Software brings V-Ray scenes directly into the Unreal Editor, letting artists tap into the game engine’s power to create immersive experiences.
LOS ANGELES -- Chaos Group today has released V-Ray for Unreal, the fastest way for architecture, automotive and visual effects users to create immersive experiences from their V-Ray content. With V-Ray for Unreal, artists and designers can easily bring V-Ray scenes from 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino and SketchUp directly into the Unreal Editor, without needing to learn a new workflow. Once there, users will have access to the full power of V-Ray Next technology, making the process of creating accurate ray-traced visuals possible directly from Unreal Engine.
V-Ray for Unreal consolidates two separate workflows, making it easier to tap into the power of a game engine through a creative process users already know and trust. After designing a scene in V-Ray, V-Ray for Unreal imports every part of the scene file into the Unreal Editor. V-Ray lights and materials are automatically converted into their real-time equivalents and maintain a smart connection to the originals, ensuring high-fidelity stills and animations at render time.
The official launch introduces V-Ray Light Baking, a powerful feature that lets users bake V-Ray lights (including IES) directly into Unreal with full GPU acceleration. Unlike other light baking implementations, V-Ray Light Baking maintains V-Ray accuracy, ensuring a lifelike, physically based result for realtime experiences and VR.
V-Ray for Unreal also introduces a new pipeline for CAD designers, who want to utilize the power of V-Ray rendering in their designs.
According to Ken Pimentel, senior product manager at Epic Games, “By combining Datasmith and V-Ray for Unreal, industrial designers can easily add the accuracy of photorealistic ray tracing to their interactive designs without requiring V-Ray in their CAD tool. V-Ray for Unreal Engine unlocks new workflows that will fundamentally change how people visualize and experience their designs. Now, all designers can benefit from both real-time interactivity and production-proven ray tracing within the Unreal Editor."
Other Features Include:
- Accurate Lighting – Render Unreal scenes with physically accurate, ray-traced lighting that matches your designs.
- Global Illumination – Render realistic bounced light using V-Ray’s Brute Force and proprietary Light Cache global illumination.
- Rendering Animation – Render sequences from Unreal’s Sequencer to create V-Ray-quality, ray-traced animated cinematics. Deforming objects can also be rendered using V-Ray Proxy objects.
- GPU+CPU Rendering – Render on all hardware, with support for CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, or a combination of both.
- Unreal Foliage Support – Compatible with Unreal's native foliage system for rendering large environments and landscapes. Support for animated foliage coming soon.
- V-Ray Proxy Support – Load high-resolution assets at render time using memory-efficient V-Ray Proxy objects.
- Render Elements – Supports a wide range of render elements for better artistic and technical control in compositing.
- Distributed Rendering – Leverage the power of multiple machines to speed up rendering and light baking.
V-Ray for Unreal will be on display next week in the Epic Games booth (A443) at Autodesk University, November 13-15. V-Ray for Unreal is available now and compatible with V-Ray for 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino and SketchUp. V-Ray for Unreal currently supports 4.19 - 4.20 with support for 4.21 coming soon. V-Ray for Unreal will be rapidly updated to keep pace with the Unreal Engine, so it will be sold through a subscription that always keeps the user up-to-date. The monthly rate will be $80, while the annual rate will be $470. Chaos Group also offers a flat annual rate ($99) for students, educators and universities. Visit the website for a free starter’s guide.
Source: Chaos Group
