V-Ray 6 for Houdini

V-Ray 6 for Houdini introduces a fully featured V-Ray Hydra delegate for Solaris as well as support for Houdini 19.5. Plus, it comes with native support for Houdini’s ocean tools, so users can render seascapes without the need for texture baking. This release also includes new, smart tools to let users unleash their creativity, a number of performance improvements, along with a tool to give them data to optimise their scenes for even faster rendering. 

 

Update 1 is here! 

We’re excited to announce that V-Ray 6 for Houdini, update 1 is now officially out. 

 

This latest release lets users break free from artistic boundaries and breathe life into any idea. 

 

 

With powerful new tools they can elevate their skin shading workflow for even more natural and lifelike skin textures. Gain creative control over lighting. Effortlessly project decals and add surface effects onto any cylindrical object. Create even more breathtaking skies for their environments with new procedural cloud options.  Boost cross-team collaboration with seamless USD data exchange between applications, accelerate rendering, and much more. 

 

What's new? Key benefits:

• Cross-team collaboration has also been boosted with seamless USD data exchange from Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max to Houdini, and vice versa.

• Users can do more in less time by getting to first pixel up to seven times faster, and up to three times faster rendering for previews and lookdev.

• They can further optimize their scenes for even faster rendering, exporting, and more, thanks to new profiling data.

• V-Ray 6, update 1 also brings in powerful new, tools, allowing users to easily add decals and surface effects to any cylindrical object.

• Plus, they can now create even more breathtaking skies for their environments with the new procedural cloud options.

• V-Ray GPU users can benefit from increased memory efficiency, faster rendering, and even more tools for artistic control.

• Removing excess character skin shine is now much easier with the new Bump to the Glossiness node.

• Now with even more post-processing capabilities in the V-Ray Frame Buffer, users can perfect their renders in no time.

 

Key Features in V-Ray 6 for Houdini

Tight Integration for a Smooth Workflow

Houdini 19.5 and Solaris Support

Make use of Houdini 19.5 features such as the Hydra Hair procedural, Solaris Render Region, and many more — now supported by V-Ray. Plus, a fully-featured V-Ray Hydra delegate for Solaris.

Ocean Rendering

Create the perfect ocean waves with native support for Houdini’s ocean tools. With more control than ever before, you can render Houdini’s oceans faster, and without the need for texture baking.

 

Smart Tools to Unleash Creativity

Enhanced Volumetric Rendering

Generate more realistic volumetric effects such as clouds, smoke, and more, with support for anisotropic scattering, also known as Phase Function, for volumetric rendering. Easily create masks for volumetrics with the new option to export Cryptomatte elements without using the Volumetric Geometry mode. 

Chaos Cosmos

Bring your scenes to life with Chaos Cosmos, our free library of high-quality V-Ray content. With its collection of high-resolution materials, beautiful HDR environments, and render-ready 3D models such as plants, trees, bushes, and more, Chaos Cosmos is a great resource for your next project. Learn more about Chaos Cosmos.

Procedural Clouds

Customise just the right clouds for your environment without spending hours browsing through HDRI libraries. V-Ray Sun and Sky’s new procedural clouds system helps you achieve the perfect look and animate your clouds for impressive time lapses in a simple and memory-efficient way.

V-Ray Decal with Displacement

You can now use V-Ray Decal to add displacement to any surface for even more realistic cracked walls, rocks, scratched and rusty surfaces, embossed lettering, and more. You can also instance your Decals for an advanced material bombing workflow.

V-Ray Enmesh

Repeat geometry across the surface of an object in the most memory-efficient way possible. In just a few clicks, you can create complex surfaces with lots of detail such as chain mail, car grilles, metal grids, panels, fences, fabrics, and so much more, as if geometry was a texture.

Finite Dome Light mode

Elevate your HDRI environment renders with the new, more flexible ground projection capabilities of the V-Ray Dome Light. Set the scale of your light, and enjoy full control over blend settings with the new Finite Dome mode.

 

Enhancements for Faster Rendering

Adaptive Bucket Splitting

Bucket rendering is now faster than ever before with a clever new algorithm. Render bucket size is adapted for optimal utilisation of your hardware and maximum memory-efficiency. Learn more about the method.

Light Cache in IPR

Now that V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) output is identical to the production renderer’s, you can make better decisions while iterating designs.

Faster Rendering, and More

V-Ray Environment Fog now renders up to 30% faster. Translucent material rendering is also up to two times faster thanks to V-Ray Material’s brand-new SSS mode. Also a shorter time to first pixel and quicker VRscene generation for studio workflows utilising Alembic and VDB caches.

V-Ray Profiler

Receive reports on the time spent calculating shaders and volumes in your scenes. Locate all hot spots in your scene and optimise pipelines for even faster rendering. Pair V-Ray Profiler with the Memory Tracker, and you now have everything you need to monitor and optimise your projects.

 

More Options for Faster and Better Shading

Thin Film Layer

Create realistic soap bubbles, oil spills and more, with the new Thin Film option in the V-Ray Material.

Enhanced V-Ray Material Energy Preservation

Render even more physically accurate rough metals and other reflective surfaces with enhanced V-Ray

 

Material Energy Preservation

Composition Guides Layer in VFB

Easily fine-tune your images with the new composition guides layer in the VFB. Experiment with the customisable overlays to enhance your compositions without using a separate application.

VFB Panorama Viewer

Now you can preview your spherical panorama renders while rendering, right from your V-Ray Frame Buffer.

 

Key Points

• V-Ray 6 is now even more tightly integrated with Houdini, including a fully featured V-Ray Hydra delegate, native support for Houdini’s ocean tools and support for Houdini 19.5.
• Volumetric rendering and compositing have been enhanced to give artists more freedom and allow them to create without limits.
• Users also have free, render-ready 3D content at their fingertips. With a collection of high-resolution materials, beautiful HDR environments, they can bring any environment to life in no time.
• This new version allows users to create geometric surfaces with lots of detail in the most memory-efficient way.
• V-Ray is constantly optimised for performance and it also gives users the data they need to locate hotspots for optimisations in their scenes for even faster rendering.
• Allows them to create custom skies in just a few clicks and render powerful time-lapse videos.
• The V-Ray Frame Buffer now enables users to do even more, without going to other applications. This includes fine-tuning their compositions and viewing panoramas.