Chaos Releases V-Ray 6 for Maya

The award-winning renderer adds new systems and updates, including geometric tiling, procedural clouds, a new shader profiler, and USD support; numerous enhancements create a more complete toolset for monitoring and optimizing projects.

The latest version of Chaos’ Academy Award/Emmy Award-winning production renderer V-Ray 6 for Maya is now available, with expanded features including geometric tiling, procedural clouds, and a new shader profiler.

The new systems and updates enhance the tools needed to monitor and optimize projects and include:

VRayEnmesh repeats geometry across the surface of an object and lets artists treat geometry like a texture for creating patterns that are close-up ready, both with optimal memory efficiency.

Procedural Clouds are now part of the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, letting artists customize scenes and take advantage of ray-traced lighting, ground shadows, and volumetric effects as they animate.

V-Ray Profiler introduction allows artists to track the calculation time of shaders and volumes in a scene, enabling them to locate hot spots and optimize pipelines for faster rendering.

Additional updates and features in V-Ray 6 for Maya include:

USD Improvements: V-Ray 6 supports the latest MayaUSD version and includes enhancements for OpenVDB volumes and V-Ray material export for easier exchange with Solaris and USD-powered pipelines.
Performance Improvements: 30% faster rendering for Environment Fog and up to double the speed of rendering for the Translucent layer in the V-Ray Material, as well as enhanced memory efficiency for scenes with thousands of instances.
Improved Dome Light – The new Finite Dome mode allows users to control the physical size of their light according to radius and height, which helps render objects like cars with proper size and scale in relation to image-based lighting (IBL).
Thin-Film Materials: The new thin-film layer has been added to the V-Ray Material, making it easy to create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.
Chaos Cloud Collaboration: The added push-button cloud collaboration for project reviews shares renders through Chaos Cloud via the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB). Clients/teams can now add comments and annotation and see panorama views remotely.
Background Cloud Submissions: Users now have uninterrupted access to Maya when submitting to Chaos Cloud Rendering, preserving their iterative cycle.
Decal Displacement: VRayDecal now adds displacement to any surface, bringing more realism to cracked walls, rocks, and embossed lettering.
More Accurate Reflections: With the new energy compensation updates, rough metals and surfaces look more realistic.
Light Cache in IPR: V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) output is identical to the production renderer, providing flexibility.
V-Ray Frame Buffer Upgrades: Added to the VFB are a panorama viewer, a Proportion Guides Layer for composition development, and a Flip button to help designers make decisions when assessing their work.
New Chaos Cosmos Assets: Chaos Cosmos has expanded the VFX world in fast-tracking previz work and has added over 1,500 assets since V-Ray 5, including detailed vegetation, urban textures, and photorealistic materials.
V-Ray GPU Improvements: Support is available for most of the new V-Ray 6 features, and with a new faster Light Cache and a new Device Selector, users can now assign devices to tasks.