V-Ray 3.30 official build available for download

[vlado]

Hello,

We just uploaded the official V-Ray 3.30.03 builds on the website. The cumulative changelog since the previous official service pack is below. Many thanks to everyone who participated in the beta and provided feedback!

A short preview video with some of the more interesting stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XB5nAxQnzs

New features:
(*) V-Ray: General speed improvements;
(*) V-Ray: New adaptive sampling algorithm for better detection and clean-up of noise in the image;
(*) V-Ray: Added option for automatic subdivs calculations for materials and lights;
(*) V-Ray: Better GI distribution (more robust handling of reflective GI caustics) for interior scenes;
(*) V-Ray: Experimental support for machines with more than 64 logical cores (enabled through VRAY_USE_THREAD_AFFINITY=1 environment variable);
(*) V-Ray: Better sub-pixel filtering for the progressive sampler;
(*) V-Ray: Dynamic noise threshold for the progressive sampler for more even noise distribuion;
(*) V-Ray: Internal spectral color space switched from CIE RGB to sRGB;
(*) V-Ray: Added "Generate render elements" option to the V-Ray object properties;
(*) V-Ray: Added vrayGetStampVariable() MaxScript function to return the value of any VFB stamp variable;
(*) VRayAerialPerspective: New aerial perspective atmospheric effect;
(*) VRayTriplanarTex: A new texture that implements blended box mapping (many thanks to Neil Blevins!);
(*) VRayStochasticFlakesMtl: New stochastic flakes material for car-paint like materials;
(*) VRaySun/VRaySky: New sky model (Hosek et al);
(*) VRaySun/VRaySky: Added ground color parameter;
(*) VRayClipper: Ability to clip against arbitrary meshes;
(*) VRayEdgesTex: Implemented raytraced rounded corners when used as bump map;
(*) VFB: Ability to compare the V-Ray settings recorded with the VFB history images;
(*) VFB: Ability to export the color corrections settings as single LUT (.cube) file;
(*) VFB: Ability to load color corrections from VFB history;
(*) VFB: Ability to remember the window position since the last 3ds Max session;
(*) VRayProxy: Specify the proxy preview faces as percentage of the original faces, min and max values;
(*) VRayFur: Implemented options for hair curling;
(*) VRayInstancer/VRayMetaball: Added ability to pick individual PFlow events;
(*) VRayNormalMap: Added an "Additional bump map" slot;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added support for importing VDB caches from FumeFX 4;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added options for probabilistic volume sampling in the VRayVolumeGrid atmospheric effect;
(*) V-Ray and VRayMtl: Updated default settings;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: GLSL shaders are now compiled to binary code through LLVM for increased render speed;
(*) V-Ray RT: In-process RT engine (no separate command-line opens up);
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Support for lights include/exclude;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Better support for AMD hardware;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Initial support for GLSL texture shaders;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Support for hair and particles from VRayProxy objects;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added initial support for VRayMultiSubTex;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for 3ds Max procedural textures in environment slot;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for VRayFur;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for MultiTexture;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for mapped IOR of VRayMtl;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for the physical camera bitmap aperture;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for the "cast shadows" option of the V-Ray lights;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for VRayPlane;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Added support for VRayUserColor and VRayUserScalar;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Support for texture-mapped "radius" parameter in VRayDirt;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Initial support for rounded corners on the GPU;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Initial support for the MultiTexture plugin from CGSource;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU OpenCL: Support for VRayDirt;

Modified features:
(*) V-Ray: Automatically disable the bitmap pager;
(*) V-Ray: Distributed calculations of the light cache with distributed rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Further speed improvements for proxies and instances (beyond what we had in V-Ray 3.20.03);
(*) V-Ray: Improved CPU utilization for the progressive sampler when using noise threshold;
(*) V-Ray: Speed improvements when rendering displacement/subdivision surfaces;
(*) V-Ray: Added progressive sampling buffer memory usage info to the V-Ray rendering messages log;
(*) V-Ray: Optimized Mitchell-Netravali filter performance on Intel Xeon CPUs;
(*) V-Ray: Added warnings about compatibility issues with Blend, Shellac and Composite materials;
(*) V-Ray: Include the name of the material causing "invalid bump normal" warnings itself;
(*) V-Ray: Removed the V-Ray PowerShader banner from all it's appearances;
(*) V-Ray: Improve light cache quality for small render regions;
(*) V-Ray: The "Adaptive tracing" option for the light cache is removed as it didn't work reliably;
(*) VFB: Faster activation of the mouse tracking with the progressive sampler and V-Ray RT;
(*) VFB: Added tooltip with the image comment to the images in the VFB history;
(*) VFB: Adding/removing render elements will not delete the contents of the frame buffer;
(*) VRayLight: Adjust default settings of dome lights - they are spherical and do not affect alpha channel by default;
(*) VRayLight: Take into account scene exposure when calculating the number of samples;
(*) VRayLight: Use a resolution of at least 2048 for dome lights, even if less is specified in the UI;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Improved "Optimizing Atmospherics" phase;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Added automatic preview detail reduction;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Allowed the render diagrams/gradients to be resized by MaxScript;
(*) VRayHDRI: Added tiling support and Real World Mapping in the Material Editor and viewport previews;
(*) VRayHDRI: Tiled textures caching optimizations;
(*) VRayHDRI: General speed improvements;
(*) VRayHDRI: Support for UDIM tiles greater than 1999;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Enabled adding of multiple lights in the Environment Fog field through "Select by name" dialog;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: "per gizmo fadeout enable" option is disabled by default;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Renamed the per-gizmo "fadeout" parameter to "falloff";
(*) VRayDirt: For newly created VRayDirt textures, the subdivs (and samples quality) is no longer influenced by antialiasing settings;
(*) VRayBlendMtl: Added toggle controls for the coat materials;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Added support for Hair, Cook-Torrance and GGX BRDFs;
(*) VRayOSLMtl/VRayOSLTex: Added user tags support for textures connected to a GLSL/OSL texture or material;
(*) VRayOSLTex: Fixed incorrect results when the "Mirror" and "Tile" options are switched off;
(*) VRayMtl: Moved the "Use interpolation" options for reflections/refractions to the relevant rollout;
(*) VRaySamplerInfo render element: Added modes to extract a specific node user attribute as an integer or floating-point render element;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Added support for the Output rollout and crop/placement values;
(*) V-Ray vrmat converter: Added support for VRayHDRI and VRayNormalMap;
(*) V-Ray: Enabled assigning of existing trace sets to object nodes through the vrayAddTraceSets MaxScript function;
(*) V-Ray RT: .vrscene exporter support for VrayScannedMtl;
(*) V-Ray RT: Added "Show log" button in the System rollout when set as production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT: Avoid burning the RT statistics into the final saved images;
(*) V-Ray RT: V-Ray plugins can be loaded from multiple paths set in the VRAY30_RT_FOR_3DSMAXNNNN_PLUGINS environment variable;
(*) V-Ray RT: Moved the "Ignore in RT Engine" option from Object Properties to V-Ray Properties;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Improved light cache with support for motion blurred hairs;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Optimized the "Compiling geometry..." phase on scenes with many nodes;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Print warning for unsupported textures;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Increased the GI bounces when retracing the light cache;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU CUDA: Prevent kernel recompilations during ActiveShade;
(*) Installer: Auto-run the license server if it was running prior the installation;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Added support for Corona 1.2.1;
(*) vrayspawner.exe accepts "-numthreads" option to limit the number of threads for the DR node when not using NUMA options;
(*) ply2vrmesh: Instancing is enabled by default when converting Alembic files;

Bug fixes in next post.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Bug fixes:
(*) V-Ray: "Transfer missing assets" option wasn't working trough Backburner;
(*) V-Ray: Automatically turn off image filtering with Cube 6x1 cameras because it is causing "Invalid geometric normal (-0 -0 -0)" errors;
(*) V-Ray: GI "Leak prevention" parameter name was disappearing when loading settings from VFB history file;
(*) V-Ray: Light Cache was crashing at Merging Passes stage with Motion Blur and particle systems;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed wrong results with sharpening image filters when rendering with progressive image sampler and V-Ray RT;
(*) V-Ray: "Maps" option in Global Switches doesn't disable the textured lights properly;
(*) V-Ray: Per-pixel statistics were wrong with region render;
(*) V-Ray: Render mask in texture mode was loading only the top level bitmap if there were sub-textures;
(*) V-Ray: Rendering was freezing with static subdivision and tiled textures when the displacement map is missing;
(*) V-Ray: Rollouts in the Render Settings window were disappearing when loading V-Ray presets;
(*) V-Ray: The "?" button for the Adaptive image sampler was opening broken URL;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed crash with Free Directional Lights;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed wrong result in the VRayShadows render element;
(*) V-Ray: Added missing V-Ray items in the 3ds Max menus;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed crash when rendering Particle Flow system with VRayLightMtl with Falloff map;
(*) V-Ray: Wrong samples distribution with VFB mouse tracking and progressive sampling and V-Ray RT;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed crashes when cancelling render while tessellating subdivided/displaced objects with "static geometry" enabled
(*) V-Ray: Fixed crashes with dynamic meshes that have no faces but have more than one vertices;
(*) V-Ray: Fixed wrong URL of the Global DMC settings "?" button;
(*) V-Ray: The V-Ray option to show the render messages window on warning/error was still taken into account in 3ds Max 2016;
(*) V-Ray: Work around an issue with notification system in 3ds Max 2012, causing old scenes loading to crash;
(*) VFB: Fixed random crash when displaying RT stamp variables;
(*) VFB: Prevent auto-save an image in the history if the VFB has just been cleared;
(*) VFB: Adding points to the curve color correction was resetting the right tangent of the last point;
(*) VFB: Channels were mismatched in compare A/B mode when channels were different in both of the images;
(*) VFB: Fixed %frame variable in the frame stamp doesn't work;
(*) VFB: Fixed color correction rollouts scroll position after hiding rollouts;
(*) VFB: White balance color correction was causing hanging after rendering;
(*) VRayHDRI: Fixed crash with exr files using custom data window;
(*) VRayHDRI: Elliptical filtering was crashing when assigned as environment map;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Fixed fog density texmap offset;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Fixed result affected by inactive instances;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Was not irradiated by VRaySun in V-Ray RT;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog: Wrong deep output was generated when using with multiple/overlapping gizmos;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog, VRaySphereFade, VRayToon: Enabled copying through MaxScript;
(*) VRayFastSSS2: Fixed differences in rendering since Beta 1;
(*) VRayFastSSS2/VRaySkinMtl: Lights include/exclude list was ignored when motion blur was enabled;
(*) VRayFastSSS2/VRaySkinMtl: Fixed visible edges in raytraced mode when intersecting with other invisible geometry;
(*) VRayFur: Material sub-texmaps were not rendered in V-Ray RT;
(*) VRayFur: "Placement" option was not reflected in the viewport preview;
(*) VRayFur: Source object's scaling was not taken into account;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Fixed crash when compile error messages exceed 512 symbols;
(*) VRayMetaball: Wrong motion blur on PFlow events that reduce the particle count;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed crash when adding point to the diagram and gradient controls;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fixed black pixels occurring when rendering Phoenix FD with "Affect background" off and "Color Clamp" on;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Deleting and then undoing breaks all rendering and simulation functionality;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Fire in "own opacity" mode was rendering very dim in reflections with glossiness < 1;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Workaround F3D files from FumeFX using boundless simulation or wavelet are not scaled correctly;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Fixed crash when encountering duplicate structures with different layouts;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Fixed crash when re-loading shaders with syntax errors;
(*) VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex: Fixed crash when VRayHDRI texmap is attached as input;
(*) VRayColor2Bump: Was not returning correct number of sub-textures;
(*) VRayDisplacementMod: The "max subdivs" parameter was not disabled for modes other than subdivision surfaces;
(*) VRayDistanceTex: Fixed "inside color" leaking out with particular geometry;
(*) VRayLight: Environment was wrongly contributing to irradiance maps when there was a dome light with "affect alpha" disabled;
(*) VRayHairFarmMod and VRayOrnatrixMod: Fixed crash when rendering with VRaySamplerInfo render element;
(*) VRayHairMtl: Fixed reflections when the material has glossy reflections and GI is off;
(*) VRayHairMtl: Fixed missing direct light from VRayAmbientLight;
(*) VRayMtl: Anisotropy and Rotation texmap shortcut buttons did not have context menus;
(*) VRayNormalMap: Fixed crash when the map channel is set to 100;
(*) VRayPhysicalCamera: Rendering with bitmap aperture was producing black images;
(*) VRayStereoscopic: Camera exposure from the VRayPhysicalCamera was applied twice to render elements when rendering with shademaps;
(*) VRayStereoscopic: Disable the DOF effect while rendering shade maps;
(*) VRaySky: The wrong VRaySun lights was chosen in case there were multiple hidden but one;
(*) VRaySun: Exposure in viewport was too dark in the in 3ds Max 2016;
(*) V-Ray Light Lister: Handling lights with incorrect intensity;
(*) V-Ray Bitmap to V-RayHDRI converter: Fixed error if there are Bitmap textures with no file names;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash when there are changes to one of several VRayInstancer objects with the same source object during ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash when opening Render Setup during ActiveShade session after changes to the scene;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed VRayDistanceTex "inside color" leaking out with particular geometry;
(*) V-Ray RT: "Receive shadows" option from the Object Properties was not working;
(*) V-Ray RT: The default lights were not enabled after all lights were deleted in ActiveShade since Beta 1;
(*) V-Ray RT: Multi/Sub-Object assigned to VRayBlendMtl was not rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: "Blur" parameter of VRayHDRI map was not correctly exported;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash on render end with VRayMtlWrapper;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash with dynamic noise threshold when rendering as production renderer through Backburner;
(*) V-Ray RT: VRaySky randomly stopped illuminating the scene when the sun was disabled;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed unhandled exception when rendering motion blurred particles with longer duration and more than two geometry samples;
(*) V-Ray RT: 3ds Max Photometric lights' filter color was not exported to .vrscene files;
(*) V-Ray RT: Camera animation was not properly exported to .vrscene files;
(*) V-Ray RT: Could not lock render view if Phoenix FD GPU preview is in one of the viewports;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash when creating spherical light during ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed 3ds Max crash when inserting VFB stamp variables after rendering as production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed crash when re-connecting Multi/Sub-Object material to VRayBlendMtl during ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed different results with VRayIES lights compared to the production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed error when rendering Normal Bump map with texture in Additional bump map and no Normal map set;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed export of textures redundantly wrapped in TexOutput plugin;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed random error "stage 2" after tweaking exposure settings due to uninitialized resources;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed silent crash when closing 3ds Max after rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed VRayBlendMtl exporting of redundant BRDFLayered plugins for the sub-materials;
(*) V-Ray RT: Fixed wrong scaled camera rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: Gradient Ramp texture had Surface Normal not properly calculated for backfacing polygons;
(*) V-Ray RT: MaxScript/Quad menu export to .vrscene was always creating animation keyframes;
(*) V-Ray RT: Meshes with subdivision should be exported as GeomStaticSmoothedMesh;
(*) V-Ray RT: Prevent hidden geometry export;
(*) V-Ray RT: Subtract function in VRayCompTex was producing incorrect results;
(*) V-Ray RT: The parameters for probabilistic lights were not exported to .vrscene files;
(*) V-Ray RT: The RGB Offset, Level and Output Amount from the Output texture and rollout were not applied correctly;
(*) V-Ray RT: VRayDistanceTex was not exported;
(*) V-Ray RT: VRayFur placement by material ID was offset by 1;
(*) V-Ray RT: VRayGLSLTex and VRayOSLTex were not shown as compatible textures in the material editor;
(*) V-Ray RT: VRaySun exclude list was not applied;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed crash when creating standard geometry during ActiveShade and there is VRayProxy with Alembic particles present;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed crash with missing tiles of UDIM bitmap textures;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed differences in reflections of highlights compared to the production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed flipped normals on objects with negative scaling and subdivision since Beta 2;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed crash when rendering through Backurner;
(*) V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed incorrect orientation of VRayHDRI in environment slots;

..... (post too long; for a full list see the changelog in the installation)

Best regards,
Vlado

[Bruce Hart]

That's a LOT of work. Thanks to Vlado and the team for your efforts! I'm having trouble logging in to the download area (as in nothing happens after the user name and password screen). Are there any browser settings I should look at?

[short cirkuit]

Thanks - one quick annoying quirk though and ive asked before, is the hover information only stays for a few seconds.... i cant read that quick lol!

[short cirkuit]

PS the VFB on/off toggle doesnt work during rendering (eg for exposure, white balance etc)

DISREGARD - it was just playing up. Now works.

[hubmer3]

Thanks a lot vlado and team for such big new features!

Greets

[sharktacos]

I'm intrigued by the new "automatic subdivs calculations for materials and lights" option. Where can we learn more about this?

[Ihno]

This is a very nice Christmas gift.
Thanks and Congractulations, you guys rock.

[^Lele^]

I'm intrigued by the new "automatic subdivs calculations for materials and lights" option. Where can we learn more about this?

It's the checkbox in the UI which turns off local subdivision settings on shaders and lights (not dissimilar from the old way used to do so, setting the GSM to 0.0), delegating the ratio between AA and secondary rays to the "min. shading rate" control (which one needn't change from the defaults, anyway.).
Further to this, V-Ray knows that some specific type of objects will require more or less AA samples versus secondary rays, and automatically balances them for best performance.

The result on a new (or old with reset settings) scene is simply that one can concentrate on authoring a scene, knowing that at the press of the render button one will get the best possible performance out of V-Ray for a given cleanliness.

Any tweaking of settings is now not only unneeded, but in the best of cases it will only give diminishing returns, the further one moves away from the defaults.
We did very extensive profiling and benchmarking on a wide variety of scenes, some synthetic to create the worst possible scenarios for V-Ray to try and cope with.
The defaults are the synthesis of such an experimental approach.

[super gnu]

how was the cake material done in the demo vid? looks really cakey.

[lukx]

hard to download, servers have hard time to keep up I guess

[lightpixel]

oh come on...make a mirror for the latest downloads... server hangs!

[NicoC]

oh come on...make a mirror for the latest downloads... server hangs!

Yes ... seeing the bug fixes and improvements list, it seems a great XMas gift !! it would only be great to be able to download it

[rebelthink]

Problems downloading it, download progress is not stopped and it seems impossible to access with my username and password and it says my mail is not present, maybe there are any kind of problems with servers.....hope you can solve it soon.

Thanks

[vlado]

oh come on...make a mirror for the latest downloads...

We do have mirrors actually... but I'll ask the IT guys to check what's going on.

Best regards,
Vlado