Software > 3DS Max | Software > Renderers
V-Ray Next preview and beta announced
Dec 14, 2017 by CGPress Staff
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Previews of the what’s to come for Chaos Group’s popular renderer V-Ray and a new beta has been announced. Codenamed V-Ray Next, new features outlined so far include:
- V-Ray GPU has faster, cleaner lighting and now supports environment fog and VRscans.
- A new adaptive dome light for faster, cleaner image-based lighting, removing the need for skylight portals.
- Auto exposure and auto white balance adds automatic scene analysis to determines correct exposure and white balance for your image.
- The V-Ray Physical Camera makes a comeback and has been updated with a simpler UI and support for the new auto exposure and white balance settings.
- A new more realistic VRayHairMtl2 hair shader has been added with melanin color controls, better highlights and more natural light distribution.
- A new switch material to change between several materials applied to any object, useful for rendering material options, adding random variations or creating render passes.
- The ability to load any texture or material that’s available in V-Ray Standalone and render it in V-Ray for 3DS Max using the new V-RayPluginTex or VRayPluginMtl.
- The ability to denoise elements, not just the beauty pass.
- A new V-Ray SDK that takes advantage of modern hardware, including optimised vector calculations using SSE 4.2 and customized Intel® Embree ray tracing library 2.13.
After tried redshift i don’t think i’ll use vray anymore.
I tried Redshift, it is fast. And I’ll probably end up using it at home for personal projects, as the cost is reasonable to jump in now. But it is still lacking features that we need in production, especially for animations. The developers seem to be paying attention to feature requests, so I will keep a close eye on it. VRay is just more flexible ATM. Though VRay GPU, or RT, or whatever they want to call it, is also not production ready for me.
I wouldn’t say it’s not production ready when Blizzard has been using it for all the Overwatch films, and at least two companies in London are using it for full cg animated tv series.
There’s always room for improvement, but you can definitely do a production with it.
Definitely can be used in production. A few places using it in London like you said. It is missing some of the features that you get used to using while using vray, lot of the tricks you use to get by you cant replicate in some cases they are not necessary in redshift. But I personally still like Vray but good to have options. Interesting to see where this goes.
Sorry, Redshift Overwatch films at Blizzard look inferior to the first trailer released by them that was using Renderman, they just needed the speed to pump the rest of them out fast.
Also i wouldn’t exactly compare the level of complexity of an overwatch film with very stylized (simplified) cartoonish characters to their cinematics work where they still use Renderman. All this further points to the fact that Redshift or other GPU renders just aren’t there yet and arguably may never be in the foreseeable future.
Not a software fanboy, but Vray is production proven rock solid renderer that Will deliver whatever you throw at it in terms of complexity and it keeps growing.
You are right, although the first Overwatch cinematic was done for who knows how long, and the last batch of cinematics were done much more quickly. Past a certain technology gap (you couldn’t do that with poweranimator, for example), it’s more of a matter of time thrown into the project.
Anyway, looking forward to see all render engines evolve and make our lives easier 🙂
Production ready is meaningless. If people are using it, it’s production ready for *their* needs.
I have both VRay and Redshift and use RS pretty much all the time now.
Horses for courses.
Agree with you!
Even if it’s fast I’m still missing features on Redshift that I’m used to in V-Ray, but it’s also true that VRay GPU is further to be production ready. I really hope Chaosgroup will work more on their GPU version otherwise I’ll probably switch to Redshift.
Beside that it seems that the new improvements of V-Ray are more focusing on the architectural market (even if it could also benefit others). I also wish that they’ll release version for Maya at the same time than Max. I feel like I’m not their first target working in animation and Maya.
Anyway that’s a good thing that they’re cleaning up the codes, must be a lot of work!
Redshift/v/vray today is equal to mentalray/v/vray more than 10 years ago.Under the hood will be the Render Legion code too (read as new points of view) so I’m pretty optimistic for “Coray 1.0”.
Hey folks, I don’t really understand what functions do RS lack? I know that Vray has features that RS hasn’t and vice-versa, but what is the key feature in Vray that makes you want to stay with it?
RS devs are really responsive and I’m sure they’ll implement any feature required by users.
OK, I love RS but here’s my list of things that need addressing (Max specific)
Direct support of FumeFX/PhoenixFD
Better support of 3rd party procedurals, Bercon doesn’t work for example (apparently shader SDK is coming)
Better sky model
Visibility track isn’t supported (just annoying)
Particle tech/point shader needs implementing – there in some DCC apps
Ray-traced SSS (coming)
That’s off the top of my head, but there are definitely holes.
I think chaosgroup is a very good company. The only thing I want as a customer from them is saving us from the tedious process of irradience map calculation for animation.
It was ok when it first came out. After all this time, it is slowly becoming an outdated method that drags the whole workflow down. Later results leading to later feedback and revision of scenes.
We need some other way for GI calculation that is less open to human error and flickers and still very fast.
That is why everyone talks about Redshift these days.
There are very few people left using irradiance maps, even for animations. The default settings in V-Ray have been brute force+light cache for years now. In many cases this is faster than using irradiance maps – we’ve optimized brute force raytracing significantly. The sooner you drop your irradiance map workflows, the better.
Best regards,
Vlado
Wow! I didn’t know that. I’ve been using irradiance maps for ages, with prepass to get rid of flickering. Are the new animation settings available on the chaos site?
Sorry guys but when i see all these fanboys going nuts about Redshift i see exactly the same as when Arnold showed up few years back suddenly and how everyone went crazy about it and talk in exactly the same way as i see now about Redshift.
The best, the fastest, it can handle huge scenes, it has XY tech…now barely anyone is mentioning Arnold.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens to Redshift – the best, the fastest, it can handle huge scenes, it has XY tech, etc. Few years later new render will show up and you will forget about Redshift too.
I wonder why VRay is still here then always ready to be compared with all these fancy renderers as they come and go.
I’m not a fanboy, i just realize with redshift, i don’t have to pay for render farm services anymore. I bought 2 1080GTX card and my pc is enough for my freelance projects now.
Maybe for bigger projects Vray still better but i believe RS will also get there soon enough.
*Sigh*
as I said before, I have both.
Before slinging words like ‘fanboys’ around – ask yourself this – “Why would I buy RS if VRay was doing everything I needed”
For the work I do, Redshift is faster – yes it has holes, which I detailed above, *but* I use it way more than VRay these days.
Fanboyism tend to stick with whatever they’ve sunk money or time learning into.
I had V-Ray for a long time before RS, and didn’t buy RS until it was at v2.
My decision was based on these criteria.
Does it do what I need it do – mostly yes.
Is it faster than what I have – definitely yes.
Are there murky legal things going on like Octane/FStorm – no.
Is it rental only – no.
So it ticked all my boxes.
The reason people are going ‘nuts’ about Redshift, is that for once, indies/freelancers/the little people are getting something which fits them well without having to render to farms.
As far as I can see, Arnold is too slow/more suited to big companies.
I have nothing against V-Ray, I will continue to upgrade it. It’s just another option.
Which is a good thing.
Steve, yes! Exactly! I have 3 GTX 1080Ti’s because of Redshift and the speed it gives me overall. I do FX work, so everything is always heavy. I have been using Vray for 10 years now and will continue to keep a license even if it’s not for Max. On a production I’m on now, 85% of it is using Redshift – but because of Vray we are able to solve certain problems (loading Alembic files from Houdini into Max without a single issue).
Also, I will fight to the death over this, but Vray’s Volume grid. My god is that the best. The second I was able to load .fxd files and then .VDB’s from Fume…that’s what I used to render by default. Stopped using Fume to render. I was able to speed up renders and get better results + added things that it wasn’t able to do in Fume. For me, I’ve used PyroFX, and Redshift’s atmosphere shader. Vray has the best one from an artistic perspective.
The thing with Vray that I just love is not only does it act as a great renderer but it also acts as a fantastic tool for other things like command like .vrmesh.
Plus…it’s Chaos Group/Vlado, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a prototype version of Vray floating around that would floor us. I don’t expect them to dump their current products and go all in on ONLY GPU’s.
I was/still am a V-Ray user for a long time before I bought and used Redshift.
Fanboyism doesn’t come into it – at least for me.
It suits my needs, and anything that it can’t do – like proper PhoenixFD support, I’ve got V-Ray for.
RS suits indies/freelancers without reliance on renderfarms – Arnold doesn’t.
People should be able to use, and enthuse about renderers without someone calling them fanboys.
The desire for Arnold seemed to be mostly driven by it being rare or unattainable – therefore it must be brilliant.
Speaking to people it’s more suited to larger studios in the same way Renderman is. RS works well for indies/freelancers who don’t want to go the renderfarm route.
Competition is good – and I would hate to see a world where it was just a single renderer – that doesn’t seem healthy for anyone.
Chaosgroup is a great company, Vray is a great product. Redshift however is all into the GPU rendering game as where Chaosgroup from where I’m standing has had their foot halfway in the door.
For good reason! Their entire client base has been built around CPU rendering. To just throw them to the wayside and go full in on GPU development would be sort of a crappy move. Hence (in my mind) Hybrid rendering.
Redshift on the other hand doesn’t have to put resources into CPU rendering development. They started with GPU rendering, are based in pure GPU rendering and that’s that. No development resources at Redshift are going to develop a CPU based renderer that I’m aware of.
If GPU rendering is the clear future of rendering in the industry (which the jury is still out on that as it’s relatively new – but it seems to be looking like it is), then to go with Redshift, the newer biased GPU based render engine kid on the block, seems to be a relatively logical decision for early adopters of GPU rendering now that Redshift has matured a good deal.
Yes, features may not be a robust as Vray CPU, but the gap will close quickly. As where Chaosgroup continues to develop on both fronts of CPU/GPU rendering and also has resources tied up in VRScans, the Redshift team will be all in on developing for straight GPU rendering.
Operation size plays a huge role. Chaosgroup has been around for a while and I’d assume has a larger development team than Redshift. This would allow them to have the extra resources to develop for a multitude of solutions. With the purchase of Corona however, I would think Chaosgroup will have their hands in CPU rendering for a long while yet.
At any rate, both good companies and I don’t think fanboyism plays all that huge of a roll in people’s excitement about Redshift. 3D Artists are excited to move over to the GPU and reap the benefits of quicker rendering at a much lower price-point that the GPU platform seems to be offering. The question is, which company will get them there the quickest with the feature-set they need to accomplish their goals?
My take anyways if you’re going to bring Redshift “fanboyism” into this discussion.
3D applications live and die by hype.
I’ve no idea how that happened – that is my comment attributed to Kenshin3D.
yuo used a smartphone to write? Sometime in my phone I can see the “reply” fields just compliled with the name and e mail of the last user post
No was on PC… weird.
We’re very sorry about that Steve. I’ve changed the attribution and we’re looking into how this happened. I suspect it’s the caching plugin that speeds up load times and I’ve changed a few things bu please let me know if it happens again.
No worries, cheers!
Vray has been great so far and it has evolved and improved over the years, I don’t tend to be a fan boy when it comes to softwares, I will use whatever gets the job done, and I tend to joke that I hate all of the 3d apps equally, but V-ray is different for me, it has always been reliable and it allowed me, years ago, ( I started using v-ray 0.2 ) to explore GI rendering in my crappy machine at that time! it has evolved a lot since then and it will continue to do so, and now they got corona witch is also amazing, so only good things may come of that!
redShift,I tried the demo and I wasn’t impressed at all with the speed, so obviously I was doing something wrong, as every one seems to claim that is super fast… the fact that doesn’t render raytraced sss ( does it render hair/fur? ) is a big deal for me tho
Yeah it renders built-in hair, Hairfarm and Ornatrix in Max.
Not used it a huge amount with them to know if there are any problems though – I’ve not seen any complaints about it on the forum anyway.
Works with Forest Pro as well (apart from the material used to vary materials AFAIK)
Alex, I too didn’t think I was getting decent speeds out of RS, until I watched the basic tutorials on it. When you start setting up the properties to clean up the noise, it got much faster. It’s kind of how VRay was before they changed the setup to where you had to control the samples of your materials, lights, and engine to get a clean render and better render times (I actually got better render times before the dumbed down default VRay is now using, but it took setup time which doesn’t pay unless you have a long animation to render). Basically, if you let the anti-aliasing do all of the work, you got bad render times. RS has horrible default settings which will give you render times that are worse than what we can get from VRay. Of course, it also depends on what GPU and CPU you are using. If you are comparing a CPU with 48 threads or more to a 1080, the CPU will often beat that GPU in my testing. But the RS demo is a version behind where things might have changed, and I’m sure I could have optimized it more.
I find it interesting that after 40 replies no one wrote down what is the true advantage of switching the current production from CPU to GPU rendering? In this test questionary, i use RedShift and Vray as representatives, but it can be any other solution (i have both, i use both, i love both of them, i don’t want that developers read this and think i am biased and hate me afterward: it is not the case!).
You are all, just as me, artists and businessman in one person: without an objective “time effectiveness + quality boost + cost + saving + energy consumption” calculation is all what you wrote above: a religious debate.
I would like to see if anyone can explain the following criteria for applying RS over existing Vray in the production (again – i take Redshift here as example for GpuRenderer):
– Is the look and the quality of Vray so much inferior to RedShift?
– Is the production pipeline with Vray and all it supporting plugins less effective and usable then the same one with RS?
– Is RedShift far more stable and reliable then Vray?
– Is RedShift, by producing the similar result by the same energy consumption, at least 25% faster?
– Are the production assets, both delivered by freelancers and purchased in 3d stores, better prepared and optimized for usage with RedShift then with Vray?
– Are my production partners (third party studios, freelancers) ready and fully equipped with RedShift and can they deliver me compatible assets and materials for my RedShift production?
– Do the RenderFarm facilities (online render farms) have the needed resources to consume my RedShift render-jobs? Will the render-hour be more expensive?
– Do the own production studio have enough technology resources to move ahead with RedShift (8 Render-machines ca. 250 CPU-GhZ has to be re-equipped to 8×2 Nvidia 1070 Gcards + RS licenses). Do the capital situation allows a small studio to invest ca. 15.000 EUR for render farm upgrade and are there jobs to finance it – is it worth it?
– Are the energy costs (0,23 cent per Kw) using one or two high-consumption x 280W GCards cheaper (spoiler: they are not!) then the current 95W CPU render block?
– Does RedShift come with 10 render-farm convenient pricing bundle so i do not suffer additional price-shock?
– Can i easily convert my 10 year old and running projects to RedShift, including Plugins, Shaders, Hairs, Atmospherics etc? Are the plugins developers already supporting RedShift (Fume, Ornatrix, Substance etc)?
– Can i render my Poster or Architecture ArtWorks up to 20000×12000 pixel, just as i do it with Vray without any thinking, with GPu Renderer? Do i get the needed Render Elements i got used while using Vray/Mr too?
– Did anyone here professionally made a few serious CG production comparisons, tracked them, made a summary, calculated the time and the costs and what were his observation? Or do we all here play around with some test scenes (I think I read once Rune Spans moved his whole movie production to RedShift, but i have no more Infos about it)?
and so on.
Once we put this in the pro-contra lists, we can start thinking about converting the production to GPU. 🙂
Hi!
Yes, I switched my personal projects to Redshift in 2015, when Redshift still was in alpha for 3ds Max. I was working on a print project, and my main renderer at the time kept running out of framebuffer memory. Redshift rendered the same resolution without any issues. Even back then, Redshift was very stable and felt feature complete in terms of what I wanted (rendertime displacements, rendertime subdivision, motion blur, scattering, support of Max maps and features). For film projects I still use whatever the production company is using, but I suggest them to check out Redshift if they have the resources.
It’s been a massive benefit to how I work. I converted a project from V-Ray to Redshift halfway through ( Red Rainbow https://vimeo.com/206286755 ), when we no longer could afford an outside renderfarm. And scenes that took 2-3 hours on a CPU renderer, took 15-20 minutes on Redshift, and would even render cleaner in Redshift! So now I could match the output of two workstations at home to a multi CPU renderfarm. It took some hours to convert the scenes for that project, but thankfully there are excellent scripts taking care of that now. Assets can now be converted in minutes.
Other GPU renderers I’ve tried in the past have felt off in a way, either in features, or in their understanding of how max works – Redshift just gets it right. Its philosophy is also similar to V-Ray, going for realism, but letting you break it when you need to. There are still some features missing and not as evolved, such as volumetric rendering and support for 3rd party materials (Forest Pro, Bercon etc), but the benefits far outweigh that for me. And I still keep V-Ray around for those reasons 🙂
Well I have mentioned parts of these before.
– Is the look and the quality of Vray so much inferior to RedShift?
No – don’t think anyone has mentioned that, it’s all about the speed.
– Is the production pipeline with Vray and all it supporting plugins less effective and usable then the same one with RS?
No – see above
– Is RedShift far more stable and reliable then Vray?
I’ve found them similar.
– Is RedShift, by producing the similar result by the same energy consumption, at least 25% faster?
Hard to tell – my gut feeling is that RS is around 3 times quicker on my system compared to Vray.
– Are the production assets, both delivered by freelancers and purchased in 3d stores, better prepared and optimized for usage with RedShift then with Vray?
No, but I’ve not found conversion a chore either.
– Are my production partners (third party studios, freelancers) ready and fully equipped with RedShift and can they deliver me compatible assets and materials for my RedShift production?
Does not apply to me.
– Do the RenderFarm facilities (online render farms) have the needed resources to consume my RedShift render-jobs? Will the render-hour be more expensive?
I don’t know – main advantage for me was not having to use renderfarms, and be reliant on internet connection (a weak link)
– Do the own production studio have enough technology resources to move ahead with RedShift (8 Render-machines ca. 250 CPU-GhZ has to be re-equipped to 8×2 Nvidia 1070 Gcards + RS licenses). Do the capital situation allows a small studio to invest ca. 15.000 EUR for render farm upgrade and are there jobs to finance it – is it worth it?
Again, can only speak for myself.
– Are the energy costs (0,23 cent per Kw) using one or two high-consumption x 280W GCards cheaper (spoiler: they are not!) then the current 95W CPU render block?
Does not apply to me – I am a single user, do not have space for it.
– Does RedShift come with 10 render-farm convenient pricing bundle so i do not suffer additional price-shock?
No, but RS licences are full ws licences, so apples and oranges comparison.
– Can i easily convert my 10 year old and running projects to RedShift, including Plugins, Shaders, Hairs, Atmospherics etc? Are the plugins developers already supporting RedShift (Fume, Ornatrix, Substance etc)?
Rarely revisiting 10 year old projects in reality – but that due to compatibility breaking in other plugins – say something using Reactor or a plugin not recompiled – that would be a problem regardless of renderer so you would be stuck with whatever you had years ago.
FumeFX (and PhoenixFD) you need to render out to OpenVDB – main issue is support of foam/points in PhoenixFD. Volumes render quickly though.
Still a weak point.
3rd party shader support is weak – Berconmaps for example. Shader SDK is coming though. Ornatrix/Hairfarm works. Substance seems to work on some DCCs but doesn’t on Max.
– Can i render my Poster or Architecture ArtWorks up to 20000×12000 pixel, just as i do it with Vray without any thinking, with GPu Renderer? Do i get the needed Render Elements i got used while using Vray/Mr too?
I can certainly render *a* 20000×12000 pixel image. It’s not something I do often, so can’t answer if there are any limitations on that side.
Without knowing what Render Elements, that’s hard to answer – there are pretty extensive AOVs though, including a new custom one – think Puzzlematte is the main absentee.
– Did anyone here professionally made a few serious CG production comparisons, tracked them, made a summary, calculated the time and the costs and what were his observation? Or do we all here play around with some test scenes (I think I read once Rune Spans moved his whole movie production to RedShift, but i have no more Infos about it)?
The jobs I tend to work are on event animations, quick turnaround – Redshift has churned out animations more quickly than other renderers, and enabled me to get jobs done.
At my end of things, clients never seem to have enough money, or time or want to change their minds, and RS is great for me – it’s faster and ‘good enough’, even with the holes I’ve mentioned.
And for everything else, I have V-Ray as an option.
Redshift cannot render 3dsMax map.
It is the fundamental limitation of any GPU renderer.
They can make an under the hood conversion map to make it look like supporting it. But, that’s not the same map.
Try use Noise map in the displace modifier and use map for render.
Displace shape and reder doesn’t match.
Also check Forestpack document, Redshift doesn’t support most of material/map related feature of Forestpack.
Does Reshift wlasys faster? No.
Sometimes VRay is as fast as Redshift.
If you use only bitmap, material converison would be easy.
Good luck to convert material/map tree.
Redshift doesn’t have render license. It is the same $600. Then you have $300 yearly mainternance fee.
If the spped is your ONLY concern, Redshift make sense.
IF you need compatibility and flexibility, it has llong way to go.
@vlado. This is news to me. You really need to publish a new workflow tutorial for GI calculation for animation on the official vray help then.
It is still all about irradience maps. I hope the new workflow is completely flicker free .
So.. where is the benchmarks and comparisons? We can complain and argue about what to use or not, which btw is a waste of time, if you don’t like it don’t use it, we don’t need your justification for using it not. I would however like some hard data on speed, noise quality etc? Anyone with access?
I have both.
However I don’t know if there even is such a thing as hard data – and that’s a bit of a waste of time as well.
It’s going to be variable as to what’s acceptable from person to person, regards speed/quality/features depending on what they’re doing.
I just don’t want to get down a rabbit hole of x renderer does this well, and someone says, well I don’t use that so I don’t care.
There’s a demo out there of Redshift (watermarked) and a 30 day trial of V-Ray.
Use whatever suits you.
I’d like to see opinions about which is the best render (or the fastest) for computers that have powerful CPUs and weak GPUs. Every day I need to animate and render logos and texts for aggressive TV popular stores advertisements (metal texts with exaggerated reflections and grunge textures, concrete demolitions, a lot of ambient occlusion, 3d motion blur and other dirt “oldschool 3D things”).
Until nowadays i still use 3ds max 2016 because the delayed updates of cebas finalrender, the render that i am used to pay since the first version, because fast without GPUs (i know that have a new version for max 2018… but in my demo tests it only work fast when “hibrid” (gpu+cpu))… maybe the best solution for me is Corona only??
(sorry my engRish)
For things like this E3D is great ..take a look here :
https://www.videocopilot.net/products/element2/
Just tried out Redshift demo, the IPR does not support deforming meshes you have to hit the refresh button to see changes.. pretty lame with all the hype about how great it is, octane and vrayRt do
I have a feeling that the developer of Redshift for 3dsMax is not as experienced as VRay/COrona/Fstorm/FinalRender developers.
When I tried to script something for Redshift, it failed to provide proper notification. I also found out that building material for Redshift woth maxscript takes longer than building materials for other renderers.
Or it’s not as important to some people as it is to you.
I’ve listed holes in RS that I’d liked filled, deforming meshes wasn’t one of them, as it’s not something I even noticed.
For me it’s primarily about the speed, and I like the way company does things – Octane going after FStorm put me right off them.
Just be happy that there are renderers which suit you, rather than calling stuff lame.
We’re spoiled for choice.
“Or it’s not as important to some people as it is to you.”
What???
I can cay MR, Reactor, Box#2/3 were not as important to me as it is to you.
I’m not even sure what you’re asking.
Different things matter to a greater or lesser extent to different people.
A lack of deforming meshes in IPR is not going to be particularly ‘lame’ if you only do architectural walkthroughs.
You have an interesting double standard.
I still don’t know what you’re talking about.
It was a response to the comment
“pretty lame with all the hype about how great it is, octane and vrayRt do”
I don’t think it’s particularly contentious or hypocritical that some people use features in different ways.
Personally, the removal of MR didn’t affect me, but I could see that it was for some people.
The removal of reactor was annoying because it was sprung on people with no warning – that’s removing a feature, not one not being available yet.
Maybe you can spell it out for me?
Come on guys we all know Scanline is the King. All these others are just pretenders 🙂
LOL, well I did use it a fair bit for certain projects – it was ‘good enough’ for quick and dirty projects.