V-Ray 2.40.01 available for download

[vlado]

Hello,

V-Ray 2.40.01 is now available in the download section of our website at http://www.chaosgroup.com Here is the changelog with the most important stuff compared to the previous release; the full changelog is included in the installation.

For this service pack, it is recommended to use the V-Ray RT CUDA engine on nVidia GPUs. The OpenCL engine performance will be much lower (we had to sacrifice some optimizations in order to make it run at all).

2.40.01 official (21 January 2013)
==============

New features:
(*) VRayHairFarmMod: Added support for rendering Hair Farm 2.0 with V-Ray; requires Hair Farm 2.0
(*) VRayProxy: Support for Alembic .abc files;
(*) V-Ray RT: Support for instancing;
(*) V-Ray RT: Support for Forest Pro instancing; requires Forest Pro 4
(*) V-Ray RT CPU: Faster update when adjusting VRayLights;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: CUDA speed optimizations and optimizations for GK110 cards;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Support for the ColorCorrection texture;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Support for the Mix texture;

Modified features:
(*) VRayFur: Added "Level Of Detail" option to reduce geometry along the distance from the camera;
(*) VRayLight: Added "targeted" option for rectangle VRayLights;
(*) MultiMatte: Added include/exclude object lists for different color channels to the MultiMatte render element;
(*) VRayProxy: Fixed issue that was slowing down multi-core rendering for VRayProxy objects;
(*) VRayHDRI: Optimized multi-core rendering for OpenEXR textures;
(*) VRayMtlGLSL: Added ability to save and load compiled shaders;
(*) VRayMtlGLSL: Added cubemap texture support;
(*) VRayMtlGLSL: Added viewport color parameter;
(*) VRayMtlGLSL: Added vr_brdf_light builtin BRDF support;
(*) V-Ray: Added option to the VRayExtraTex render element to avoid auto-renaming the element when the texture is changed;
(*) V-Ray: Default memory limit for dynamic geometry changed to 4000 MB for x64 versions;
(*) V-Ray: Optimized unnecessary velocity calculations when no velocity channel is needed;
(*) V-Ray: V-Ray components now register in the respective menus across different language 3ds Max builds;
(*) V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayHairMtl;
(*) V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayFur;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Added mr_Sun/mr_Sky lights in export to VRaySun/VRaySky respectively;
(*) V-Ray scene exporter: Added subdivided geometry export;
(*) VRayEdgesTex: Improved the round corners algorithm;
(*) VRayAmbientLight: Made some of the parameters animated;
(*) VRayHDRI: Added "Color space" section and moved the "Gamma" option there;
(*) VRayIESLight: Added an option to override the IES shape;
(*) VRayIESLight: Made selecting both the light and it's target when clicking on the line between them;
(*) VRayLight: Added a preview of the "directionality" parameter of VRayLights in the viewports;
(*) VRayLight/VRayIESLight: Added textured lighting in Nitrous viewport, for Dome light enabled by an environment variable VRAY_DOME_VIEWPORT=1;
(*) VRayMtl: Made "Fog color" mappable;
(*) VRayMtl: Made reflections to affect the alpha of matte objects;
(*) VRayProxy: Support for flipping of Z/Y axis;
(*) VRayProxy: Support for visibility lists for .vrmesh and .abc files;
(*) VRaySphereFade: Added support for box and cylinder gizmos;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Added option to specify the name of the velocity attribute (-velocityAttrName);
(*) ply2vrmesh: Added support for .hclassic and .bhclassic files produced by Houdini 12;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Added support for color sets from .bgeo files;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Added support for exporting the face and vertex normals in .geo and .bgeo files;

This is one of the last V-Ray builds to support 32-bit versions of 3ds Max. If you have not migrated to 64-bit 3ds Max, we strongly suggest that you do so.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Here is a video demonstrating some of the new GPU instancing stuff:

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

And another one with the final animation:

Best regards,
Vlado

[RE:FORM_STUDIOS]

Ooooh some nice new things! Great stuff!

-----
What kind of performance improvements have you seen with these two issues ?
V-Ray: Fixed issue that was slowing down multi-core rendering for VRayProxy objects;
V-Ray: Optimized multi-core rendering for OpenEXR textures;


With the multi-core rendering of openEXR does this only apply if the EXR has been converted using the vray tool ?

[vlado]

V-Ray: Fixed issue that was slowing down multi-core rendering for VRayProxy objects;

I think it was about twice, but the scene was heavy in proxies and the machine had 32 logical cores. The issue wasn't too obvious on the average i7.

V-Ray: Optimized multi-core rendering for OpenEXR textures;

This only applies to tiled textures rendered through VRayHDRI.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

Thanks for the update Vlado.
Its a very good update so well done Team Chaos!

Does this update include OpenEXR 2.0?

[gandhics]

Still no Self-Illumination option in VRayMtl?

[dlparisi]

Still no Self-Illumination option in VRayMtl?

I'm not sure when it was added but it's in the current 2.4.

[flat]

greenish tint bugfix of FasrSSS2 is not included?

[jstrob]

Just installed it. Firts thing I noticed is when I load my rpmanager interface, it takes fa very long time... It was not like that with vray 2.3

[sandykoufax]

Only Forest Pack Pro ? Not support Forest Pack Lite ?

[vlado]

Only Forest Pack Pro ? Not support Forest Pack Lite ?

I have not tested, to be honest. The guys at Itoo can answer that.

Best regards,
Vlado

[G0M0]

I have trouble installing it - it shows that 3dsmax is currently running and I have to close it, but there is no 3ds max running (and no such process in task manager)

[Itoosoft]

Yes, Forest Pack Lite will be supported as well. It is not available yet because Forest 4 is in beta, and betas are available only for the Pro version.

We have plans to release Forest 4 officially (both Lite/Pro) in the next weeks.

[sandykoufax]

Thanks for the answer vlado and Carlos. You guys so quick!