V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max Beta Released!

New UI design, Progressive Production Rendering, Cross-Application Shader Format, and Rendering Speed Improvements Highlight the Artist-Inspired Upgrade

Sofia, Bulgaria – September 4, 2013 – Chaos Group has announced the beta program for V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max - the most complete lighting, shading and rendering toolkit on the market. Everything an artist or full scale production team needs to tackle tight timelines comes standard with V-Ray 3.0. Beta testers will have direct access to the Chaos Group team, which will help make this artist-driven package even more appealing to VFX, arch-viz, and industrial design users in the coming months. 

Speed will be the first improvement most users will notice as ray tracing calculations are running up to 5 times faster. Also debuting is a new simplified user interface design that provides quick access to common controls and settings. With Production Presets and Quick Settings right up front, users can fine tune quality and speed from the start of their design process, helping them be more efficient. Another point of efficiency will be the new Progressive Production Rendering; an intuitive one-click action that allows artists to set up a scene in seconds and iterate quickly, even when using V-Ray’s most complex features.

Over the beta period, Chaos Group will roll-out a new XML, cross-application material format called VRmats that can be universally transferred across multiple V-Ray host applications.

“Speed and simplicity remain at the core of V-Ray 3.0’s roadmap because that’s what our users want,” said Vladimir Koylazov Chaos Group Co-founder and Lead Developer of V-Ray. “Our community is very active and very collaborative, which is a great situation to be in if you want artist feedback. V-Ray 3.0 is their proof that we hear them loud and clear."

V-Ray 3.0 has taken their need for speed and extended it to tasks where time has always been crucial for artists. That means general ray tracing is on average 2-3x faster, and hair rendering speeds are clocking in at up to 15x the previous rate. V-Ray 3.0 will also introduce support for a variety of open source technologies including Alembic, OpenEXR 2.0 and Deep Image Data, OpenColorIO, and Open Shading Language [OSL].

“Productions of all sizes are about to get a lot more out of V-Ray,” added Lon Grohs, VP of Business Development at Chaos Group. “V-Ray 3.0 is our pipeline-ready answer to any production problem that takes away from the creative process.”

For the complete list of new features and upgrades, please visit v-ray.com, a new home for the V-Ray community.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 3.0 Beta for 3ds Max is now available for users who already own a V-Ray for 3ds Max License. This release also marks the introduction of several new licensing choices and policies.

Universal Render Nodes
New universal V-Ray Render Nodes support network rendering and distributed rendering across multiple platforms (including 3ds Max and Maya, with Rhino, Softimage and SketchUp to be added in the future).

Unified Licensing
In V-Ray 3.0 the User license and Render Nodes are licensed separately. This allows for unified licensing across applications and reduces the cost for individual User licenses. The new price of V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max User license + 1 V-Ray 3.0 Render Node is $1050/ €750. Single V-Ray Render Nodes 3.0 cost $350 /€250.

Upgrade Bundles
Customers upgrading from V-Ray 1.5 and V-Ray 2.0 will have several cost effective options. V-Ray 1.5 upgrades start at $980/€700; while V-Ray 2.0 upgrades start at $420/€300. Users who purchased V-Ray 2.0 for 3ds Max between 4 August 2013 and the V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max official release date will be eligible for a free upgrade.

Flexible Term Licensing
New flexible options for monthly and annual licensing are now available.
For full pricing information on every licensing type, please visit the Chaos Group website.