Overview

This guide is to serve as a reference for installation of V-Ray for Blender.

You can download the latest official version of V-Ray for Blender from  https://nightlies.chaosgroup.com/main#/blender with the account supplied to you by Chaos Group or your reseller.

If you experience any problems please check the Troubleshooting section. If you are still having problems please contact our support team: http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/support.htm

In order to render with V-Ray for Blender you need:

• V-Ray for Blender custom build which consists of:V-Ray Standalone
  • A custom build of Blender which has optimized export functions
  • V-Ray for Blender scene exporter

About V-Ray for Blender

V-Ray is a free plug-in for Blender that exports your scene into a .vrscene file which can be rendered by the V-Ray Stand Alone application. In order to use it you need to install a custom Blender build which has the V-Ray plug-in and scene exporter properly integrated.

V-Ray Standalone is a standalone application that can render .vrscene files exported from 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage or Blender. It is sold and licensed separately by Chaos Group. For more information on the licensing policy refer to the Licensing section.

System Requirements

Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray.

Installing V-Ray Standalone

1. Log into our website and download the installation file for V-Ray Standalone.
2. Make sure you have administrative privileges, run the installer and follow the instructions.
3. Restart your session (relogin) after the installation is complete

Installing V-Ray for Blender

For Windows

1. Go to https://nightlies.chaosgroup.com/main#/blender and download the latest build for V-Ray For Blender.
2. Run the installer file.
3. Upon the start of the installation Windows may ask you for permission to run the installer with administrator privileges. Please confirm.
4. You are presented with the License Agreement. Click I Agree to continue.

5. The next screen allows you to control some installation settings. You can see the Installation Directory and choose whether or not to create a Desktop Shortcut. To manually set the installation folder click Customize, otherwise click Install Now.

6. If you clicked Customize, you will see the screen below. Here you can manually specify the installation Directory. Once ready click Install Now.

7. Once ready click Install Now.

8. The installation will commence and once it's complete it will show you the following screen. Click Finish.

For Mac OS

Download and unpack the archive and you are ready to go.

For Linux

The custom V-Ray for Blender build is compiled for Ubuntu 12.04 and later.

To install it download and unpack the archive. You should restart the session (re-login) after the installation in order for it to work.

Should any issues with dependencies arise refer to the FAQ.

Updating V-Ray for Blender

V-Ray for Blender consists of several components which need to be updated separately.

V-Ray for Blender and V-Ray Standalone are updated by downloading and installing the latest available version from our web site.

The Exporter component is updated more often to address user requests. To update it go to the render settings and in the Exporter panel click on the Update Exporter button.

Please make sure that you have the appropriate administrative rights before trying to update the Exporter. To do that right click on the V-RayBlender icon and pick "Run as Administrator"

Initial setup of V-Ray for Blender

To run V-Ray for Blender go to Windows Start > All Programs >VRayBlender 2.xx> VRayBlender

1. Enable the V-Ray Addon. Go to File > User Preferences > Addons and enable the addon called Render: V-Ray For Blender 3.0.

2.Choose V-Ray as a rendering engine as shown in the image below.

To enable the preview of materials and textures using V-Ray you need to select V-Ray(material preview) as a render engine.

3. Set up the render preview

V-Ray has it's own frame buffer used to preview the rendered image. To avoid rendering in both frame buffers - V-Ray's and Blenders' go to the Render Setup and in the Render panel set the Display parameter to Keep UI.

4. Set up the V-Ray Standalone connection

V-Ray For Blender will automatically detect any V-Ray Standalone installation using V-Ray's environment variables. Since there may be more than one V-Ray Standalone installed V-Ray for Blender will search for the installation path according to the following hierarchy:

- %VRAY_PATH% - this variable shows where V-Ray Standalone is installed
- %VRAY_FOR_MAYA_* - this variable shows where V-Ray for Maya is installed
- %PATH% - this variable allows you to manually specify the location of V-Ray Standalone

If you need to manually specify the vray.exe that you want to use you can do that by disabling the "Detect V-Ray" check box in the Exporter panel under Render Settings. This will show you the Path field which you can use to specify the location of the V-Ray Standalone executional file.

5. Set up the Exporter

V-Ray for Blender is set up to work in two stages. In the first stage the scene is exported to a .vrscene file which is then transferred to and rendered by V-Ray Standalone in the second stage. For that to happen the Exporter will save the scene in a temporary folder on your hard drive:

For Windows that is C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp

For Linux that is /tmp/

For OS X that is: /var/folders/xg/<tmp-value>/

You can also manually set the folder to which the .vrscene is exported. To that go to the Render Settings and in the Exporter panel set the Export to parameter to User-defined directory. Now you can specify a location in the field below.

Setting up Distributed Rendering

Distributed rendering is the process in which several machines in a network are used to render a single image. The machine which distributes the tasks is called a Render Client and all other machines are called Render Servers.

Render Servers setup

To set up a Render Server you need to run V-Ray Standalone and then in the console type:

vray -server -portNumber=n

where n is the network port number that is going to be used for Distributed Rendering. Please make sure it matches the one set in the Render Client setup

Render Client setup

In the Render Settings open the Renderer panel and enable the Distributed rendering. This will create a new panel called Distributed rendering in the System panel which holds all the options seen on the right.

Set the port number. Make sure it matches the port number set for the render servers.

Add render servers by pressing the +/- button on the right. Specify an IP address or host name. You can use the check box on the right of each Render Server to quickly include or exclude it from the distributed rendering.

All machines need to have access to the scene assets. V-Ray could automatically transfer all needed assets by enabling the Transfer Assets checkbox.

If you choose to disable that option (not recommended) you will need to manually specify the type of network used and the location of all render assets

Troubleshooting

V-Ray for Blender is still being developed. If you encounter an issue please submit a bug report so that we can fix it in the upcoming builds.

To do that once you experience an issue open the Blender System Console by going to Window>System Console and perform the same steps you did when you got the issue. Copy the contents of the system console and submit it at https://github.com/bdancer/vb25/issues