New features:
(*) V-Ray: Add VRayRawDiffuseFilter, VRayRawReflectionFilter and VRayRawRefractionFilter render and bake elements;
(*) V-Ray: Enable the resuming of bucket renders from raw .vrimg files;
(*) V-Ray: Enable the resuming of progressive renders;
(*) V-Ray: Implementation of adaptive lights;
(*) V-Ray: Optimize GI rendering;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Enable usage as an interactive production renderer (IPR);
(*) V-Ray RT: Add support for adaptive lights;
(*) V-Ray RT: Enable “Set focus distance” in the VFB for the selected camera;
(*) V-Ray RT: Object picking in VFB;
(*) V-Ray RT: Support for direct output to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Add “Low GPU thread priority” option;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Add support for VRayAtmosphere render element;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Aerial Perspective support;
(*) V-Ray GPU: All supported procedural textures to work for bump maps, when used through VRayColor2Bump texture;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Better handling of geometry and materials updates during ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Distortion support for physical camera;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed differences in lighting between V-Ray RT CPU and GPU;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Fixed differences in texture blending between V-Ray RT CPU and GPU;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Implement ground projection of VRayHDRI;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Implement support for Forest Color texture;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Implement support for Render mask;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Initial implementation for on-demand mip-map texture in production rendering mode;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Less CPU memory usage when rendering scenes with many textures;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Less GPU memory usage when rendering scenes with many textures;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for “Mapped”, “Linear” and “4 corners” Gradient types in Gradient Ramp texture;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for Irradiance Map from file;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for VRayRenderID, VRayObjectID and VRayMtlID render elements;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for adaptive lights in CUDA (both in production and in ActiveShade);
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for additive mode of the VRayBlendMtl;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for matte materials shadow catcher;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for the VRayStochasticFlakesMtl material;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for the planar VRayClipper;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for transparency for the layers of the VRayBlendMtl;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for velocity render element;
(*) VFB: Implement hardware acceleration support for lens effects;
(*) VFB: Lens effects can be enabled and adjusted during rendering;
(*) VFB: Lens effects work on the denoised result if a denoiser render element is present;
(*) VRayALSurfaceMtl: Include alSurface shader port for V-Ray in the installation;
(*) VRayMDLMtl: Initial support for VRayMDLMtl in V-Ray RT;
(*) VRayMDLMtl: Integrate support for NVIDIA MDL;
(*) VRayMtl: Implement “Glossy Fresnel” option;
(*) VRayProxy: Support for user property tags in the proxy file name;
(*) VRayScannedMtl: Add ability to capture and render the back lighting;
(*) VRayScene: Implement scene node that supports rendering geometry and materials from a .vrscene file and settings override with another file;
(*) VRayToon: Ability to store the toon outlines in a separate render element;
(*) VRayVRmatMtl: Does not update on filename change in V-Ray RT;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Add a render preset for Maya Fluids vdb;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Support for Cap Mesh mode in V-Ray RT;
(*) V-Ray Toolbar: Add button to make selected objects shadow catchers;
Modified features:
(*) V-Ray: 3ds Max render effects should be applied when the “Stop” button is pressed in the render progress;
(*) V-Ray: Adaptive lights sampling improvement when the total lights are less than the Adaptive lights count;
(*) V-Ray: Bucket resuming writes its own .vrimg output if other output format is set;
(*) V-Ray: Enable adaptive lights by default;
(*) V-Ray: Faster 2d displacement on machines with many cores;
(*) V-Ray: Faster rendering of proxies on many-core machines;
(*) V-Ray: Improve the HDR images loading speed;
(*) V-Ray: Make “1” a possible value for Geometry samples in Render Setup;
(*) V-Ray: Remove limitation on parameters count for OSL and GLSL shaders;
(*) V-Ray: Restore the 3ds Max project folder after DR render;
(*) V-Ray: Rework post-effects pipeline to avoid Lens effects overriding the denoised image in particular;
(*) V-Ray: Right-click on parameters’ spinners should reset them to the default values instead of zero for most of V-Ray plugins;
(*) V-Ray: The light grid for adaptive lights does not take specular light contributions into account;
(*) V-Ray: Move the VRayDenoiser “progressive update frequency” in the System rollout;
(*) V-Ray/V-Ray RT: The progressive sampler should finish the current pass when the given “Render time” is surpassed;
(*) V-Ray: Add control for panoramic pole merging for stereoscopic rendering (V-Ray RT MAXScript properties .top_merge_angle .bottom_merge_angle);
(*) V-Ray/V-Ray RT: Draw the alpha channel during the undersampling phase of the progressive sampling;
(*) V-Ray: Dome light minor speed optimization;
(*) V-Ray: Display warning when “View navigation” in ActiveShade is selected without looking through camera;
(*) V-Ray: Increase the tooltip display times in the render settings;
(*) V-Ray: Remove the interpolated reflections/refractions options;
(*) V-Ray: Set the default value for the dynamic noise threshold for the progressive sampler to 80;
(*) V-Ray: Use adequate precision for render elements (full/half precision) in OpenEXR files;
(*) V-Ray: When using a dome light, matte objects have visible outlines unless GI environment is overridden with zero;
(*) V-Ray: Bundle License Server with the installation instead of the vrlservice.exe;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Add MAXScript callback when IPR completes rendering;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Production IPR should fill the VFB and react to changes in the VFB size and changes to render resolution;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Production IPR should react to changes in the render region in the VFB;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Track changes to node properties both V-Ray and user during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Track changes to the environment overrides in the render settings during IPR;
(*) V-Ray RT: ActiveShade should render with the current VFB resolution and should track changes to the VFB size;
(*) V-Ray RT: Add “Select object” and “Get object material” right-click options in the VFB;
(*) V-Ray RT: Add UI mode views switcher for V-Ray RT between Default and Advanced views;
(*) V-Ray RT: Allow irradiance map and light cache from saved file in ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray RT: Apply resolution changes without restarting the rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: Change mouse cursors for some of the right click modes during ActiveShade;
(*) V-Ray RT: Implement export of VRayToon;
(*) V-Ray RT: Implement the glossy Fresnel options;
(*) V-Ray RT: Improve random by render ID values generation for V-Ray RT and matched with VRayMultiSubTex;
(*) V-Ray RT: Make V-Ray RT to take the render state of the Laubwerk trees options, not the viewport;
(*) V-Ray RT: The “real zoom” feature is broken since beta 2;
(*) V-Ray RT: The IPR button in the VFB should work when V-Ray RT is the production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT: VFB output file paths are not exported in .vrscene file;
(*) V-Ray RT: View navigation in ActiveShade VFB is too fast;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Ability to load precalculated Irradiance map GI cache files;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Add a warning when users have Adaptive Lights and Shadows RE enabled;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Changes on materials with baked texture to be updated quicker;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Faster rendering of materials with bump maps;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Faster rendering of rounded edges texture;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Faster rendering with Bitmap output curves;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Print the OpenCL Driver version in the log;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Print the message about not having OCL devices env var as a info, not warning;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Print warning when max sample level is set to 0;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Print warning when there is a render element that’s not supported on the GPU;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Raise the number of rays per pixel when the number of active pixels is too low;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Solid reflective material getting alpha dropouts;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support VRayUserColor to be used for mapping channels;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for UVW coordinates type in VRaySamplerInfo render element;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support for the directionality attribute of the VRayLight in Plane mode;
(*) V-Ray GPU: Support the noise parameters for Gradient Ramp texture;
(*) VFB: Add a render stamp variable “noiseThreshold” for the reached noise threshold of the progressive sampler;
(*) VFB: Add command for VFB display control (vfbControl #show);
(*) VFB: Add toolbar button for copying the current channel to clipboard;
(*) VFB: Change the default values of the Lens Effects;
(*) VFB: Contrast curve should be applied in sRGB color space;
(*) VFB: Improve history images saving speed;
(*) VFB: Increase default VFB history maximum files count to 100 and the size on disk in MB to 10000;
(*) VFB: MAXScript commands to show/hide history and color corrections panels of the VFB;
(*) VFB: Move the history image compare buttons from the main toolbar to history toolbar;
Modified features (continued):
(*) VFB: Move the history image compare buttons from the main toolbar to history toolbar;
(*) VFB: RGB button switches between RGB color and effectsResult channels;
(*) VFB: Show HSV values in the VFB pixel information window;
(*) VFB: Show a progress bar in the VFB during IPR session;
(*) VFB: The button for showing the messages log should bring the messages window to the front;
(*) VFB: White balance should be applied before exposure;
(*) VRayALSurfaceMtl: Support for “Raytraced SSS ID” V-Ray object property;
(*) VRayClipper: Optimize plane clipper with empty exclude lists;
(*) VRayDenoiser: A warning should be printed when the VFB is disabled;
(*) VRayDenoiser: Check the sampler settings before starting a render and warn if incompatible;
(*) VRayHDRI: Add a MAXScript parameter for axial rotation;
(*) VRayMDLMtl: Add displacement support to MDL;
(*) VRayMDLMtl: Display texture parameters in MDL materials as file buttons;
(*) VRayMtl: Disabled by default the GI checkbox for self-illumination;
(*) VRayMtl: Make the GGX BRDF the default one and turn on glossy Fresnel by default;
(*) VRayMtl: Move the “reflect on back side” option in the reflection section of the Basic rollout;
(*) VRayMtl: The anisotropy controls should be disabled when the BRDF is set to Phong;
(*) VRayMtlReflectIORBake: Replace the “Store in fixed point format (rg.ba)” option with an “Invert value” one;
(*) VRayOSLMtl/VRayOSLTex: Enable support for multiple include paths in OSL;
(*) VRayOSLMtl/VRayOSLTex: Speed up the texture sampling in OSL;
(*) VRayProxy: Add rendering support for Mudbox exported .vrmeshes with Level-of-Detail;
(*) VRayProxy: Allow for the viewport preview to be overridden by another .vrmesh or Alembic file;
(*) VRayProxy: Interpolate geometry data for heterogeneous Alembic files with velocity channel;
(*) VRayProxy: Optimized the preview read and update for animated proxies;
(*) VRayScannedMtl: Add ability to render licensed materials (library licenses);
(*) VRayScannedMtl: Add support for Nitrous viewport preview;
(*) VRayScene: Override material with 3ds max native materials;
(*) VRayStereoscopic: Add new fragment merge mode, where fragments are merged by render ID and z-depth;
(*) VRayToon: Add an option to exclude an object in the V-Ray object properties;
(*) VRayTriplanarTex: The “blend” and “scale” parameters should be animatable;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: High-DPI support for the render curves and gradients;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Improve the motion blur for atmospherics;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Improve the velocity voxel preview;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Optimize rendering with emissive lights, Ray-Traced self-illumination and complex geometry;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Option to disable the “Optimizing Volumetrics” rendering pre-pass;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Respect the maxRenderThreads setting in V-Ray during rendering;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: Support V-Ray’s per-object motion blur duration override;
(*) VRayVolumeGrid: When several points on diagram are selected, right click on one of them should affect all points;
(*) V-Ray Bitmap to VRayHDRI converter: Bitmaps in objects/modifiers/environment should be handled;
(*) vdenoise.exe: Add abort on OpenCL errors;
(*) vdenoise.exe: The noise level channel can also be named “VRayNoiseLevel”;
(*) V-Ray Toolbar: Creating VRayFur from the toolbar button should select the newly created fur object;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Added an option to convert only selected objects;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Blend material to VRayBlendMtl conversion support for sub materials and textures;
(*) V-Ray scene converter: Convert Corona’s native materials, textures and lights to V-Ray ones;
(*) .vrscene exporter: Renderer settings of V-Ray RT as production renderer are not exported;
Bug fixes:
(*) V-Ray: Crash on loading scene after rendering with time stamp;
(*) DR: “Failed to delete server scene file” DR warning appears but the file has been deleted successfully;
(*) V-Ray: “Tiled texture cache set” message is flooding the log when using Slate Material editor;
(*) V-Ray: Adaptive lights don’t work with fly-through light cache;
(*) V-Ray: Artifacts with adaptive lights and VRayFastSSS2 material;
(*) V-Ray: Concatenated node user attributes on VRayProxy objects;
(*) V-Ray: Crash when modifying matte object material in IPR;
(*) V-Ray: Deep merge strategy set as “None” renders incorrectly with non-fully opaque objects;
(*) V-Ray: Different bump with bitmaps since 3.50.01;
(*) V-Ray: effectsResult channel is not saved with vrimg file from render setup;
(*) V-Ray: Environment map ghosting through objects when matte/shadow objects are in the scene;
(*) V-Ray: If there is no license available V-Ray crashes when rendering;
(*) V-Ray: Issue with finalToon and orthographic cameras;
(*) V-Ray: Noisy pixels not cleaned up by the progressive sampler;
(*) V-Ray: OSL preprocessor-only output is polluted with diagnostic messages;
(*) V-Ray: Random crashes after progressive rendering is finished;
(*) V-Ray: Remove the “(notUsed)” from the imageSampler_renderMask MAXScript properties;
(*) V-Ray: Render hangs when resuming with DR and distributed light cache;
(*) V-Ray: Rendering hangs at transforming vertices when there is a VRayVolumeGrid and many VRayLightMtl materials with “direct illumination” enabled;
(*) V-Ray: Resumable rendering with bucket sampling and post effects stops with an error after the first completed frame;
(*) V-Ray: Scene renders brighter when there is glass at the windows;
(*) V-Ray: Unwanted GI caustics with refractive materials with “affect shadows” enabled;
(*) V-Ray: Wrong viewport drawing of objects after rendering in 3ds Max 2017;
(*) V-Ray IPR: “Render mult” parameter of VRayHDRI is not working in IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Adding lights during IPR session produces wrong results when adaptive lights are enabled;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Changing properties of the VRayPhysicalCamera are not updated in IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash after using the V-Ray light lister during production IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash when accessing the Material Editor during an ActiveShade session with “Clear cache on render end” is enabled;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash when adjusting curves in VRayHDRI during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash when cloning a specific object during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash when creating VRayLight without dragging for setting the size during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash when creating instances in a particular scene during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash with IPR with VRayFastSSS2’s object-based prepass;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Crash with XRef materials during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Hiding and unhiding of nodes is not reflected in production IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: IPR crashes while painting with the VRayFurStyler;
(*) V-Ray IPR: IPR crashes with Hair and Fur on render stop;
(*) V-Ray IPR: IPR crashes with VRayExtraTex render element;
(*) V-Ray IPR: IPR crashes with VRayExtraTex render element;
(*) V-Ray IPR: IPR render from camera which has Skew modifier applied doesn’t match production render;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Locked camera view is not respected in IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Making an object a shadow catcher from the V-Ray toolbar is not updated in IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Modifying VRayLight created in IPR as a Copy crashes 3ds Max;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Occasional crash with IPR related to texture shortcut buttons;
(*) V-Ray IPR: Unhandled exception with instanced objects during IPR;
(*) V-Ray IPR: VRayLightMtl intensity is not properly updating in IPR;
(*) V-Ray RT: “Static geometry” of VRayDisplacementMod is not exported;
(*) V-Ray RT: Composite texture with Output map on reflect and diffuse gives a different than production render result;
(*) V-Ray RT: Crash during ActiveShade with a scene with instanced VRayProxy;
(*) V-Ray RT: Crash when there are materials with very long names and special characters;
(*) V-Ray RT: Crash with Particle Flow and motion blur when sliding the time during ActiveShade session;
(*) V-Ray RT: Crash with time slider and motion blurred meshes;
(*) V-Ray RT: Effect ID of VRayMtl is not exported;
(*) V-Ray RT: Error when rendering RT DR with Max Frame buffer and Render Mask;
(*) V-Ray RT: Excessive progressive sampling AA filter memory consumption with ActiveShade rendering and render region;
(*) V-Ray RT: Exclude lists of VRayDirt don’t work with HairFarm;
(*) V-Ray RT: Exporter doesn’t resolve light cache file paths;
(*) V-Ray RT: Exporter is missing some of the VRayMtl and VRayFastSSS2Mtl features;
(*) V-Ray RT: Incorrect adaptive lights with production (non-ActiveShade) renders;
(*) V-Ray RT: Invalid geometric normal warnings with VRayLight and stereo cube camera;
(*) V-Ray RT: Isolating geometry in a scene with duplicating nodes names and handles produces WndProc error with out of process rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: Light cache from map is not used in out of process rendering;
(*) V-Ray RT: Matte for refl/refr of VRayMtlWrapper has no effect;
(*) V-Ray RT: Mismatched Vertical Tilt correction compared to production renderer;
(*) V-Ray RT: Motion blur samples are not applied to animated VRayPhysicalCameras unless they are set locally;
(*) V-Ray RT: Noisy results with progressive sampler when Sub-pixel mapping is enabled;
(*) V-Ray RT: Not all supported image filters are exported;
(*) V-Ray RT: Not exported opacity texture correctly if names are the same with other textures;
(*) V-Ray RT: Not located alembic proxies with local paths;
(*) V-Ray RT: Not updating the IFL sequences properly during time slider change;
(*) V-Ray RT: Not updating the IFL sequences properly during time slider change;
(*) V-Ray RT: Skew modifier on Standard cameras is ignored;
(*) V-Ray RT: Some scenes with multiple MDL materials fail to export;
(*) V-Ray RT: There is no motion blur on VRayFur when applied to a geometry with a modifier;
…
for the complete list, please consult the changelog.
I can see the hesitation if you have to pay for a new version, but there is a pretty big difference between 2012 and new versions.
If you go up to 2014 there is a big speed difference, while 2016 has some substantial new features.
Thank you for your hard work and the constant innovation ChaosGroup !
I have one question. I thought I read somewhere on the forum that 3.5 would bring new previews for the materials.
The scene used for the previews would have been updated.
I didn’t see it in the changelog or maybe did I miss it.
Ok I think that’s enough feature for a service pack already :).
If I may, it would be cool that if I use a render region and activate IPR that the render could stay at normal resolution.
When I use IPR I like to edit the materials parameters. So I need the full resolution to see what changed at pixel level.
I don t know if that would be possible.
Is there any way to directly launch IPR without having to call the VFB and press the button? Or a maxscript function so i can do a little button to start it from the viewport.
Great release too, loving the GPU features!
Yeah I’m looking at 2014. After that version I can’t stand what they’ve done to the layer manager. I’d need to start using an alt script/plugin for layers going forward
‘substantial new features’? It’s more like they’ve broken it more. Vray has been the one aspect of my work that I actually want to continually upgrade because the features and fixes have addressed my problems.
