Thank you for your interest in Vantage, as well as V-Ray GPU. As Muhammed explained, V-Ray GPU is really the GPU version of V-Ray and aims to solve all the classic 3D production rendering challenges. In contrast, Vantage is all about being real-time while still 100% ray tracing, with many people finding that a perfect fit for pre-visualization and look-dev, with many people no longer working in 3ds Max without it. At the same time, others find Vantage’s real-time capture great for “play blasts” and its final (off-line) rendering sufficient for many projects. Regardless, if you need more quality or capabilities when using Vantage, V-Ray and V-Ray GPU are always there for you. Vantage is very much a companion tool to your V-Ray workflow.
In regards to your questions -
0. We are expanding our overall USD support in Chaos products as quickly as the host applications support USD themselves, with this currently being best from Houdini, then Maya, and lastly 3ds Max. We are considering having Vantage support USD directly as this overall support becomes more complete. Until then, the vrscene support from all the V-Ray products into Vantage accomplishes most of what a USD workflow would do as well (at least within Vantage). We are examining ways for Chaos products to interact with Omni, and you’ll probably see the first signs of that at GTC this month.
1. Vantage does work in headless mode today via command line, and can be automated in a network rendering manner by a queue manager, so the likes of Deadline, etc. could support it if they wish. As with V-Ray and Corona, we look to the makers of such managers to be adding support in their solutions, so don’t hesitate to request it of them.
2. We are looking at how best to support than 2 GPUs in the future with Vantage. We haven’t made this a priority due to everyone’s difficulty in purchasing GPUs for over a year.
3. We are also looking at how best to support memory pooling via NVLINK in the future as well. This priority got reduced when NVIDIA removed NVLINK from GeForce except at the top 3090 level.
Kind regards,
- Phil