Geometry

This page introduces features for creating and modifying geometry objects in V-Ray for 3ds Max.

Overview

This section covers the different ways V-Ray can create and modify geometry objects in a scene.

Primitives and Procedural Geometry

The following geometry objects can be created through V-Ray.

  • Infinite Plane - Creates an infinite plane at render time that will have no visible end.

  • Section Clipper - Creates a simple plane at render time that can be used to clip away parts of the scene without modifying the actual scene geometry itself.

  • Metaballs and Iso-Surfaces - Creates a raytraced iso-surface out of an existing particle system at render time and is not generated as actual geometry.

  • V-Ray Sphere - Creates a procedurally generated perfect sphere.

  • V-Ray Fur - Creates simple procedural fur at render time.

Modifiers

The following features are provided by V-Ray for modifying geometry objects.

  • Displacement Modifier - Allows higher detail to be added to a geometry object through displacement.

  • Hair and Fur - Enables V-Ray compatibility and additional control to hair and fur systems through modifiers.

  • Object and Light Properties - These additional controls in the Systems rollout allow the user to adjust render settings on a per-object basis.

Additional Features

The following geometry features are also provided by V-Ray.

  • Proxy Objects - Allows an external mesh to be imported at render time only. Since the proxy object's geometry isn't present in the scene, it will not take up resources and allows the rendering of meshes with triangle counts higher than 3ds Max itself can handle.

  • Particle Instancer - Creates instances of other objects over particles from a ParticleFlow system.

  • Volumetric Grid - Creates a volumetric effect that works with grid-based cache formats. It reads its data from an input file which supports grid-based volume representation.

Tools and Utilities

The following utilities and standalone geometry tools come packaged with V-Ray for 3ds Max.

  • Convert OBJ GEO PLY to V-Ray Proxy - A command-line tool that converts a variety of mesh files into .vrmesh format for V-Ray Proxy Objects.

  • V-Ray Mesh Viewer - Allows the user to preview static and animated V-Ray mesh (.vrmesh) and alembic files.

  • V-Ray Scene Exporter - Exports the geometry, lights, and shaders in a scene into a .vrscene file.

  • V-Ray Scene Converter - This tool converts all scene materials and raytraced shadows to versions optimized for V-Ray.