Official Release
Date – 15 October, 2020
Download – Build 4.30.03
New features
VRScene
- Enabled VRScene export from Houdini Indie
- Added support for unpacking the VRScene into live polygon geometry under the "Import" tab of the VRScene SOP
VRProxy
- Added support for render-time baking of subdivision and displacement into a VRMesh from the V-Ray Object Properties "Bake Geometry" tab
Hair
- Added "ACEScg" color space support for the Hair material
UI
- Аdded a "Reset VFB Position" button under the Images tab of the Renderer ROP
- Updated the File Browser type for image paths
Houdini
- Changed the Console / Log window behavior - the V-Ray Log window is now always used instead of the native Houdini console
Added support for Houdini 18.0.499
Added a Pack Scene option under the V-Ray Main menu
Added a V-Ray Renderer TOP node
- Added support for the "Representative Node" option on HDAs
- Added an "About" button to the V-Ray menu that shows detailed V-Ray for Houdini and V-Ray Core information
Added support for Houdini 18.0.566
Added initial support for Houdini 18.5
Added support for textures embedded in HDAs (currently limited to PNG image file format)
Updated the V-Ray main menu with buttons linking to the documentation, forum and tutorials section
- Added support for HDA embedded textures in JPG, PNG and TGA format
Textures
- Added a Random texture that accepts either a float or vector value as a seed to generate either a random float or a random vector value
- Added the Volume Grid Texture used for sampling voxel values from a volume
- Added a custom Pattern ID texture that can be used with the Multi ID Material/Texture for assignments based on string attributes placed over packed primitives or packed alembic primitives (Note: this will not work with string attributes placed on the individual faces of polygon mesh)
- Added the GLSL Texture VOP
Texture Baking
- Added Post-Translate Scripts support to the V-Ray Baker Tool
- Added the Denoiser render element to the V-Ray Baker Tool
Deadline ROP
- Added custom Environment Variables export parameter to the Deadline ROP
Rendering
- Added an initial integration of the Volume Grid Texture for sampling voxel data
Lights
- Added light linking support for the Volume Scatter material
Materials
- Added the GLSL Material VOP
Export
- Added support for multiple Post-Translate scripts
- Added support for the Transform VOP
Hydra/Solaris
- Added initial Solaris support accessible through the "V-Ray (Alpha)" option in /stage
Modified features
Alembic
- Added support for displacement over an Alembic file with a baked "shop_materialpath" attribute
- Added support for the "alembicfullvisiblity" intrinsic attribute
- Added support for the Hair Properties' "Tessellation Multiplier" and "Geom Splines" options for hairs contained in a Delayed-Load alembic
Rendering
- Material assignments are lost for instances using @instance or @instancepath when Rayserver Instancer is enabled
- Sped up Rayserver Instancer when rendering single-level hierarchies of instances
- Added “Estimated Time Remaining” support for the V-Ray Frame Buffer
Added a "Save Deep Data to Separate Files" toggle under the Images -> Advanced tab of the Renderer ROP
Added a "Save Color Corrections to Raw Files" toggle under the Images -> Advanced tab of the Renderer ROP
Installer
- Updated the json environment setup due to a QT libraries conflict causing the Houdini Help Browser to stop working
- V-Ray for Houdini builds are now always installed in the default HFS path for the selected V-Ray version
Textures
- Added a Color parameter to the OCIO Texture
- Added "Horizontal Rotation" and "Vertical Rotation" parameters to the UV Environment VOP
- Added missing "Extrapolate Type" parameter to the Bezier Curve texture
- Exposed the "Cache Size" option under the Renderer->Options->Textures tab used for limiting the amount of RAM consumed by textures
- Added a "Clamp" option to the Bezier Curve texture
The Volume Grid texture now expects a disk file path instead of a node path
Added support for the $F tag in the texture path for lights
VRScans
- Removed the Color Space parameter from the VRScans material - this is automatically handled by the Color Space parameter on the Renderer
- Sped up the preview when loading VRScenes containing V-Ray Proxies
- Updated preview for meshes with a large numbers of faces
AOVs
- Restored the "Zero Infinity Depth" toggle to force a black background color for the Z-Depth element
- Added support for the Cryptomatte "User Attribute" mode when rendering with the GPU
Volume Grid
- Removed the "*.vdb" file extension filter from the Volume Grid Cache SOP's File Browser dialog
Texture Baking
- Added the option to explicitly specify the UDIMs to bake in the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP
- Disabled the export of splines and particles when baking textures with the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP
- Automatically recalculate invalid normals on Mesh export to resolve empty AOV output for geometry with (0, 0, 0) normals
- The "Consider for AA" toggle for render elements is now exposed on the V-Ray Baker Tool
UI
- Removed the "Use Particle Color" parameter on BSDF Point Particle material because it's redundant with the User Color VOP available
- Restored UI visibility of the “Translate” parameter on the Dome Light due to a forum request
Deadline ROP
- Added support for per-frame VRScene export and Deadline Task per VRScene submission
Export
- The OpenSubdiv toggle on the V-Ray Object Properties will now work for Alembic Delayed Load primitives
- Added support for float attributes on vertices
Added support for the V-Ray Sampler RenderID parameter for render-time randomization of VRScenes
Added support for instanced lights with animated visibility
- Added support for the V-Ray Hair Properties when rendering Alembic files containing hair primitives
Volume
- int 'vray_objectID' point attribute can now be added to packed volumes for use with the ObjectID or Multimatte render elements
Lights
- Added support for automatic generation of multiple mesh lights from packed geometry coming through a single Geo node
Materials
- Added the Anisotropy UVWGen input to the V-Ray Material
- Updated the V-Ray Toon material to the latest version available in V-Ray Core
GPU
- Added support for more than 10 materials in MtlMulti when rendering with V-Ray GPU
VFB
- Added a "Remaining Time" progress bar to the V-Ray Frame Buffer
Hython
- Added a wrapper for the ropNode.render() method to resolve syncing issues when rendering in a loop through hython
Houdini
Creating a V-Ray Renderer will now always create a V-Ray IPR ROP as well
Bug fixes
Alembic
- Empty render when the Geometry node holding the Alembic file is inside a Forced Matte Subnet node
- Fixed a hang on render start with particular Alembic file and Displacement enabled
- Crash when rendering a particular Alembic file containing degenerate faces
- Baked s@shop_materialpath assignments are lost when enabling Displacement from the Object Properties of the parent node
AOVs
- Forced material assignments from an Alembic baked shop_materialpath would not be registered for Cryptomatte in "Material Name" mode
- BRDFs hooked up to a Blend material had wrong output for the Material Select element
- Updated Cryptomatte VOP UI
Fixed a crash when selecting a Bump BRDF VOP into the Material Select Render Element
Fixed a bug with the Object Select AOV causing the Physical Camera's "Exposure" parameter to be ignored for the AOV output
The "Don't Save RGB Channel" toggle did not work as expected
- Crash when selecting Bump VOP into Material Select render element
GPU
- Fixed a crash when opening a new scene after rendering with GPU
- Hang after rendering a volumetric on the GPU and trying to close Houdini or open new file
- Fixed a crash with a specific scene when rendering on the GPU
Deadline ROP
- Export a single Houdini job with sub-tasks when the Mode is set to "Render Job"
- Fixed a bug causing "Director" to be used in place of the ROP node name when "${OS}" is part of the export path
- Selecting slaves for the Machine List adds a "Qt: Untested Windows version 10.0 detected!" message to the list
- Default Deadline ROP Frame Range for "Frames per Job" export was one frame shorter than the entire timeline range
Added support for UNC paths
Fixed a bug causing wrong evaluation of the "${OS}" variable for the Image and VRScene output paths
Environment texture parameters are not exported when no input node is provided to the slot causing V-Ray to use the "background" texture
Fixed a bug causing wrong output on the farm when Deep Output is enabled on the Renderer ROP
IPR
- IPR is not updated for volumes when the Renderer's Sampler type is set to "Bucket"
- Hooking/unhooking nodes under a File SOP used to load VDBs (e.g. Transform SOP) did not update IPR
- Changing the visibility flag on a piece of geometry would occasionally cause the entire geometry to disappear
- Creating a node inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP used to restart the IPR even if that node is not a part of the shading network attached to the rendered geometry
- Adding or removing an input connection to a VOP node would occasionally fail to update IPR
- Pressing the "X" button on the VFB to close the window would not stop the IPR
- When Motion Blur is enabled, objects with velocity blur used to have wrong motion blur after changing the Timeline frame
- V-Ray Clipper was not updated in IPR
- In some cases instanced geometry would not update in IPR
- Adding or removing an input connect to a VOP node does not update IPR
- Fixed multiple issues with IPR inside the Houdini Render View window
- Distance texture was not rendered in IPR
- Moving the camera during IPR causes "Camera Motion Blur" to disappear
The position of an animated camera was not updated when changing the timeline frame during an IPR session
Starting IPR with no Camera present in the scene does not bring up the VFB to the foreground
When IPR is started in the VFB without a camera, the VFB window would disappear
Volume Grid Shader ramps are not updated in IPR
Export
- Geometry with no animation keyframes disappears when using Rayserver Instancer with Motion Blur enabled
Added required metadata for Material Select element to support sub-BRDFs selection when e.g. Blend material is assigned
Wrong animation frame keys exported when using Time Shift to lock the time for an Alembic file containing multiple samples to the current frame
The "Find Sun Automatically" toggle on the V-Ray Sky texture was not working
Fixed a crash caused by forced Vertex attribute export
Forced subnet with forced children produces multiple visible nodes
Fixed wrong objectID parameter export for volumes causing wrong ObjectID and MultiMatte render elements output
When Motion Blur is disabled and Duration is set to 0, the geometry disappears
Alembic paths were not exported correctly for alembic files containing 2 frame samples in a single frame abc file
Some V-Ray Frame Buffer settings were not stored in the scene or went missing when opening it in non-GUI mode
Fixed wrong "Display" parameter evaluation when the parameter is animated
Updated Wrapper material, Object Properties and Volume Grid Shader parameters to fix a wrong export issue with the Volume GI properties
In some cases duplicate geometry was exported to the VRScene for every packed primitive
Locked the "Min. Geometry Samples" option for Motion Blur to 2
Object with animated "Renderable" parameter in the V-Ray Object Properties is not rendered
In some cases the live geometry instancing will fail producing large VRScene files
Objects with animated visibility are always visible
- Wrong evaluation for "${F}" when used in an expression for the "Environment" parameter on the V-Ray Renderer ROP
- Fixed a problem in a specific scene where the animated mesh vertices would not be exported
Displacement through material is not exported when some of the faces have a shader with no displacement assigned to them
Added support for a default material and default texture export under the Options tab of the V-Ray Renderer ROP
Fixed an assignment mis-match when using shop_materialpath on packed primitives in a specific scene
Volume Grid
- Phoenix FD ".aur" cache files produced wrong emission results
- Preserve environment variables functionality on the ROP was working incorrectly for volumes
V-Ray
- Fixed a difference in Motion Blur when using the "v" attribute if Rayserver Instancer is enabled
- Crash when the Chaos License Server is not installed and trying to select GPU Devices
Aerial Perspective
- The V-Ray Sun was missing
Textures
- Object level transformations were not considered by the V-Ray Distance Texture for geometry in the "Objects" list
- Fixed a bug preventing the re-loading of an OSL file in the OSL texture
- Added some missing UV Bercon parameters
- UVWGenEnvironment has horizontal and vertical rotations swapped
- OSL string widgets do not generate a drop-down menu for TexOSL
- The Distance Texture was not picking up instanced objects in IPR
- Fixed a displacement texture export issue when no file path is provided
Make Transform VOP data was not exported to the VRScene
Wrong UVs export when displacement is enabled
Removed the "Filtering Strength" parameter from the UV Bercon VOP
Changed the Reference Shader VOP's Node parameter to 'oppath' instead of 'oplist'
Added a name parameter for each layer of the Layered texture
- Fixed a bug causing UV stretching when using OpenSubdiv
Added support for all common Image File VOP output sockets when OCIO is enabled
Texture in a V-Ray Image node connected to the Displacement VOP doesn't override the texture in the displacement node
Fixed a crash when the Volume Grid texture's Path parameter is empty or incorrect
Fixed an issue with the Image File VOP causing OCIO texture colorspace parameter menus to not be populated automatically
The OCIO configuration used to be parsed per-texture instead of globally which produced noticeable slowdowns when opening a scene that contains a large number of V-Ray OCIO VOPs
Crash when no UV Mapping VOP is connected to the V-Ray Bercon Noise VOP
Displacement
- File sequence textures with an e.g. <frame4> token in the file path would not be loaded when specified directly under the Displacement VOP's Texture parameter
VRProxy
- Proxy created from Packed Geometry has wrong Viewport preview when imported back into the scene
UI
- The Physical Camera "Rolling Shutter" parameter had an unreasonable default value
- The V-Ray Bump material is present twice in the VOP menu with the copy causing a UI error
- 2D displacement settings stay hidden when displacement type is set to 2D
Updated the GPU Device Select window borders
Removed "Work in Progress" UI prefixes for new features
Added missing "End Tangents" toggle to the Bercon textures
- The Physical Camera "ISO" parameter should not be disabled for CUDA/RTX render modes
Chaos Cloud
- Fixed a crash when submitting to the Chaos Cloud without a camera in the scene
Rendering
- Fixed a crash with particles and Rayserver Instancer when Motion Blur is enabled, velocity is used and Sampler Max Subdivs is greater than 11
- Fixed a bug causing wrong EXR Metadata export due to ticks (`) in the string field
- Fixed a bug causing no motion blur with non-default Motion Blur settings on CentOS 7 with Houdini 17.5
- Car Paint material was missing a "flake_uvwgen" input
- Environment texture parameters were not exported when no input node is provided to the input slot causing V-Ray to use the "background" texture
- Added a "Save Deep Data to Separate Files" toggle on the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Images -> Advanced tab
Rendering splines with V-Ray GPU would produce dark artifacts on the hairs in some scenes that contain a V-Ray Rect or Sphere light
Crash on render start under Mac OSX
Volume
- Fixed a bug causing wrong VRScene export for volume sequences loaded as Packed Disk Primitive types
- Fixed wrong objectID parameter export for volumes causing wrong ObjectID and MultiMatte elements output
- Duplicate "Disabling Light Cache for ..." message printed for volumes even when Volume Light Cache is disabled when rendering in IPR
Volumes
- Fixed a crash when rendering volumes instanced over points with a @pscale of 0
Houdini
- Fixed a bug causing the Houdini “hou” python module to fail loading when starting Houdini in batch
- Fixed an issue with the V-Ray TOP node caused by using a relative, rather than absolute path in the VRayTOP HDA
Referenced parameters are sometimes not evaluated for the V-Ray Renderer ROP when placed inside a locked HDA
Referenced python expressions would sometimes not be evaluated correctly for the V-Ray Renderer ROP
The "Pack Scene" option from the V-Ray menu used to crash Houdini when used on an empty scene with no V-Ray Renderer ROP present
Lights
- Lights instanced over template points do not disappear if the template point is removed during animation
- Fixed a crash on render end with instanced Mesh lights
- Fixed HDA errors thrown by Mesh light when attempting to create a digital asset
- Sphere and IES lights were not exported to the VRScene
- Fixed a bug causing instanced lights to emit no light in the scene
Materials
- Light links are not considered by the Volume Scatter material
- Fixed an issue with Dispersion when using the acesCG color space
- Fixed a bug causing scrambled material assignments when assigning a Multi ID Material to a mesh with OpenSubdiv enabled from the Object Properties
VRScene
- Materials are not re-built correctly when importing them from a VRScene that uses the parameter::socket notation
Crash when importing material from VRScene generated in Houdini using the "Plugin Name" option
Empty material import with VRScenes generated from Houdini when using the "Scene Name" option