Date – August 09, 2018
Download – Build 4.03.03
Key Features
GPU Rendering
- V-Ray for Houdini comes bundled with the same GPU rendering improvements implemented in the other V-Ray Next DCC integrations.
Volume Rendering
- Support for VDB rendering through the Volume Grid Cache SOP and the Volume Grid Shader VOP.
- Support for direct rendering of volumetrics without the process of loading the files through a Volume Grid Cache SOP is coming in the future. A major advantage of V-Ray vs competitive products is the fast computation of volumetric lighting, ie. fire illuminating the smoke and fire illuminating the scene.
VRScene Rendering
Instancing of VRScenes with custom transformations and orientation is fully supported, allowing the user to easily transfer assets in a V-Ray based pipeline.
Custom overrides on the imported VRScene are fully supported. Geometry in the VRScene is represented as Primitive Groups, allowing you to override the material assignments on a per-object basis.
Alembic support
- Тargeting of individual objects in the packed alembic hierarchy for material assignment is fully supported. Transformations, copying, instancing, etc. are supported.
Hair & Fur
- Rendering of Houdini hair generated at the SOP level is fully supported. V-Ray for Houdini comes with the new Hair 4 shader.
Particles
- Driving the shader parameters through custom attributes on a per-point basis is supported.
Packed Primitives
- Тargeting of primitives in the packed object hierarchy for material assignment is fully supported.
- Rendering of Packed Fragments and Agents for Rigid Body and Crowd simulations is supported.
Material Stylesheets
- Full support for material overrides based on groups, bundles, attributes, etc.
Instancing
- Copying of Packed Geometry, Instancer and “instancepath” attribute works with all supported object types, including Volumes.
- Instancing of lights is supported, with options for per-instance overrides of the light parameters.
Other Features
Object Types
- Regular Polygon Geometry as GeomStaticMesh
- Regular Poly Soup Geometry as GeomStaticMesh
- Packed Geometry
- Poly Lines as GeomMayaHair
- Curves (NURBS, Bezier) as GeomMayaHair
- Points as GeomParticleSystem
- Instanced Geometry
- VRayProxy loaded through VRProxy SOP node
- VRayScene loaded through VRScene SOP node
- Volumes as VDBs loaded through Volume Grid Cache SOP node
- V-Ray Infinite Plane
- Subdivision and Displacement
- Node linking through op:/path syntax
Lights
- Support for Houdini’s Light Linker
- Ambient, Direct, Dome, IES, Mesh, Omni, Rectangle, Sphere, Spot, Sun
- V-Ray Sky as Environment or Dome Light texture
- Light Instancing through instancepath attribute or Houdini Instancer - support for color and intensity per-instance overrides and Light Linker overrides (per base object)
Camera
- V-Ray Physical Camera -- Aperture, Focal Length and F-Stop inherited from Houdini’s camera settings so the camera manipulator handles can be used.
- Spherical, Cylindrical, Box, Fish-Eye, Warped, Ortho, Pinhole, Spherical, Cubic projection
- Depth of Field and Motion Blur supported
Animated Geometry
Full support for transofrmations
- Full support for deformations.
Instancing Types
- Instancing through Instance node
- Light Instancing through Instance node
- Instancing through instancepath attribute
- Light Instancing through instancepath attribute
- Instancing of volumetrics supported
Simulation Types
- Particle Simulations
- PBD Grain Simulations
- Crowd Simulations
- Cloth Simulations
- RBD Simulations
- Volumetric rendering of VDBs with Volume Grid Cache -> Volume Grid Shader
- FLIP simulation rendering of meshed surfac
- FLIP secondary effects (Foam, Bubbles, etc) as particles or VDBs
Import/Export
- Proxy Import/Export
- VRScene Import/Export
- Alembic - Full Support
- Houdini bgeo - Full Support
- Yeti caches through VRayPgYeti SOP
Stylesheets
- Limited support of VEX
- String overrides not yet implemented per polygon
- Full support for overrides based on primitive attributes, groups, bundles, etc
- Support for Global Stylesheets
- No support for per ROP stylesheets akin to Mantra ROP -> Decale Style Sheets / Apply Style Sheets parameter yet.
IPR
Limited GPU update support