V-Ray for Houdini, Update 4 - now available!

V-Ray for Houdini V-Ray for Houdini :: Announcements
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Hello everyone,

We have a new V-Ray for Houdini update available, bringing a large number of improvements across Solaris, USD/Hydra, Vantage, MaterialX, volumes, Gaussian splats, displacement/subdivision, and the V-Ray core.

This update includes new features, workflow improvements, performance optimizations, and many bug fixes based on production feedback from users and studios working with Solaris and USD.

Highlights

Parallax Texture

We added a new Parallax Texture VOP, along with support for importing Chaos Cosmos assets that use the new Parallax texture.

Quick Caustics on V-Ray Material

V-Ray Material now includes new Quick Caustics parameters for common scenarios such as pools and water features. This allows you to create believable caustic light patterns without the overhead of full photon-traced caustics.

Volumes

Several volume rendering improvements were added:

  • New Multiple Importance Sampling option for volumetrics in the global V-Ray Render Settings.

  • New Vol. Step Rate parameter for volumetrics under the Render Geometry Settings LOP.

  • New Volume Velocity Scale parameter for V-Ray Object Properties and Render Geometry Settings LOP.

  • Automatic Step Size control for V-Ray Environment Fog, which should help reduce render times.

  • A control for switching to the new volume integrator for Environment Fog. This should be used by default when mixing Environment Fog with the new Volume Shader for more cohesive results.

Gaussian Splats

Gaussian splats now support relighting, opening up more flexible workflows when working with splat-based assets inside V-Ray/Vantage workflows.

Crowds

Crowd rendering in Solaris has received performance and memory optimizations.

This should reduce system memory usage and improve time to first pixel when working with heavy crowd simulations.

Solaris

Several Solaris workflow improvements were added:

  • Support for motion blur from animated camera focal length.

  • Significantly improved memory usage for nested instancing.

  • New Night Sky controls in the V-Ray Atmosphere LOP.

  • Support for acceleration motion blur using the p@accel attribute.

  • Stereoscopic camera support.

  • Support for the husk --threads argument.

  • Pattern matching support for lights in the /stage context.

  • New multipliers for Velocity, Widths, and Scale under the Render Geometry Settings LOP.

USD / Hydra

This update includes a lot of work around USD and Hydra workflows:

  • V-Ray Render Settings are now exposed for usdView/Hydra.

  • Support for the latest Nuke version for the V-Ray and Vantage delegates.

  • Support for the latest Katana version for the V-Ray and Vantage delegates.

  • Support for usdView and usdRecord for both the V-Ray and Vantage delegates.

  • Support for USD 26.x.

  • Support for USD 25.11 with Python 3.10.

  • Support for USD 25.05 and Python 3.11 on Linux/RHEL8.

  • MeshLightAPI support in USD 25.x.

  • OpenPBR support for USD.

  • Viewport selection support for the Vantage delegate.

  • Support for dynamic parameter aliases in Hydra.

  • Light Linker support for USD 25.x.

Displacement and Subdivision

For Solaris, we added a new global Out of Frustum control.

There is also additional control for overriding tessellation of out-of-frustum geometry when using displacement or subdivision.

MaterialX

MaterialX support has been improved:

  • Native MaterialX support in Vantage.

  • Support for MaterialX 1.39 and newer.

  • Support for overriding parameters with primvars.

V-Ray Core and Workflow Updates

Several V-Ray-level improvements were added:

  • Increased the maximum number of V-Ray Light Selects to 256.

  • Scene Light Path Expressions are now converted to V-Ray Light Selects where possible for better performance.

  • Added daemon mode for Vantage, used for Live Link with V-Ray for Houdini.

  • Added Intel Open Image Denoiser support.

  • Added support for the V-Ray Cylinder Camera type in the Projection VOP texture.

  • Added an installer option for AI features.

  • Added a Chaos Account window in the V-Ray top menu bar.

Modified and Improved Features

This update also includes several workflow and performance improvements:

  • Changing the render resolution no longer affects bump mapping strength.

  • The Velocity Blur parameter from V-Ray Object Properties or Render Geometry Settings LOP now correctly affects volumetrics when using a vector vel field.

  • Improved VRMat memory usage when loading encapsulated shading graphs.

  • Improved time to first pixel when rendering subdivided/tessellated hair.

  • Updated Cosmos asset loading to better support farm rendering with Cosmos assets.

  • Improved OCIO texture performance.

  • V-Ray Frame Buffer Lens Effects can now affect the Background layer.

  • Added additional functionality to the V-Ray Frame Buffer Background layer.

  • Moved the Highlight Burn option from the Exposure layer to Filmic Tonemap - linear.

  • Improved mask functionality in the Exposure layer.

Bug Fixes

This release includes a large number of fixes across Solaris, USD, Hydra, MaterialX, Volumes, IPR, V-Ray GPU, Vantage delegate workflows, VFB, Cloud export, installation, instancing, motion blur, displacement, bump mapping, cryptomatte, light linking, SSS, Gaussian splats, and more.

Some of the important areas covered include:

  • Solaris material assignment, GeomSubsets, instancing, flickering, motion blur, DOF, viewport rendering, render settings, Cryptomatte, USD export, Light Filters, Atmosphere, Environment Fog, volume interaction, shader translation, and Houdini 21 compatibility.

  • MaterialX rendering, anisotropy, imported .mtlx files, and dependency handling.

  • Volume rendering performance, empty channels, deep output, vector fields, and new volume shader behavior.

  • IPR updates for lights, shaders, primvars, environment fog, Gaussian splats, material assignment, bitmaps, and Houdini 21 workflows.

  • USD standalone rendering, USDZ texture handling, unicode names, nested rayserver instancers, dirty primitive updates, half-float primvars, and Katana depth output.

  • V-Ray fixes around long output paths, installer behavior, VFB behavior on Linux, Gaussian splats, deep output, Cryptomatte stability, bump mapping, render elements, Alembic velocity blur, Yeti caches, triplanar seams, EXR texture loading, Cloud export, V-Ray Scene import/export, and several crash cases.

As always, please let us know if you run into any issues with the new builds, especially if you are testing Solaris, USD/Hydra, MaterialX, Vantage delegate, Gaussian splats, crowds, or volume-heavy workflows.

Thank you to everyone who shared scenes, feedback, and production cases with us. A lot of the work in this update comes directly from user and studio feedback.

Best,

Muhammed

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