to V-Ray Next Compilation

This is a compilation of the Introductory tutorials for V-Ray Next including 3ds Max, Revit, Sketchup, Rhino, Unreal, Modo and Houdini.  Most of these tutorials also have downloadable assets.

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Introduction to V-Ray Next for Houdini

This is a quick start introduction tutorial to V-Ray Next for Houdini and covers the basic startup and UI integration. 

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V-Ray for Houdini: Introduction + Batch Rendering + Using Python HOU

Here's a couple of tutorials to get you up and running with V-Ray for Houdini quickly. The introduction covers the basic startup and UI integration, the next tutorial teaches you how to start a batch render, and finally you will learn how to use the Python Hou module .

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