Supported features |
Render settings from the standard V-Ray renderer
The V-Ray RT interactive rendering system has many advanced features; here only some of them are listed. Note that all features are subject to change without special notice.
V-Ray RT is an ActiveShade renderer in 3ds Max, separate from the standard V-Ray renderer. V-Ray RT does not introduce new plugins other than the interactive renderer itself. Instead, the existing 3ds Max and V-Ray materials, textures, lights, cameras etc. are used.
V-Ray RT consists of two major components:
- V-Ray RT interactive renderer in 3ds Max;
- One or more V-Ray RT render servers.
V-Ray RT performs the actual rendering outside of 3ds Max itself, with the help of the V-Ray RT render server(s), which can run either locally on the same machine, or on other machine(s) in the local network. The renderer plugin in 3ds Max only relays the scene changes to the render servers and displays the final result.
A major feature of V-Ray RT is its ability to track changes to the scene performed by the user and automatically update the ActiveShade preview. The following scene changes are supported:
- Create/delete objects (geometry, lights, cameras, etc.);
- Modify object parameters;
- Move/rotate/scale objects;
- Apply/remove/edit object modifiers;
- Hide/unhide objects;
- Apply materials on objects;
- Modify material properties like textures, colors etc;
- Modify light properties (like position, quality and etc.)
- Animation of cameras, objects, lights and materials (scrubbing the time slider);
- Render settings change;
- Camera/view orientation change;
- Modify camera/view parameters;
- Environment change (color, texture etc).
Note: Changing the geometry or transformation of an object that has motion blur in an interactive session will remove the motion blur.
The following geometric objects are supported by V-Ray RT:
- Triangle meshes;
- All other primitives that are convertible to triangle meshes (NURBS surfaces, patches, etc.);
- VRayPlane objects.
- Render-time cached geometry through VRayProxy primitives.
The following materials are supported by V-Ray RT:
- V-Ray materials: VRayMtl, VRayBlendMtl, VRayOverrideMtl, VRayLightMtl and VRay2SidedMtl;
- 3ds Max materials: Multi/sub-object, Standard, Shellac and Blend;
- VRayWrapperMtl material is only partially supported.
The following textures are supported by V-Ray RT:
- Bitmap textures: PNG, BMP, TGA, JPG, EXR, HDR, SGI, PIC and TIFF file formats;
- Procedural textures: Checker, Noise, Falloff, Speckle, Cellular, Gradient Ramp, Tiles etc;
- Utility textures: Output, Normal bump, Mix, Mask, RGB Multiply, RGB Tint etc;
- V-Ray textures: VRayColor, VRayCompTex, VRayEdgesTex, VRayHDRI, VRaySky and VRayBmpFilter;
- 3rd party textures: the ColorCorrect texture is partially supported (the Source parameter and the parameters in the RGB Space (Pre-Process) section).
The following methods for illumination are supported by V-Ray RT:
- Indirect (global) illumination:
- Progressive path tracing as global illumination solution.
- Direct illumination:
- Standard lights: Spot, Omni and Direct;
- VRayShadow shadow type for hard and soft shadows;
- Photometric lights;
- V-Ray lights: VRayLight (Plane, Sphere, Dome and Mesh types), VRaySun and VRayIES.
- Environment illumination and image-based lighting (IBL):
- Either through GI or
- with a VRayLight in Dome mode with a texture map.
The following shading effects are supported by V-Ray RT:
- Diffuse materials;
- Bump and normal mapping;
- Transparency;
- Clear reflections and refractions;
- Blurry reflections/refractions:
- Phong, Blinn and Ward reflection models;
- Anisotropy;
- Absorption (fog) for refractive materials;
- Layered materials;
- Two-sided (translucent) materials;
- Self-illuminated materials.
V-Ray RT supports the following camera types and camera effects:
- Camera types:
- Perspective views;
- Standard cameras;
- VRayPhysicalCamera;
- VRayDomeCamera.
- Camera effects:
- Depth-of-field with bokeh effects;
- Exposure settings and vignetting;
- Camera type overrides (spherical/box/fish-eye etc);
- Camera distortion;
- Motion blur (if Motion blur is enabled in the V-Ray RT settings);
V-Ray RT supports and reacts to the following animation types:
- Camera animation;
- Object animation (move/rotate/scale; deformations);
- Material animation;
- Lights animation.
V-Ray RT supports motion blur, if the Motion blur option in the V-Ray RT is enabled:
- Motion blur must be enabled in V-Ray RT as well as the production renderer or through a VRayPhysicalCamera. Simply enabling Motion blur in V-Ray RT will not produce the effect;
- The motion blur Duration/Interval center parameters are taken from the production renderer or from the physical camera if one is used. These settings are taken into account once when the V-Ray RT rendering starts. Modifying them in an interactive session has no effect on the motion blur result until the ActiveShade rendering is restarted;
- The global motion blur Geometry samples option of the production renderer is supported, as well as individual overrides in the V-Ray object properties;
- Both transformation and deformation motion blur is supported, as well as motion blur for VRayLights and VRayIES lights;
- Moving or otherwise modifying an object that has motion blur in an interactive session will cause that object to loose the motion blur effect. This includes scrubbing the time slider if the object is animated. However changing its material should preserve the motion blur.
V-Ray RT takes some of the render settings from the standard V-Ray renderer, if present in the scene:
- Color mapping;
- Override material (in difference from the V-Ray RT material override, this one is only considered once when the ActiveShade view is opened);
- Camera settings for depth of field (when using perspective views or standard cameras);
- Environment overrides;
- Indirect illumination settings (GI on/off, reflective/refractive GI caustics, GI multipliers);
- V-Ray VFB (when used as production renderer);
- Motion blur (if the Motion blur option in V-Ray RT is also enabled) and related parameters (motion blur interval center, duration, geometry samples);
V-Ray RT supports distributed rendering across multiple machines in the local network.