V-Ray 7 Beta First Impressions

In this video we will check out the public BETA version of V-Ray 7 to learn what features will come to V-Ray 7 once it's released. Bear in mind that this is a BETA version, so it is subject to changes but it should give us a quite good overview of what we can expect.

V-Ray 7 will offer the ability to render Gaussian Splats directly within V-Ray. You can use this to integrate 3D Objects seamlessly into an Environment. 

The enhanced Framebuffer allows now to render Polygon Regions where you can outline complex shapes. This avoids rendering unnecessary parts as your computing power will only be used for your specified areas. Additionally you can now use a new Vignette Effect directly in the Framebuffer and modify that interactively. Also a new Soft-Stop rendering mode allows you to abort the rendering without skipping Denoising or other Post-Effects.

The new Luminaire lights also can speed up rendering and improve noise quite drastically by pre-computing the lighting into an external file, similar to IES lights. Unfortunately now the feature only works for Cosmos assets but there are plans to let users pre-compute for their own needs.

The updated V-Ray Sky allows receives advanced features that allow to control how blue or dusty the sky appears. You can also render the sky from different ground level heights and move the sun below the horizon to create Nautical Twilight Effects.

A newly built in FireFly Removal Algorithm seems very promising in removing unwanted super bright pixels which are a challenge to remove using traditional methods. This works not as a simple post-effect but is embedded in the rendering process so that all your AOVs stay consistent.

V-Ray GPU also gets some nice updates with the ability to render Caustics directly on the GPU which speeds up the process quite drastically compared to CPU rendering. Several other improvements also increase the scene building process and will allow you to see your rendering start faster.

Chaos Scatter also receives some overdue updates with built in distribution maps and the ability to add and remove instances using a brush. Also scenes using Chaos Scatter will now be able to export much faster to VRayScenes or Vantage and various other improvements.

The V-Ray Profiler allows to analyse your rendering and gives you detailled information about which element rendered how long in your scene. This allows for tackling rendering issues and much better understanding what happens under the hood.