V-Ray

• Update the SDK to make greater use of SSE instructions for 3D vector, color and matrix operations

• Update Embree to version 2.13

• Add options for auto-exposure and auto white balance in the Camera section of the render settings

• Add tooltip translation support for various languages

• Add scripts for the 3ds Max Scene Converter (2017 and newer) for various scene elements to V-Ray ones

• Add drag-n-drop support for V-Ray asset files onto the 3ds Max window (.vrmesh, .abc, .vrscene, .ies, .aur, .f3d, .vdb, .vrlmap, .vrmap)

• Require CPU with SSE 4.2 to support SIMD optimizations

• Show render progress on the Windows taskbar buttons

V-Ray GPU

• Add support for glossy Fresnel

• Improved GPU 3D displacement

• Initial version of GPU dedicated UI (to be further simplified in next versions)

• Initial support for VRayEnvironmentFog (without textures)

• Initial support of VRayVolumeGrid (brute force probabilistic volume sampling only)

• Initial support for VRscans (VRayScannedMtl)

• Support for Bercon Noise texture

• Support for DoF with pinhole camera

VRayLight

• New adaptive dome light option to help speed up rendering of interior scenes and IBL in general (work in progress)

VRayHairMtl2

• Implement initial version of a new hair shader with melanin color control

VRayDenoiser

• Ability to denoise multiple render elements in a single pass (also added denoising on/off in various other REs)

VRayMDL

• Ability to manage include paths through MAXScript

• Support for UTF-8 resource file paths

VRayMtl

• Add a texmap slot for the GGX GTR tail falloff

VRayOSL/VRayMDL

• Allow adding shader include paths from UI

VRayPluginNode

• Initial implementation of VRayPluginNode material and texture

VRayProxy

• Modifiers applied to VRayProxy objects are rendered correctly (the proxy is converted to a regular mesh)

VRayRenderTime

• Per-pixel render time information render element (bucket sampler only)

VRayScannedMtl

• Add triplanar mapping option

VRaySwitchMtl

• Add switch material for selecting sub-materials based on a texmap value

VRayVolumeGrid

• Integrate new velocity-based grid interpolation method

vdenoise.exe

• Implement GUI for use without command-line parameters

vrstconvert.exe

• Add the deep reader and converter for .vrst files to V-Ray for 3ds max and Nuke installations

V-Ray

• Simplify code at key points by removing stale parts and avoid wasting time on branches

• Better render time estimation for progressive sampling

• Optimize the use of DR servers (early free servers at the end of a render so that they can join other jobs)

• Reduce the number of samples in the light cache

• Optimize intersection calculations with SIMD where possible

• Faster calculation of surface normals for 3D displacement

• Allow licenses with the server to be accessed through a network proxy

• Remove the "Show GI Only" option from the render settings as it's obsoleted by the VRayGlobalIllumination render element

• Print a warning if a node has different shadow and GI visibility flags as this causes artifacts with the adaptive dome light

V-Ray GPU

• Support for material IDs higher than 255 in the 3ds Max Multi/Sub-object material

• Faster VRayDirt & rounded corners in some cases

• Support for VRayDirt "Consider same object only"

• Better sampling of rectangle and mesh lights in some cases

• Better sampling of glossy materials

• Optimize GPU displacement/subdivision compile times

• Improve normal mapping in procedural maps

• Broadcast 3ds Max rendering notifications during production rendering

• Export Ornatrix and HairFarm instances emitted by VRayInstancer

.vrscene export

• Add export times for various scene objects (i.e. Nodes/Nodes' meshes/Materials/Texmaps)

• Export for VRayNoiseLevel render element

• Export the Cryptomatte render elements

• When exporting animations to vrscene and motion blur is OFF, export at exact frame times

VFB

• Ability to load as background OpenEXR images with data window

• Auto-fit for A/B images with different resolutions

• Save 3ds Max scene path to history and add option to load the scene from the VFB history right-click context menu

• Support for gamma 2.2 color correction in the VFB history

VRayHDRI

• Optimize memory usage for opaque and monochrome bitmaps (work in progress)

VRayMtl

• Faster rendering of glass materials with diffuse components

• Add "Compensate camera exposure" for Self-illumination

• Remove the highlight glossiness parameter and the lock button

VRayPhysicalCamera

• Reintroduce the V-Ray physical camera and update its UI

VRayDistanceTex

• Optimize both viewport preview and rendering speeds

VRayInstancer

• Ability to instance Ornatrix and HairFarm objects

VRayFur

• Add dynamic tessellation option

VRayGLSL/VRayOSL

• Change range of GLSL/OSL anisotropy rotation parameter of GGX BRDF

VRayIES

• Add option to specify the actual light power of the source, instead of using the prescribed power from the IES profile

VRayLight

• Change the Half-Length/Half-Width options to Length/Width for Plane light

VRayMultiSubTex

• Add a random seed parameter

• Add option for the VRayMultiSubTex texture to cycle through the textures

VRayMDL

• Add support for "boolean" widgets

• Make widget types case-insensitive

• vMaterials autodetection

• Improve anisotropy precision

VRayScene

• Possibility to use shader names with MtlMulti/GeomStaticMesh

VRayVolumeGrid

• Ability to horizontally or vertically stretch and flip the selection in curve controls

• Implement stronger Approximate Scattering for brighter regions and lower scattering for the darker regions of the same volume

• Improve temperature interpolation using the Precise Tracing method

• Flickering when rendering Smoke Color based on a gradient with varying data range with Approximate Scattering

• Option to control the minimum visible voxel opacity for the volumetric shader

• Option to disable preview cache load during simulation or when not rendering

• Rename Cache Start to Cache Origin and Play Start to Timeline Origin

• Render negative Fire from caches imported from FumeFX

V-Ray scene converter

• Add conversion from Autodesk Bitmap to VRayHDRI

V-Ray .vrmat converter

• Add partial support for VRayLightMtl

ply2vrmesh.exe

• Skip @subdivGeometry and @displaced in vrscene files with and directly convert the linked static mesh

vdenoise.exe

• Ability to denoise multiple render elements in a single pass

Bug Fixes

V-Ray

• 3ds max Physical camera is not moving when MB samples are set to 2

• Caustics on motion-blurred objects may be blurred incorrectly

• Continuous reactivation of pixels at the end of the rendering with progressive sampling

• Crash after exporting .vrmesh with a frozen geometry for preview mesh

• Crash with matte objects, render elements and affect all channels for reflection

• Improve Light cache saving on network locations

• DR render client ignores server anouncement broadcast when host is added as 127.0.0.1

• Embree generates artifacts in specific scenes

• Random Hair&Fur strands render with the diffuse color instead of the plugged gradient or gradient ramp in that slot

• Stuck render with one core at 100%

• Unhandled exception error when camera motion blur is enabled in specific scene

V-Ray IPR

• 3ds max crashes to desktop when VRayScannedMtl is reloaded during IPR rendering

• Some crashes with VRayVRmatMtl in certain scenarios with VRayScene

V-Ray GPU

• Animatable parameters for VRayGLSL, VRayMDL and VRayOSL

• Animated radius of sphere light is not exported for VRayLight

• Artifacts in VRayLighting render element with Aerial perspective and Highlight burn below 1.0

• Artifacts with denoiser and VRayStochasticFlakesMtl

• Black color applied instead of diffuse when VRayHDRI tag tiled image is not found

• CUDA error 716 on a scene with Velocity render element and spherical VRayLight

• CUDA error 719 with specific scene with VRayClipper

• Changing the verbose level of V-Ray log is evaluated only with launching a production render

• Crash with Bercon Noise in displacement with two or more devices

• Crash with mapped opacity and on-demand textures with 382 drivers

• Crash with on-demand textures

• Crash when hiding/unhiding geometry while rendering

• Crash when turning on and off a rect/mesh Light

• Crash when rendering backwards sequence

• Crash when tweaking values in Output

• Different rendering of some of the falloff types in Falloff Map

• Displacement is not disabled from the Global switches in production rendering mode

• Displacement subdivides the geometry more than it should when Physical camera is used

• Exception after moving a VRayTriplanarTex with VRayNormalMap from bump slot to another

• Exception with MultiTexture in VRayLight

• Exposure is not updated when switching between cameras

• Flickering in animation with 3ds Max animated Noise modifier

• Material fog bias with ActiveShade rendering

• Memory leaks with animation and geometry with modifiers

• Missing reflections on VRayBlendMtl with reflective base material, non-reflective coat material and additive mode

• NaNs in Light select render element when using Light cache

• Out-of-process rendering crashes with simple scenes loaded in the VRayScene node

• Parented lights in groups don't work in VRayLightSelect render element

• Problems with Fit resolution to VFB and changing the Max resolution during ActiveShade

• Scene with particles crashes when scrubbing the time slider during ActiveShade

• The viewport representation of Body objects (CAD) is rendered during ActiveShade

• Unhandled exception when rendering a sequence with a VRayVRmatMtl

• UV tiling breaks if there is Output node between VRayHDRI and VRayColor2Bump

• VRayDirt "affect alpha" option not supported

• VRayMDL is not updated in ActiveShade when the file in attached VRayHDRI is changed

• VRayMDL is rendered black out-of-process

• VRayMtl opacity not working with image sequence

• VRayStereoscopic helper is not working

• VRayTriplanarTex for bump doesn't respect UVW scale

• Wrong result with VRayStereoscopic camera when Override FOV is enabled

• Wrong anisotropy effect in specific scene

• Wrong progress information for Light cache calculation

V-Ray Standalone

• Crashes with specific scene with MDL materials and Scanned materials

VFB

• A/B comparison distorts the images when panning

• Inconsistent message when the History Directory path is empty

• Occasional crash when closing 3ds Max with VFB A/B compare enabled

VRayClipper

• Clipping geometry shows up with ambient occlusion

VRayDisplacementMod

• Broken geometry edges at UV-borders

• Crash when rendering animation with subdivision displacement

VRayFastSSS2

• Parameters are not updated in the UI lately when color mode is set to "Scatter coefficient + Fog color"

VRayInstancer

• Add support for objects with Ornatrix/Hairfarm hairs

• Different instances rotations with PRT Source objects for source particles

VRayLight

• Mesh light does not respect geometry flipping in V-Ray GPU

VRayLightMtl

• Direct illumination enabled doesn't produce correct results when illuminating Standard material

VRayMtl

• Crash with enabled Abbe number and Full mode VRayLightSelect

• Fog color is ignored if VRayDisplacementMod is present

VRayMDL

• MDL assets are not transferred to DR slaves

• Message boxes are shown in quiet mode

• Subsurface absorption issues

VRayProxy

• Crash when loading a file after the preview cache had been enabled and 3ds Max was reset

• Hair and particles are not displayed in viewport after their preview is cached

• Reads mesh files even when they are cached

• Viewport preview is not affected when a new scale factor is set after the preview has already been cached

VRayScannedMtl

• Artifacts when rendering with Light cache on specific scene

• All maps (paint, filter, ior, etc.) are not affected by the parallax displacement

• Constant increase of the consumed memory during the rendering of certain material

• Crash when using UV adjustment with certain object

• Edge displacement appears inclined when the UV tilling multipliers do not match exactly the sample aspect

• Edge displacement does not produce equal result in all ray directions

• Geometry with smooth or shell modifier produces holes behind the displaced edges

• Renders black when seen through the translucency texmap of VRay2SidedMtl

• Viewport preview of the VRScan does not match the render

• VRscans materials slow down the viewport animation

• When no UV mapping is present, the light cache cannot sample the material

VRayToon

• Is always applied on VRayLights

VRayVolumeGrid

• "fire_opacity_mode" parameter isn't exported to vrscenes

• After loading a cache, CPU usage remains high on machines with many threads

• Artifacts when rendering overlapping containers in Volumetric Geometry mode

• Crash when rendering a simulator without a cache with Velocity render element enabled

• Crash when rendering in Mesh mode with Surface channel set to Texture

• Crash when rendering converted grid to Editable poly

• Crash when Rendering->Surface Channel is set to Texture and Mesh Preview is enabled

• Errors when saving and loading presets

• Frame offset in Loop mode between Phoenix and V-Ray Volume grid

• Keyed Playback Mode parameter doesn't render as expected during sequence render

• Loop overlap only works when load nearest if missing is enabled

• Sequence render with V-Ray and Fire Lights keeps showing the lights after the cache sequence ends

• Missing RGB for Liquids on some frames when using Play Speed less than 1.0 and the Velocity method

• No confirmation box when overwriting presets

• Warning about using local machine Input path for distributed rendering even if the path is UNC but starts with forward slashes

V-Ray Light Lister

• Disable subdivisions of the lights when Use Local subdivs is unticked

ply2vrmesh.exe

• Crash with specific nodes from vrscenes with applying both velocity and transformations

vdenoise.exe

• Crash if an incomplete or broken file is passed

• The denoiser tool crashes when the input images are non OpenEXR or vrimg