This page introduces the Render Settings in V-Ray for Blender.
Overview
The V-Ray Render Settings provide control over the parameters that adjust the rendering process. They can be accessed from the Properties Editor within Blender's interface once V-Ray is selected as the active renderer.
The V-Ray Render Settings are divided into the following categories:
- Sampler - Settings related to the selection and manipulation of the Image Sampler type and the Global DMC Sampler.
- GI - Settings related to Global Illumination.
- Globals - Global settings, including displacement and texture settings.
- System - Settings related to the overall operation of V-Ray as well as those for the Lens Effects and Distributed Rendering.
Note: In V-Ray, the two tools that most greatly impact the balance of render quality vs. speed are the Image sampler and GI engine(s). Learning the basics of how these two features work will greatly enhance your ability to adjust settings in V-Ray and maximize image quality while keeping render times to a minimum. See the linked pages for explanations of how these features work.
UI Path: ||Properties Editor|| > Render > Render Engine > V-Ray
Render Engine
V-Ray allows you to use both CPU and GPU hardware for renders through the Render Engine rollout.
When GPU is selected as the V-Ray Engine, both the Light Cache and Brute Force GI engines are available. However, the primary bounces are always calculated with Brute Force.
When the engine is set to V-Ray GPU, you can also select the GPU platform:
Engine – Allows you to choose between the V-Ray and V-Ray GPU engines.
GPU Engine – Shows which GPU platform to use for calculations - CUDA or RTX. Cuda is the default engine. When Use RTX (no CPU, Slower start) is enabled, the engine switches to RTX. For information on GPU Render Engines, see the Rendering with V-Ray GPU page.
V-Ray CPU
V-Ray GPU
GPU Texture Options
When the V-Ray Engine is set to GPU, a new tab appears, which allows you to define how to engine reads textures.
Texture Mode –Determines how textures' resolution/size are handled to help optimize memory usage. The possible values are:
Full size textures – Textures are loaded at their original size.
Resize textures – Adjusts the size of high-resolution textures to a smaller resolution to optimize render performance.
Compressed – Compresses the textures to optimize performance. Compression results in roughly a 75% reduction in memory usage. In some situations, Bitmaps cannot be compressed, such as when a bitmap is used both as a normal/bump map and a color map; when a bitmap is used as a displacement map; when a bitmap is used for lens effects. This option is not supported on macOS.
Texture Size – When the Texture Mode is set to Resize Textures is enabled, this value specifies the resolution to which the textures are resized.
Texture Format – The amount of bits per channel used to store the material texture information into memory. You can choose between 8 bit, 16 bit, and 32 bit. This does not affect textures used for lights and displacement.
Use System Memory for Textures – Lowers GPU memory usage significantly by offloading textures to system memory with little impact on performance. This option speeds up GI build-up and eliminates the risk of errors caused by memory insufficiency. Not compatible with On-demand, Compressed, and Resized textures.
