Page History
This page provides information on the V-Ray GPU rendering engine within 3ds Max.
Overview
...
V-Ray GPU is a separate rendering engine in 3ds Max, provided by Chaos, that offers GPU hardware acceleration. It also works with CPU hardware and utilizes both CPU and GPU devices for smooth hybrid rendering.
...
| UI Text Box | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
For answers to common questions about V-Ray GPU, see the V-Ray GPU FAQ page. For more information on NVidia RTX, check the OptiX and NVLink FAQ page. |
...
Enable GPU Rendering
...
| Section | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Supported Hardware and Drivers
...
| Fancy Bullets | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
|
...
If V-Ray GPU cannot find a supported CUDA device on the system, it silently falls back to CPU code. To see if V-Ray is actually rendering on the GPU, check out its console output.
...
| UI Text Box | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||
To use NVLINK on supported hardware, NVLINK devices must be set to TCC mode. This is recommended for Pascal, Volta and Turning-based Quadro models. For GeForce RTX cards, a SLI setup is sufficient. Also note that to prevent performance loss, not all data is shared between devices. |
...
Choosing Which Devices to Use for Rendering
...
You may not want to use all available GPU devices for rendering, especially if you have multiple GPUs and you want to leave one of them free for working on the user interface or you may want to combine your CPU and GPU together (see the Hybrid Rendering section below). To do this, you can use the control in the V-Ray GPU Render Devices Select in 3ds Max, which allows you to specify which devices you want to use for GPU rendering without restarting 3ds Max.
Alternatively, you can use the supplied GUI tool, which you can find in Start Menu > Programs > V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max #### > Select rendering devices for V-Ray GPU for 3ds Max ####, where #### is the 3ds Max version.
After changing this option, you need to restart the 3ds Max (or V-Ray Standalone) if it is running for the changes to take effect. If the V-Ray GPU render server is running as a Windows service, you may need to stop it from the Services applet in the Control Panel.
The Select The Select devices for V-Ray rendering tool also allows for selecting GPU devices for denoising. It can also set Low GPU Thread Priority per device. When Low priority is enabled, V-Ray tries to lessen the load on GPUs working on displaying graphics to the monitor(s) in order to give them more resources to complete other processes and tasks for the OS. This is done by internally using a lower value for Rays bundle size/IPR rays bundle size for those GPUs with attached displays (Rays per pixel is still the same for all GPUs). This can affect the overall performance, and the render speed might be reduced. It is recommended to utilize a separate GPU for the display, if possible.
...
| UI Text Box | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
The asterisk (*) sign next to a GPU device's name in the list means that a monitor is connected to that GPU device. If two or more monitors are connected to the GPU device, there are 2 or more asterisks next to the GPU device name. There is a tooltip that appears upon hovering over the asterisks that shows information on the GPU and number of monitors connected to it. |
The Select devices for V-Ray rendering tool has less functionalities and different design in earlier versions of V-Ray. It is located again in Start Menu > Programs > V-Ray 5.0 for 3ds Max > Select rendering devices for V-Ray GPU 5.0 for 3ds Max.
Balancing the GPU Load
...
If you have only one GPU on your system, you may find that the user interface becomes sluggish and unresponsive while V-Ray GPU is rendering. To alleviate this problem, reduce the Rays per pixel and/or the Ray Rays bundle size / IPR ray bundle size parameters parameters in the Performance tab of the V-Ray GPU renderer settings. For example, you can try values like like 64/1 or 32/1. This breaks up the data passed to the GPU into smaller chunks so that the user interface requests can be processed faster. Note, however, that this reduces the rendering speed. Turn on the statistics display to check the difference in render speed and to find the optimal settings for your system.
| Anchor | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Hybrid Rendering with CPUs and the CUDA Engine
...