This page provides information about the portable installation of V-Ray for Cinema 4D.
Please do not use multiple V-Ray installation methods at the same time. If you plan on creating a Portable V-Ray installation for Cinema 4D, make sure you have uninstalled any other V-Ray version for Cinema 4D.
Overview
The V-Ray installer can be unpacked and used as a portable version. Creating a Portable Installation provides several advantages over the regular installer:
The Portable installation allows for setting a custom environment when starting each Cinema 4D instance.
The Portable installation can be used to run V-Ray for Cinema 4D from any location or even a network drive. That way, multiple users can start Cinema 4D, along with V-Ray, without the need to run local installations.
Upgrading a Portable installation is a lot easier, as you don't need to run the installer on every user's computer.
The Portable installation allows for quick switching between different V-Ray versions without reinstalling it.
Note that Chaos Cosmos is not included in the V-Ray for Cinema 4D Portable installation file. You can separately download and install Chaos Cosmos.
To use the Chaos Unified Login (a single login into whichever Chaos application grants access to all Chaos applications) with V-Ray portable installation, download and install separately.
When using V-Ray from a Portable installation, the EULA needs to be accepted to start a render. A pop-up window will prompt you to accept the EULA the first time you start a render. Batch rendering is an exception to this.
If you are using a V-Ray version older than V-Ray 6, update 1, please refer to the Installation from zip guide, as the Portable Installation is not available for those V-Ray versions.
Required Steps to Run V-Ray
To create a Portable installation, you need to:
- Download V-Ray.
- Unpack the installation file. See the Unpack the installation file section of this page for more information.
- Set up your license. Visit the Licensing page to find out how.
- Run Cinema 4D.
Unpacking the installation file
Unpack the installation into a suitable location, which you can later use to run V-Ray on any computer. Here is a detailed step-by-step guide:
Download the V-Ray installer executable (.exe).
Open a Command Prompt. Type out: the location of the installer that you just downloaded-unpackInstall=the location where you wish to unpack. Alternatively, you can drag and drop the installer and a target folder for unpacking into the Command Prompt to insert their directories. Press Enter to run the command. As an example, you can create a new folder called vray_builds to hold all portable V-Ray builds. Then, you can make other sub-folders and name them according to the V-Ray build version, for example vray_60100_c4dr26 . It should look something like this:
D:\Downloads\vray_adv_60100_c4dr26_x64.exe -unpackInstall=D:\vray_builds\vray_60100_c4dr26
After unpacking the installation file, your directories should look like this:
D:\vray_builds\vray_60100_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
Here is an example with two different V-Ray 6 builds for Cinema 4D R26 - each can be deployed with its own settings.
D:\vray_builds\vray_60100_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
D:\vray_builds\vray_60000_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
3. Cut or copy the V-Ray folder.
4. Paste it to the Maxon plugins folder. The default location is C:\Program Files\Maxon Cinema 4D Rxx\plugins , where xx is the Cinema 4D version.
The D:\vray_builds\ directory is just an example, the Portable installation can be unpacked anywhere.
The GPU device select tool is not located in the default plugins location, but instead it is found under C:/Program Files/ Maxon Cinema 4D Rxx\plugins\V-Ray\res\libs\win64
Download the V-Ray installer .dmg file and double-click to mount it. By default, it mounts to /Volumes.
Open a Terminal and type out /path/to/run_installer-unpackInstall=</unpack/target/location>. Press Enter to run the command.
As an example, you can create a new folder called vray_builds in your root directory to hold all portable V-Ray builds. Then, you can make other sub-folders and name them according to the V-Ray build version, for example vray_60100_c4dr26. An example unpacking command should look like this:
/Volumes/V-Ray\ for\ C4D\ r26/vray_adv_60100_c4dr26_mavericks_x64.app/Contents/MacOS/run_installer -unpackInstall=/vray_builds/vray_60100_c4dr26
After unpacking the installation file, your directories should look like this:
/vray_builds/vray_60100_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
Here is an example with two different V-Ray 6 builds for Cinema 4D R26 - each can be deployed with its own settings.
/vray_builds/vray_60100_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
/vray_builds/vray_60000_c4dr26
├── V-Ray\
│ ├── docs\
│ ├── res\
│ ├── tools\
├── chaos_common\
│ ├── bin\
│ └── docs\
3. Cut or copy the V-Ray folder.
4. Paste it to the Maxon plugins folder. The default location is /Applications/Maxon Cinema 4D RXX/plugins , where xx is the Cinema 4D version.
NOTE: the GPU device selection tool is not found under the default plugins location, instead it can be found under /Applications/Maxon Cinema 4D R26/plugins/V-Ray/res/libs/win64
The /vray_builds/ directory is just an example, the Portable installation can be unpacked anywhere.
For V-Ray version older than V-Ray 6, update 1 - On some macOS versions you might be presented with a security message by the OS that prevents you from installing. In such cases, right-click on the installer app and select Open which allows the installation to continue. An example and further information can be found on the Installation of Chaos Cloud Rendering Client App page or in Apple's How to open an app that hasn’t been notarized or is from an unidentified developer article.