V-Ray Next, Update 1

V-Ray

NEW Added a V-Ray for Houdini installer – a custom JSON file is placed in $HFS/packages with the environment variables required by Houdini to find and load V-Ray

NEW Significantly optimized rendering startup speed and VRScene size by implementing a smart export algorithm which ignores geometry attributes not utilized during rendering

NEW Added support for the VOP Debug flag - it works similar as an isolate select for the flagged node

NEW Added support for custom V-Ray plugins

NEW Added support for Python Post-Translate scripts on the V-Ray Renderer ROP

NEW Added support for V-Ray Object Properties on custom HDAs

NEW Integrated the OCIO texture in the Image File VOP

NEW Added Renderer selection menus to the V-Ray Shelf's "Render", "ROP Parm", "IPR(VFB)" and "IPR ROP Parm" invoked by Shift+LMB clicking the icon.

NEW Added support for environment variables in the Renderer's Image and VRScene output file paths

NEW Added "Forced Attributes" list to the V-Ray Renderer's Objects tab and the V-Ray Object Properties

IMPROVED Changed "uvwgen" type to int to allow promotion as input parameter on Sub-network VOPs and HDAs

IMPROVED Added the "SSS ID" option to the V-Ray Object Properties

IMPROVED Added Volume input slot to Material Output VOP to allow support for Environment Fog as a material

IMPROVED Use a V-Ray Light Material instead of a diffuse V-Ray Standard Material for debug shading

FIXED AlSurface material's SSS is ignored when the SSS object is placed behind a refractive V-Ray Material with Refraction Depth higher than 1

FIXED Fixed an error thrown by Houdini when attempting to create an HDA within a V-Ray Material Builder VOP

FIXED Removing the OSL code from the OSL Texture or OSL Material would not remove the spare parameters

Chaos Cloud

NEW Added a Chaos Cloud ROP used for submitting jobs to the Chaos Cloud

FIXED VRScene exported for Chaos Cloud contains more data than required

VRScans

IMPROVED Removed the "Color Space" parameter from the VRScans material - this is automatically handled by the Color Space parameter on the Renderer ROP

FIXED Updated the VRScans VOP UI

Rendering

NEW Added the option to change the rendering color space to "ACEScg" from the Color Mapping tab of the Renderer ROP

NEW Added support for resumable rendering

NEW Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP's Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the "v" velocity attribute instead of transformations or deformations

NEW Skip ray-geometry intersections for hair if "Primary Visibility" is disabled under the Object Properties or Render Stats material to speed up rendering

FIXED The V-Ray Sun was missing from the V-Ray Aerial Perspective

FIXED Crash on render end when rendering with HBatch or Hython

FIXED Fixed a crash when using per-primitive string attributes in the Image File VOP's File path

FIXED Fixed a crash with Single VOP

FIXED Screen Window X/Y options are ignored if "V-Ray Physical Camera" properties are not present on the camera

FIXED Fixed a crash when using Distributed Rendering to render scene consisting of a single spline only

FIXED Fixed a render-time crash in specific cases when the Log Window option on the V-Ray Renderer ROP is enabled

FIXED Fixed a bug causing the Light Cache calculation to get stuck when rendering with Displacement and a Color to Float texture

FIXED V-Ray Material's Refraction IOR used to affect Reflections even when "Lock Fresnel IOR to Refraction IOR" is disabled

FIXED Wrong normals for manually transformed Agent primitives at the SOP level

FIXED Fixed a crash when rendering a degenerate 2-vertex primitive

FIXED No image output when rendering a scene which is not saved to disk and uses ${HIP} in the output path

FIXED If Distributed Rendering's "Use Local Machine" option is disabled, rendering locally does not work even when DR is disabled

FIXED Crash with OSL Material when GGX Roughness is higher than 0.0

FIXED Crash to desktop if the render camera position is changed during rendering an Agent Crowd Source SOP with Motion Blur enabled

GPU

NEW Added CUDA support for custom attributes when shading particles

IMPROVED Exported Bucket Sampler settings for CUDA and RTX are now completely identical to the values set in the UI

IMPROVED Updated default mapping for textures with no uvwgen input

FIXED Hang after rendering a volumetric on the GPU and trying to close Houdini or open new file

FIXED Crash when opening a new scene after rendering with CUDA or RTX

FIXED Fixed a render-time crash when switching between CUDA and RTX

FIXED The unsupported Volume Grid Shader Emission "Enabled" toggle is now correctly ignored when rendering with CUDA or RTX

FIXED Empty Production render when Motion Blur is enabled on the V-Ray Physical Camera

FIXED Materials part of a "Multi ID Material" are swapped when rendering with CUDA or RTX

FIXED Noise COP in Sparse convolution mode, plugged in a V-Ray Image File VOP with op:/path causes a crash when rendering with CUDA or RTX

FIXED Normal maps are not rendered with V-Ray GPU

FIXED Tiled EXRs are not rendered with V-Ray GPU

FIXED Crash when starting a Bucket Sampler Production render of a scene containing a volume primitive, stopping the render and starting IPR

FIXED Hair is ignored by all scene lights if a Rectangle, Sphere, Spot or Mesh light is present in the scene

IPR

NEW Modifying Motion Blur parameters on the V-Ray Renderer ROP or the Physical Camera parameters will now update IPR

NEW Modifying the lists under the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Objects tab will now update IPR

NEW Custom AOVs created by the Material Output VOP are now updated in IPR

NEW Added a "Start IPR" button to the V-Ray Shelf

IMPROVED Added IPR support for the Physical Camera and Renderer ROP motion blur settings when rendering geometry instanced on points with the "@v" present and Velocity Blur enabled

IMPROVED Added separate Bundle Size and Samples Per Pixel options for Production and IPR rendering

FIXED IPR is not updated for volumes when the Renderer's Sampler type is set to "Bucket"

FIXED Hooking/unhooking nodes under a File SOP used for loading VDBs (e.g. Transform SOP) did not update IPR

FIXED Changing the visibility flag on a piece of geometry would occasionally cause the entire geometry to disappear

FIXED 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

FIXED Adding or removing an input connection to a VOP node would occasionally fail to update IPR

FIXED Pressing the "X" button on the VFB to close the window would not stop the IPR

FIXED When Motion Blur is enabled, objects with velocity blur used to have wrong motion blur after changing the Timeline frame

FIXED Reducing the number of instanced volumes will now update IPR

FIXED Wrong motion blur for objects instanced over points with velocity "v" attribute when changing the timeline frame

FIXED Fixed a bug causing the Houdini UI to become sluggish once the IPR Noise Threshold value is reached

FIXED Fixed a crash when changing attribute values during an IPR session with Motion Blur enabled

FIXED Fixed a bug causing the render region in the VFB to be ignored during IPR under specific circumstances

FIXED Fixed a bug causing IPR to update unnecessarily when changing the name of a material

FIXED Camera selection is ignored, Renderer ROP's camera is used instead in the Render View window

FIXED Fixed a bug causing IPR to occasionally stop updating when changing the topology or the timeline frame with heavy geometry

FIXED Fixed a Viewport IPR render region issue causing the rendered region to be offset if the camera is selected in the Network View after IPR was started

FIXED Fixed a Viewport IPR render region bug causing the image to be rendered with incorrect focal length

FIXED Nodes disconnected from the shading tree no longer will update IPR on parameter changes

FIXED Shift+LMB clicking on the shelf's IPR icon does not bring up a menu

FIXED The Volume Grid Shader's "Use Opacity Ramp" parameter does not update in IPR

FIXED The visibility of the source object for instancing is modified when changing the timeline frame

FIXED The IPR randomly does not update when the point count of the rendered geometry changes in large increments

FIXED Per-primitives displacement affects different primitives for each IPR refresh, if V-Ray Displacement properties are not applied to the Geometry node

FIXED Can not start IPR if a Render View panel is not present in the Houdini UI

FIXED Disabling the visibility of Geometry node holding a VRScene SOP while IPR is running causes a crash if there is a material override assigned to it

FIXED Objects imported into a sub-network disappear when changing settings on their assigned materials

FIXED Changing the visibility of a Geometry node during an IPR session has no effect

FIXED IPR used to discard a light if the Intensity parameter is animated and it reaches zero during the animation

FIXED Changing Volume Grid Shader parameters during IPR would occasionally cause incorrect scaling of the volume

FIXED Removing the file path from a Light's Emission Color or Shadow Color texture parameter does not update IPR

FIXED Crash when starting a VFB IPR session with a V-Ray Renderer ROP inside an HDA

FIXED The Ignore flag of VOP nodes does not update IPR when a material is assigned through a Material Output VOP

FIXED Empty Render View IPR and Viewport IPR when both "Use Denoiser" and "Use Render Elements" (with a RE:Denoiser) is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP

FIXED Crash with CUDA CPU IPR and BRDF Stochastic Flakes because object level scale is ignored by the BRDF

FIXED CUDA IPR errors and crash when changing Volume Grid shader options while IPR is running

FIXED Start Offset option of the V-Ray Proxy is not updated in IPR

FIXED Connecting a Displacement VOP to a Material Output VOP assigned through a Stylesheet while IPR is running causes a crash

FIXED Repeatedly starting and stopping the IPR fills up RAM and does not release it

Texture Baking

NEW Added a "V-Ray Baker Tool" SOP node with support for common texture baking workflows

IMPROVED Added the option to explicitly specify the UDIMs to bake in the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP

IMPROVED Disabled the export of splines and particles when baking textures with the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP

FIXED Automatically recalculate invalid normals on Mesh export to resolve empty AOV output for geometry with (0, 0, 0) normals

FIXED Fixed a bug causing baked geometry to export as invisible

FIXED Adding an object to the Target Objects list caused it to become un-renderable in regular Production rendering

AOVs

NEW Added support for custom AOVs created from the Material Output VOP

NEW Added support for forcing the "Extra Texture" Render Element output to 32-bit when rendering 16-bit Multi-Channel EXRs

NEW Added the "Indirect", "Indirect Diffuse" and "Indirect Specular" modes to the Light Select element

NEW Added the "Object Select" render element which allows isolating specific objects in a separate render channel

NEW V-Ray Light material with "Direct Illumination" enabled can now be specified under the Light Select render element's "Lights" list

NEW Restored the "Zero Infinity Depth" toggle to force a black background color for the Z-Depth element

IMPROVED Added support for specifying a list of Render Elements ROPs instead of a single node

IMPROVED Added an Exclude list option to the V-Ray Extra Texture Render Element

IMPROVED Added the "Force Lossless Compression" toggle on the Material Output VOP

IMPROVED Added "Invert Depth" toggle to the Z-Depth render element

IMPROVED Added "Deep Output" toggle to the Z-Depth render element

IMPROVED Added support for the Volume Grid shader

FIXED BRDFs hooked up to a Blend material had wrong output for the Material Select element

FIXED NaN pixel values for Normals element when "Filtering" and Motion Blur with Shutter Efficiency of 0.5 are enabled

FIXED Wrong export for frame samples when Velocity element is present produces wrong output for static frames

FIXED Incorrect Cryptomatte render element for volumes in Volumetric Geometry mode

FIXED Wrong Light Select output when rendering volumes with Light Cache enabled

FIXED Added a missing parameter export causing wrong Light Select output when rendering in Volumetric Mode

FIXED Added missing "Color Mapping", "Consider for AA" and "Denoise" options to the Light Select render element

FIXED The "Denoise" option on Color Channel render elements had no effect

FIXED No Anti-Aliasing for Cryptomatte element in Material mode because of missing face_mtlIDs parameter on GeomStaticMesh

FIXED Presence of "Reflection Alpha" element causes wrong Reflection output

FIXED Light Select output for volumetric effects was wrong due to a missing parameter output

Instancing

NEW Added support for '@instance' point attribute which functions the same as the '@instancepath' attribute

NEW Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP's Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the "v" velocity attribute of points when instancing packed geometry

IMPROVED Sped up Rayserver Instancer when rendering single-level hierarchies of instances

FIXED Material assignments are lost for instances using @instance or @instancepath when Rayserver Instancer is enabled

FIXED Fixed a difference in Motion Blur when using the "v" attribute if Rayserver Instancer is enabled

FIXED Wrong fields loaded for rendering of fire and smoke in specific cases with volume instancing

FIXED Iterating over a large number of instances with a Post-Translate script causes a crash

FIXED Fixed wrong export for instanced volumes when using 'unexpandedfilename' intrinsic attribute

FIXED Mesh Material assignments to a V-Ray Proxy are not preserved when using the Rayserver Instancer

V-Ray Scene

NEW Added support for unpacking the VRScene into live polygon geometry under the "Import" tab of the VRScene SOP

NEW Enabled VRScene export from Houdini Indie

NEW Added initial support for importing VRScene geometry as regular polygons in the Houdini scene through the "Expand Primitives" -> "Allow Unpacking to Polygons (WIP)" toggle

NEW Added support for importing VRScene materials through Python under the _vfh_ipr module using vrsceneGetMaterials() and vrsceneImportMaterial()

NEW Registered additional MODO-specific V-Ray nodes for VRScene Material Import compatibility

IMPROVED Sped up the preview when loading VRScenes containing V-Ray Proxies

IMPROVED Sped up loading of VRScenes containing thousands of individual objects

IMPROVED Sped up preview of VRScenes containing large numbers of V-Ray Proxies

IMPROVED Sped preview for meshes with a large numbers of faces

FIXED Fixed a bug causing materials imported from a 3ds Max generated VRScene to lack bump mapping

FIXED Flip Axis toggle produces normals with flipped Y/Z components for geometry imported from 3ds Max

FIXED Viewport preview is missing objects when "Expand Primitives" is toggled between "on" and "off"

FIXED Crash when changing the Viewport Preview mode of the VRScene Import SOP

FIXED Materials imported from the VRScene have invalid name if the VRScene is exported from a DCC application that uses '#' signs as part of the naming convention

FIXED Preview of geometry stored in the VRScene file does not work

Export

NEW Added support for the Display toggle under the Render tab of the Geometry node

IMPROVED All scene nodes are cooked when IPR or Production rendering is started, regardless of their render visibility

IMPROVED CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18 was not supported

IMPROVED Added the "Strip Paths" VRScene export option

FIXED Geometry with no animation keyframes disappears when using Rayserver Instancer with Motion Blur enabled

FIXED V-Ray Frame Buffer settings are not exported when generating per-frame VRScenes

FIXED Point velocity attribute "v" is not exported for packed fragments for rendering with Velocity Blur

FIXED VRScene export for cameras when rendering a frame sequence was missing a parameter which produced a wrong message for the currently rendered frame's number

FIXED Per-frame Camera transforms are not exported when "Use Camera Path" for Light Cache is enabled

FIXED Overscan is ignored when rendering through batch with "Ignore VFB Settings" enabled

FIXED The "creaseweight" attribute is not exported when using V-Ray Subdivision

FIXED Transform SOP over packed unconnected points has no effect

FIXED Lights in sub-networks are exported and rendered when the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Candidate Lights list is empty

FIXED Wrong export for custom attributes on Packed Fragment primitives

FIXED Wrong "Cd" attribute export for instanced lights

FIXED Missing V-Ray Frame Buffer parameters when rendering in batch

FIXED Wrong parsing of system environment variables specified in the Image Output Path of a Renderer ROP when the variable starts with "F", e.g. "${FNAME}"

FIXED Specifying an object which is a child of a sub-network in the Renderer's Force Objects list forces the entire parent sub-network

FIXED An object which is a child of a sub-network specified in the Renderer's Exclude Objects list is still rendered

FIXED A Candidate Object is rendered even when the node Display flag is disabled if the Display parameter on the node is enabled and set to 1

FIXED Objects in multiple sub-network levels are not rendered

FIXED Material Builder VOP assigned to a Mesh material is not exported

FIXED Objects specified for instancing using the "@instancepath" attribute are not exported if their name is "inst2"

FIXED Remap textures's "value" output used to output type color instead of type float

FIXED Added support for instancing Mesh Lights inside sub-networks when the entire parent sub-network is specified for instancing

FIXED Renderer ROP outputs all render elements from all Render Elements ROPs in the scene when Forced Materials is set to wildcard

FIXED Empty hair animation export after the first animation frame when exporting to a single *.vrscene file

FIXED No hair UVs when rendering with CUDA and using UV Channel Name VOP

FIXED Missing padding when evaluating "$F*" variable in the image Output Path of the Renderer

FIXED Wrong transformations of Packed Fragments when the "Rayserver Instancer" option in the V-Ray Object Properties is enabled

FIXED String attributes on Packed objects are not exported

FIXED Wrong parsing of string parameters which reference nodes inside HDAs

FIXED Crash when instancing objects from a SOP-level Sub-network whose Display and Render flags are mis-matched

FIXED The "Visible Children" parameter on Sub-network acts as a "Force Objects" list instead of a "Candidate Objects" list

FIXED Material SOP overrides are not handled

FIXED Per-frame transformation of geometry are not exported causing incorrect motion blur

FIXED Geometry nodes with disabled display flag are not rendered when specified in the "Force Objects" list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP

Deadline

NEW Added a custom V-Ray Deadline ROP for Standalone job submission

NEW Added support for partitioning the submission into frame chunks for the Houdini VRScene export job

NEW Added support for partitioning the submission into individual tasks for the V-Ray Standalone job

IMPROVED Export a single Houdini job with sub-tasks when the Mode is set to "Render Job"

FIXED Job is set to Deadline for rendering even if a camera is missing

FIXED Selecting slaves for the Machine List adds a "Qt: Untested Windows version 10.0 detected!" message to the list

Alembics

NEW Added support for Delayed Load Alembic material assignments through the "@shop_materialpath" attribute baked into the Alembic file

NEW Added support for hair material assignment when using "@shop_materialpath" with Delayed Load Alembics

IMPROVED Added support for reading float and integer attributes at render time

FIXED Empty render when the Geometry node holding the Alembic file is inside a Forced Matte Subnet node

FIXED Exporting float attributes added to packed alembic primitives caused unexpected behavior with the Triplanar texture

FIXED Forced material assignments from an Alembic baked shop_materialpath would not be registered for Cryptomatte in "Material Name" mode

FIXED Fixed a bug causing double export for Alembic primitives when the Alembic SOP "Create Primitives For" is set to "Shape and Transform Nodes"

FIXED Fixed a bug causing incorrect frame pattern export for per-frame Alembic files

FIXED No UVs are loaded for alembics with changing topology and "abcframe" offset

FIXED Rendering per-frame alembic files with multiple frames and velocity blur disabled used to cause stretching at first and final frame of animation

FIXED Invalid motion blur bounding box used to cause clipping in specific setup

FIXED Crash when rendering an *.abc file with baked "@shop_materialpath" if the materials are assigned to individual faces

FIXED Material Builder VOP and Material Output VOP assignments to Delayed Load Alembics with baked shop_materialpath attribute are ignored

FIXED Fixed a crash with Alembic files and invalid hair data

FIXED Fixed a crash with Delayed Load Alembic primitives and Motion Blur enabled with specific scene

Volumes

NEW Added support for the 'unexpandedfilename' intrinsic primitive attribute for VDBs loaded as Packed Disk Primitives for volume instancing

NEW Added support for packed volume instancing

IMPROVED Removed the "*.vdb" file extension filter from the Volume Grid Cache SOP's File Browser dialog

IMPROVED Removed the GI Bounces parameter from the Volume Grid Shader because it has not been supported for a long time

IMPROVED Added support for channel remapping of Phoenix FD Aur cache files using the string parameters under the Fields tab of the Volume Grid shader

IMPROVED Volumes are no longer baked when a Volume Visualization SOP is present in the node graph after a File SOP

IMPROVED Added a "Use Opacity Ramp" toggle that allows switching between Simple Smoke Opacity and the Opacity Ramp

IMPROVED Skip baking of volumes to VRScene when using File Cache, Null, Transform or Switch SOP

IMPROVED Exposed the "Backward Trace" motion blur method on the Volume Grid shader

IMPROVED Exposed the Volumetric Render Elements options on the Volume Grid shader

IMPROVED Exposed additional Fire Opacity modulation options when the Volume Grid shader's Opacity Mode is set to "Use Own Opacity"

FIXED Phoenix FD ".aur" cache files produced wrong emission results

FIXED Preserve environment variables functionality on the ROP was working incorrectly for volumes

FIXED VDBs loaded as Packed Disk primitives are baked into the VRScene when copied using the CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18

FIXED VDBs in a sub-network specified under the "Forced Objects" list on the Renderer ROP are not exported

FIXED Fixed a bug causing ch() and chs() expressions to be evaluated incorrectly on the File SOP's File parameter when exporting VDBs

FIXED Fixed incorrect cache path export when Motion Blur is enabled

FIXED Material ID option has no effect

FIXED Wrong transform export for VDBs imported with File SOP

FIXED Geometry nodes with disabled visibility which contain a volume are not rendered when specified in the "Force Objects" list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP

FIXED Crash when rendering live volumes

FIXED Providing the same name for Fire Volume and Smoke Volume on the Volume Grid shader breaks the data ranges of the Fire Luminance, Smoke Color and Smoke Opacity ramps

Displacement

NEW Added support for the "@creaseweight" vertex attribute when rendering with Displacement Subdivision or Open Subdiv

NEW Added support for render-time baking of subdivision and displacement into a *.vrmesh file from the V-Ray Object Properties "Bake Geometry" tab

IMPROVED Added the option to disable Displacement but keep Subdivision enabled

FIXED 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

FIXED The "Render as Subdivision" toggle on the V-Ray Object Properties used to also enable Displacement

FIXED Texture is not exported when provided directly inside the Displacement Properties or the Texture parameter of the Displacement VOP

FIXED Preserve Map Borders option does not work when "Render As Subdivision" is enabled

Hair

NEW Added "ACEScg" color space support for the Hair material

IMPROVED Added "Displacement", "Subdivision", "Hair", "Proxy", "Particles" toggles in the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Options tab

FIXED Wrong velocity interpolation for deforming splines

FIXED Fixed a crash with packed hair geometry

FIXED UV attribute is ignored when Hair Properties are missing from the rendered splines

FIXED Crash when using the 'distance_along_strand_normalized' output of the Hair Sampler as the Diffuse color of a V-Ray Material

FIXED Wrong attribute export for hair when a mismatch between the number of points and number of vertices is present

FIXED Only vector attributes are exported

V-Ray Proxy

NEW Added support for unpacking the *.vrmesh geometry into live Houdini geometry

FIXED Proxy created from Packed Geometry has wrong Viewport preview when imported back into the scene

FIXED Changing the "Preview Type" parameter causes a crash when loading hair

FIXED The ply2vrmesh tool produced wrong preview for a large number of hair strands

FIXED The geometry preview of a V-Ray Proxy is forced to a bounding box when the *.vrmesh has more faces than the specified number in the "Max Preview Faces" parameter

FIXED Frame tag $F is not parsed correctly for both preview and render

FIXED The V-Ray Proxy ROP exports empty *.vrmesh files when placed inside a sub-network

Textures

NEW Added support for user attributes in the Image File VOP's File Path to support per primitive texture overrides

IMPROVED Added "Horizontal Rotation" and "Vertical Rotation" options to the UV Environment VOP

IMPROVED The color of input texture to the Dirt Texture's Radius parameter is now multiplied by the parameter's numerical value

IMPROVED Exposed the Tri-Planar texture Size parameter as an input socket of the VOP node

IMPROVED Exposed the "Default Color" option for Image File VOP - used when no UVs are present or a UDIM tile texture is missing

IMPROVED Distance Texture's Objects are now always exported, regardless of their visibility

IMPROVED Added dynamic IN/OUT menus for the OCIO Texture

IMPROVED Reduced the TriPlanar Texture's default Blend amount to 0.1 from 1.0

IMPROVED Added a "UV Bercon" mapping VOP used when driving the parameters of a "Bercon Noise" VOP with the output of another "Bercon Noise"

FIXED Object level transformations were not considered by the V-Ray Distance Texture for geometry in the "Objects" list

FIXED Fixed a bug preventing the re-loading of an OSL file in the OSL texture

FIXED Added some missing UV Bercon parameters

FIXED Updated OCIO texture dynamic menus so that reverting the drop-down to its default will correctly export the first menu entry instead of an empty string

FIXED Particles specified under the Distance texture's Objects list are ignored at render-time

FIXED First animation frame only is exported for objects with disabled visibility flag specified under the Distance texture's Objects lists

FIXED Remap Texture outputs black color when in RGB or HSV modes

FIXED V-Ray Distance Texture ignores the world-space transformation of the specified objects

FIXED Bezier Curve texture present in the shading network causes a crash

FIXED Animated default color values are not updated when rendering an animation

FIXED Layered Texture does not work with input COP images

FIXED Layered Texture input textures are exported in reversed order

FIXED Crash when "Cache Bitmaps Between Renders" is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP and a tiled EXR texture is used for rendering

FIXED Export pixels data for all rendered frames if the COP network node is Time Dependent to support animated COP textures such as the Ocean Evaluate SOP's output

FIXED COP image assigned as a Dome Light texture uses Spherical Environment mapping

FIXED COP image is now updated in IPR

FIXED Export "A" image plane when referencing a COP image to support Ocean Evaluate SOP Cusp values

FIXED Shape COP referenced as texture produces wrong results

FIXED COP image used as a texture for the Physical Camera's Bitmap Aperture produces wrong results

FIXED Fixed wrong gamma export for COPs images

Lights

NEW Added new light instance toggle on the Object Properties to significantly reduce export time and VRScene size when working with a large number of instanced lights

NEW Added support for non-uniform U/V Size values for Rectangle Light when in Disk mode

NEW Added "Direct Illumination" option on the Light material which generates a V-Ray Mesh Light and added support for Alembic files and custom attributes for the V-Ray Mesh Light

NEW Added the "Light Reflection Mask" and "Light Refraction Mask" parameters under the V-Ray Object Properties which now work separately from the option on the Render -> Shading tab of the Geometry node

IMPROVED Enabled export of "Double-Sided" for Mesh Lights generated by the Light material when in "Direct Illumination" mode

IMPROVED Added support for exporting textures connected to the BRDF Light's color input when "Direct Illumination" is enabled

FIXED All lights are exported regardless for the Geometry node's Render -> Shading -> Reflection/Refraction Mask parameters making disabling reflections or refractions of specific lights for the given object impossible

FIXED Light linking for V-Ray Environment fog is not working

FIXED Light links are not updated when reopening a *.hip file which is not handled correctly by V-Ray

FIXED Animated Mesh Light geometry is not updated when rendering an animation

FIXED Crash when rendering Mesh Lights

FIXED Image File VOP assigned as Dome Light texture is not updated in IPR

V-Ray Fur

NEW Added support for unpacking fur into polygon geometry

FIXED Fur attributes are not exported unless specified in the Force Attributes list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP

FIXED Wrong Fur preview when the input geometry is scaled from the Transform tab of the parent Geometry node

V-Ray Clipper

IMPROVED Added support for capping-off the clipped mesh with a render-time generated surface

FIXED Default clipper would not fill holes of the clipped geometry

FIXED Clip mesh is visible in the final render

Installer

FIXED Updated the json environment setup due to a QT libraries conflict causing the Houdini Help Browser to stop working

FIXED V-Ray for Houdini builds are now always installed in the default HFS path for the selected V-Ray version

FIXED License server settings from previous installations were not automatically filled for new installations

FIXED Fixed an issue causing corrupt builds for OSX

FIXED Canceling installation on OSX does not stop Chaos Cloud Client installation

FIXED Chaos Cloud Client installation fails on OSX

VFB

NEW Added a Right-Click menu to the Frame Buffer's Teapot icons allowing Render Camera selection

NEW Added support for sharing the Frame Buffer History settings between different Renderer nodes using the V-Ray Menu's Global Settings.

NEW Added "Use VFB Background Image" parameter under the Renderer ROP's Images tab that overrides the Frame Buffer background image and supports image sequences using $F notation

NEW Added an option to ignore V-Ray Frame Buffer settings when rendering a hip file in batch

FIXED The "Render Last" camera is now reset when starting a Production render from the Renderer ROP's "Render to Disk" button

FIXED V-Ray Frame Buffer "Stop" button does not interrupt network location requests for files

FIXED Fixed an occasional bucket draw issue when the VFB is not the focused window starting with Houdini 18.0.391

FIXED Render region toggle is stuck and can not be disabled

FIXED Fixed a bug causing wrong Frame Buffer region settings on scene file reopen

FIXED Render region is ignored

FIXED Frame Buffer size is reduced every time it is reopened

UI

NEW Added the "Sharp Mip-Map" option on the Image File VOP

NEW Updated all V-Ray for Houdini node icons

NEW Added a V-Ray menu in the main toolbar

NEW Added V-Ray in the list of registered rendering engines for the Edit - Preferences - Rendering dialog

NEW Added OpenGL properties to the V-Ray Material Output VOP

NEW Added a "Reset VFB Position" button under the Images tab of the Renderer ROP

NEW Added the "Max. MipMap Resolution" parameter under the Options -> Textures tab of the Renderer ROP

NEW VOP node parameters are now disabled when an input connection is present

NEW Added a Default Color option to the Image File VOP

NEW Added support for storing the "VFH_BUILD" and "VFH_VRAY" variables in the *.hip file

NEW Added a Color parameter to the OCIO Texture

IMPROVED Updated the default Alpha Contribution parameter range to (-1, 1) for the Wrapper Material and Matte Object Properties

IMPROVED Removed the Proxy Export and Proxy Import shelf buttons

IMPROVED Renamed "Import Aura cache" shelf button to "Import AUR Cache"

IMPROVED Lowered the default Shadow Bias to 0.0002 from 0.002 for all V-Ray Lights

IMPROVED Updated the parameter names of the SSS2 Complex material to be consistent with the naming convention used in V-Ray for Maya

IMPROVED Hid the "Channel Data Ranges" parameter on the Volume Grid Shader and added a callback script to find the dependent node instead

IMPROVED Updated the default parameter values of the ColorCorrection VOP

IMPROVED Set the default Maximum Render Time for the Progressive Sampler to 0 instead of 1 for both CPU and GPU rendering

IMPROVED Unregistered the V-Ray Sphere Fade VOP so it is not present in the /mat network

IMPROVED Changed the default Opacity Mode of the V-Ray Material to "Stochastic"

IMPROVED Added the *.tx and *.tex extension to the list of displayed formats in the V-Ray Image File VOP's File Browser dialog

IMPROVED Updated the Material Output VOP's OpenGL parameters

IMPROVED Added Phoenix FD Fire/Smoke render presets to the Volume Grid shader

IMPROVED Moved the Volume Grid debug messages to log level "Debug" - those will only show when the hidden Renderer ROP parameter "exporter_log_level" is set to "Debug"

IMPROVED Updated the Render Elements template generation script

IMPROVED Changed the Multi-Matte Render Element "Affect Matte Objects" parameter name to "Include Matte Objects"

IMPROVED Updated the Color Correct (Max) texture's default values

IMPROVED Updated the default values for all UV Mapping VOPs

IMPROVED Show the "Digital Assets" tab for the Tab menu when inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP

IMPROVED Added viewport preview for the "Directional" parameter of the V-Ray Rect Light

IMPROVED Renamed Scatter Radius to Scatter Color for the SSS Material

FIXED Added an output socket to the Color Correct (Maya) VOP

FIXED Fixed "Parameter stepped on" errors caused by duplicate parameter imports

FIXED Disabled the visibility of the Bump Delta Scale option when the Render engine is set to CUDA

FIXED Printing of Console messages is not filtered

FIXED Physical Camera's F-Stop, ISO and Shutter Speed should not be disabled when Exposure is disabled

FIXED Override material had wrong disable condition for the "Environment" parameter

FIXED Added missing Stereoscopic camera "Output Layout" parameter

FIXED The Physical Camera "Rolling Shutter" parameter had an unreasonable default value

FIXED The V-Ray Bump material is present twice in the VOP menu with the copy causing a UI error

FIXED 2D displacement settings stay hidden when displacement type is set to 2D

REMOVED Removed the "Reflection Alpha" option from the Color Channel (RE) node

REMOVED Removed default "/obj/cam1" string from the UV Projection VOP's Projection Camera parameter because it was causing errors when creating HDAs

REMOVED Disabled the visibility of the UV Channel Name VOP's Channel Index parameter

REMOVED Removed the "Probabilistic Rendering" option from the Volume Grid shader

REMOVED Removed the "Reflection Alpha" element from the Render Elements "Generate" button on the Renderer ROP

REMOVED Removed the "Visible in GI" toggle from the Render Stats material

REMOVED Removed the "Use Particle Color" parameter on BSDF Point Particle material because it's redundant with the User Color VOP available