V-Ray

• Further optimizations for render speed

• Added "GI filter multiplier" option to the Global switches rollout to control texture filtering for GI rays for VRayHDRI

• Embree can now accelerate hair rendering for Ornatrix and HairFarm

• Secondary matte environment background slot to control the appearance of matte objects in reflections/refractions

• When created, V-Ray will automatically load a preset named "default" if there is one (allows for customized default values)

V-Ray RT

• Added support for the Mask texture map

• Support for Carbon Scatter

• Support for the V-Ray VFB for ActiveShade session

V-Ray RT CPU

• Support for the VRayClipper object

• Support for Ornatrix and HairFarm rendering

V-Ray RT GPU

• Support for using the light cache for GPU rendering

• Support for coherent tracing (may improve rendering performance)

V-Ray RT GPU CUDA

• Support for the NVIDIA Maxwell GPU architecture

• Support for the VRayFastSSS2 material

• Initial support for hair rendering for Ornatrix and HairFarm

• On-the-fly recompilation of the GPU kernel to include only features used by the particular scene

VFB

• Ability to dock/undock History window and Color Corrections window to the main VFB window

• Added highlight burn color correction to the VFB

• Added "background image" color correction to the VFB

• Added white balance color correction

• Added the ability to save multi-channel .vrimg and OpenEXR files from the VFB UI

• Added the ability to load arbitrary file formats in the V-Ray VFB for post-processing

VRayInstancer

• Implement a new geometric plugin for instancing objects on a ParticleFlow and other particle systems

VRayHDRI

• Added image preview in the file open dialog

• Added controls to specify UDIM/UVTILE tiles for the preview in material editor

• Added support for elliptical texture filtering

VRayScatterVolumeMtl

• Greatly improved calculations

• Ability to use the light cache

VRayScannedMtl

• Support rendering of scanned real-world BRDF materials

VRayProxy

• Support for hair and particle instances

• Support for subdivision objects in Alembic files using OpenSubdiv

VRayLight

• Disc light shape added

VRayLight, VRayIES, VRaySun

• Added parameters to control the diffuse and specular contributions separately

VRayLightSelect Render Element

• Added "mode" parameter to allow extracting the full/raw/diffuse/specular contribution of specific lights

VRayMtl

• Added GGX BRDF model

• Added clip opacity mode option for faster rendering of trees, etc.

VRayMultiSubTex

• Extended with new randomized modes for choosing colors

VRayVelocity Render Element

• Added include/exclude list

ply2vrmesh

• Added export options to export specified frames to separate files

• Added Alembic frame offset output to the files

• Added option to merge two or more .vrmesh files into one

vrimg2exr

• Added -multiPart option to vrimg2exr that produces an OpenEXR 2 file with each render element in its own "part"

Embree

• Update to Embree 2.3

• Proxies and instances can now be accelerated by Embree

miscellaneous features

• Updated to OpenEXR 2.2.0 and added new DWA compression options to VRayOptionsRe

• Support for point cloud rendering in 3ds Max 2015

• Built-in DMC samples calculator for VRayLight, VRayMtl and brute force GI

Modified Features

V-Ray

• Added an option to open the V-Ray messages window on error or warning only

• Added by Object IDs selection method for Render mask

• Added MaxScript access to the Trace sets include/exclude flag

• Added %numPasses and %numSubdivs stamp keywords

• "Camera Motion Blur" is controlled independently on "Motion Blur" setting

• Embree enabled by default

• Improved render speed when not using any render elements

• Light cache "Use for glossy rays" option is enabled by default

• Optimized hair rendering in general

• Reduced memory usage for hair and particles

• Renamed the "Time independent" option to "Lock noise pattern" in the DMC sampler rollout

• The default GI methods are set to Brute force/Light cache

• The default image sampler set to Progressive

• The image sampler parameters rollout is unfolded by default

• VFB is cleared always when doing network rendering with render mask

V-Ray RT

• Added support for animated rotation of VRayHDRI

• Added support for the 3ds Max default lights in production mode

• Added support for VRayHairInfoTex

• Added support for VRayLensEffects object selection (Intensity, Object ID and Material ID)

• Adjust the width of the ActiveShade renderer UI to match the standard width of the production renderer

• Clear the VFB when the camera is moved

• Frameless progressive and RT rendering, which provides for earlier preview passes

• Implemented export of the Area AA filter settings to .vrscene files

• Improved refresh speed

• Properly show statistics with region renders

• Removed the Show Mask option from the user interface, the mask is written in VRaySampleRate render element for the progressive sampler

• Remove ActiveShade related settings from the UI when used as production renderer

• When V-Ray RT is used as a production renderer, hide unused render settings

V-Ray RT GPU

• Added support for Crop/Place parameters of the Bitmap texture

• Added support for the Flip Red/Green options of the standard Normal Bump texmap

• Added support for the Visibility parameter in the 3ds Max Object properties

• CUDA driver API errors are replaced with more meaningful error messages

VFB

• Improved anaglyph stereoscopic preview to reduce retinal rivalry

• Improved initialization speed of the History window when there are a lot of images in the history

• The vfbControl MaxScript function returns values for the commands that have states

• Made the History window compliant with the 3ds Max color theme

VRay2SidedMtl

• Added ability to filter the translucency effect through the diffuse color of the front-facing side

VRayClipper

• More robust and faster algorithm is used

VRayDirt

• Added "double sided" option

• The distribution parameter can now take negative values for more defined edges

VRayFastSSS2

• Added opacity texture slot

VRayHairFarmMod & VRayOrnatrixMod

• Faster rendering of hair

VRayHDRI

• Added MaxScript access to "coords" parameters

VRayLight

• Added the ability to display the light name in the viewport

• Somewhat faster sampling of rectangle lights

VRayMtl

• Multiple layers of glass rendered with noise

VRayOSLMtl / VRayOSLTex

• Improved shader cache logic, now the compiled shaders reside entirely in a memory buffer

• Removed dependency of shader name on the shader file name

VRayProxy

• Export texture coordinates for .vrmesh preview, if preview mesh is specified

• Same proxies are automatically instantiated

• Show proxy color set names in Vertex Color texture "Channel Name" list

• Show the extra color channels from Alembic files in the "Channel Name" drop-down of Vertex Color maps applied to the proxy object

• Support for Material ID channel when rendering with point clouds

VRayShadow

• Made the U, V, W Area shadow sizes animatable in the VRayShadows params rollout

.vrscene exporter

• Added combo box to select between Scene Animation/Frame range, the latter remembers the start/end values

V-Ray

• DR hosts saved in scene were appended to the hosts list and used for consequent renderers

• Fixed Embree crash on AMD machines

• Fixed Embree crashes with specific scenes

• Fixed incorrect rendering of 3ds Max Populate with motion blur with Embree

• Fixed a crash when rendering a scene with ParticleFlow that is not generating geometry

• Fixed a crash with VRayFur density map when rendering with V-Ray RT or Standalone

• Fixed imageSampler_renderMask_texmap MaxScript property name

• Fixed issue where VRayMtl's "Affect all channels" affects matte surfaces visible through refractive objects

• Fixed light leaks when rendering bump mapping on surfaces that face away from the light

• Fixed Render mask with Light Cache as secondary GI engine, causes darker final result

• Fixed rendering wrong object when render selection mask is used with object that has Renderable property disabled

• Fixed tiled EXR clipping to half-float precision

• Fixed wrong error message "error: Auto-backup is enabled at file..." appearing when license is not found

• Fixed wrong Irradiance Map buckets appearing from the DR render hosts

• MaxScript V-Ray ".imageSampler_normal_threshold" parameter's name was ".imageSamper_normal_threshold"

• Removed artifacts caused by overlapping geometry with disable Visible To Camera option for hairs

• Strand index was not returned to shaders (e.g. Ox Hair)

V-Ray RT

• Adaptive image sampling based on the Noise threshold did not work correctly

• Added support for the color mode parameter

• Camera movement was not updated if motion blur Duration was smaller than 1.0

• Fixed no motion blur when the rendered frame is the last of the range and the keyframe is beyond the range

• Fixed progress window update

• Fixed rendering of scenes containing objects with many primitives and many texture mapping channels at the same time

• Fixed updating of GI depth parameter

• Fixed wrong camera field of view with network rendering

• Hair is rendered with preview counts even when using V-Ray RT as production renderer

• Rendering was not finished when Don't render (just export) option was enabled

• The "Scatter coeff" and "Fwd/bck coeff" parameters of VRayMtl are swapped

• The "Min shading rate" parameter was not exported to .vrscene files

• VRayFur was exported with wrong coordinates instead of the Source object's

• VRayHairMtl was not listed with compatible materials in the material editor

• VRaySun was replaced by another object, when linked to it

• When "dynamic tesselation" was turned on, the hairs UVs were lost

• When V-Ray RT was used as a production renderer, output images were saved without alpha channel

V-Ray RT GPU

• CUDA engine could not render VRayFlakesMtl unless VRayCarPaintMtl is was present in the scene

• Did not fully utilize the GPU after certain noise level was reached

• Direct light render elements were rendering black if GI depth was 0

• Falloff texture was rendering wrong (greenish)

• Fixed crash with V-Ray RT GPU on scenes with more than 100 lights

• Fixed crash with Normal map assigned to Mix map that is assigned to Bump map slot

• Fixed crash with VRayOSLMtl

• Fixed handling of environment override maps intensity multipliers

• Fixed inverted bump effect when using bitmap in VRayNormalMap

• Fixed memory leak

• Fixed Fresnel texmap shading

• Fixed render server crash when changing materials of VRayProxy

• Fixed some render elements cause others data shift in the wrong channel

• Global illumination BF/LC setup was rendering differently than on the CPU

• Multi/Sub-Object material was not wrapping the IDs for static meshes

• VRayMtls bump multiplier was not working with VRayNormalMap

Progressive sampler

• Adaptive image sampling based on the Noise threshold did not work correctly

• Progressive sampler: Fixed crash with region rendering and sample rate render element

• Progressive sampler: Switch to sRGB color mapping for AA, leading to faster sampling

DR

• X-Ref scenes were not transferred with DR option "Transfer missing assets"

VFB

• Edit boxes accept values without pressing enter

• Fixed crash with Lens effects and active link to PDPlayer when an update occurs

• Fixed lag when clicking between the VFB and other 3ds Max windows

V-Ray mesh exporter

• Fixed crash when exporting point clouds with "lowest level point size" < 1.0

• Particle systems were not exported with the "Export all selected objects in a single file" option

V-Ray Toolbar

• Button were not working after 3ds Max Custom UI Layout load/reset

V-Ray Bitmap to V-RayHDRI converter

• Fixed error when converting bitmaps to tiled EXR

V-Ray Light Lister

• Fixed an issue with light temperature, not handling very low values

VRayBPTracer

• Fixed calculation errors causing NAN results

• Fixed crash with particular scenes

VRayClipper

• The clipper showed up with ambient occlusion

• The clipper affected objects from its exclude list even when it is hidden

• There is ambiguous situation with instancing, rendering the last copy only

VRayColor

• Color swatch and gamma were not displayed as Additional Params in the slate Material Editor

VRayFastSSS2

• Fixed crash when rendering the object has Dent texmap for displacement

VRayFur

• Fixed fur placement on "Selected faces" for 3ds Max 2014/2015

VRayHDRI

• EXR textures are always loaded as 32-bit floating point

• Fixed crash with IFL input when saving in a material library

• Fixed Crop/Place not working

• Fixed overbright pixels occurring with specific texture values

• The texture cache size for tiled textures in VRayHDRI did not work correctly for values over 2 GB

VRayLight

• Fixed incorrect rendering of Dome lights with scaling, they should not take it into account

VRayMtl

• Fixed Self-illumination multiplier value not taken into account

VRayOSLTex

• Fixed crash when used as environment texture

VRayPhysicalCamera

• Tilt/Shift parameters were not reflected in the viewport when loading a scene

VRayProxy

• Cannot select in the viewport if there is a recorded preview mesh that falls outside the render-mesh bounding box

• Fixed crash when opening a scene containing a proxy created from an empty group

• Fixed incorrect UVW coordinates with point clouds

• The Alembic subdivision parameters were the same for all proxies

VRaySkinMtl

• Fixed textured scatter radiuses not taken into account

img2tiledEXR

• Alpha channel was created even if there was not such in the input image

• Fixed wrong pixel aspect in the output image

miscellaneous fixes

• Crashes with building the SD tree in specific scene

• Render mask was not exported to .vrscene files

• Fixed incorrect depth with camera motion blur for deep image output

• Fixed 3ds Max crashes when pressing the "Last VFB" button with V-Ray RT set as Production renderer

• Fixed a crash with "Render to fields" enabled on 3ds Max 2012

• Fixed unhandled exception error when rendering geometry imported from Revit

• Fixed render crash with ProBoolean scene geometry

• Fixed slow SD tree build on many-core machines