As you probably already know, Vray is a render plugin. It's a plugin, which means that it adds functionality to an existing program. Vray's features mainly aim at creating photorealistic images, together with improving rendering speed. Currently V-Ray is available for the following software products:
There is a standalone version available aswell.
Most of Vray's features can be found in the render setup dialog (F10), but many other additions are distributed across the complete program. For example Vray adds its own materials and textures, light types, a fur generator, a toon style effect, displacement modifier, frame buffer, effects, etc.
Vray is created by Chaosgroup, a European company based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
QUALITY
Production-proven ray traced rendering with a full suite of tools to create professional photoreal imagery and animations.
POWER
Built to handle the absolute toughest projects and largest scenes.
SPEED
Multicore CPU and GPU-accelerated rendering engines for optimized speed and scalability.
CREATIVE CONTROL
Real-time look development with interactive lighting, shading and rendering.
SMART INTEGRATION
Integrated seamlessly into Maya and designed to fit any production pipeline.
AN INDUSTRY STANDARD
Top artists and studios rely on V-Ray for Maya to create award-winning animation & visual effects.
Hybrid Rendering
V-Ray GPU CUDA now renders on CPUs as well as GPUs, to take full advantage of all available hardware.
Full light select render element
Render individual lights or groups of lights as separate render elements, with full support for global illumination, reflections and refractions for accurate light mixing in post.
Cryptomatte
Automatically generate ID mattes with support for transparency, depth of field and motion blur. This will speed up workflows for compositors working in NUKE or Fusion.
NVIDIA NVLink
Supports shared GPU memory across NVLink compatible graphics cards.
MDL materials
NVIDIA’s universal material format is now supported in V-Ray for Maya, allowing designers to apply MDL materials authored in programs like Substance Designer to their assets and scenes.
Viewport 2.0 improvements
V-Ray lights can now illuminate objects in Viewport 2.0, making light setup much easier. Direct support for environmental reflections and V-Ray materials have also been added.
Adaptive lights
Fast new lighting algorithm that speeds up rendering in scenes with many lights.
V-Ray IPR
New in-process IPR starts instantly, updates faster and uses less memory. Changes to materials in the Hypershade Material Viewer are made in real time.
Resumable rendering
Stop your render at any point and continue where you left off.
Alsurface material
General-purpose shader by Anders Langlands with layered SSS and glossy fresnel reflections — popular for skin.
V-Ray Frame Buffer tools
Speeds up look development on individual objects with the new Render Mask: Isolate select tool. Select objects, materials and camera focus directly in the frame buffer.
GPU rendering improvements
Render larger, more detailed scenes using a lot less memory with On-demand Mip-mapping. V-Ray’s fast GPU renderer adds support for a wider range of production features.
Variance-based adaptive sampling
Get cleaner renders with better noise detection.
GPU production rendering
Render final frames with the speed boost of GPUs.
Atmospheric perspective + NEW Hosek sky
Simulate natural looking skies with realistic atmospheric haze.
Rounded corners
Generate perfectly smooth edges at render-time with no extra modeling.
Clipper W/Render-Time booleans
Create complex cutaways and sections using any mesh object.
Triplanar Mapping
Quickly apply seamless textures without UVs.
Powerful CPU Rendering
Render superior images and animations fast with V-Ray’s highly-optimized and adaptive ray tracing technology.
Incredibly fast GPU rendering
Get an additional speed boost with GPU-accelerated look development and final frame rendering.
Global illumination
Choose from ray traced and hybrid global illumination methods for the perfect balance of quality and speed.
VRScans material library support
400+ scanned materials. Import and render directly in V-Ray.
Accurate lights
Render natural, artificial and image-based lighting with a wide range of light types, shapes and controls.
Physical materials
Create physically-based materials with multiple layers – now with GTR/GGX shading for great looking reflections.
Unique shaders
For specialized materials, choose from a collection of purpose-built shaders for subsurface scattering, skin, hair and more.
Physical cameras
Simulate any camera and lens with controls for exposure, depth of field and motion blur.
Virtual Reality
Render VR-ready content for popular headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR.
Proxy objects
Fit massive scenes into memory and cut render times using load-on-demand proxy objects.
Efficient textures
Work with multi-resolution tiled textures from top applications MARI, Mudbox and Zbrush.
Hair & Fur
Render realistic hair with support for Maya hair and fur, XGen, Ornatrix, Shave and a Haircut, and Yeti.
Volumes
Render optimized volumetric effects and import OpenVDB files from Realflow and Houdini.
Render Elements
Output a complete set of beauty, utility, and matte passes for total control in compositing.
V-Ray Frame Buffer
Track render history, fine tune colors, and match final output with advanced color management.
For more information visit the Chaos Group website
Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray. Note that V-Ray is only supported for 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit versions of Maya.
| System requirements for Windows version of V-Ray for Maya | |
|---|---|
| Processor |
Intel® Pentium® IV or compatible processor with SSE3 support. |
| RAM |
4 GB RAM and 4 GB swap minimum – recommended 8 GB or more RAM, 8 GB or more swap file |
| USB Port | Required for hardware lock, preferably USB 2.0 |
| TCP/IP | Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported |
The following table shows the versions of Autodesk Maya and operating systems on which V-Ray is supported. Note that V-Ray is only supported for 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit versions of Maya.
| Version of Maya | Supported Operating System |
|---|---|
|
Maya 2015 x64 |
Windows ® 7 SP1, Windows ® 8, and Windows ® 8.1 Professional |
|
Maya 2016 x64 |
Windows ® 7 SP1, Windows ® 8.1 Professional, and Windows ® 10 Professional |
| Maya 2017 x64 | Windows ® 7 SP1 and Windows ® 10 Professional |
| Maya 2018 x64 | Windows ® 7 SP1 and Windows ® 10 Professional |
Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray.
| System requirements for Linux version of V-Ray for Maya | |
|---|---|
| Processor |
Intel® Pentium® IV or compatible processor with SSE3 support. |
| RAM |
4 GB RAM and 4 GB swap minimum – recommended 8 GB or more RAM, 8 GB or more swap file |
| USB Port | Required for hardware lock, preferably USB 2.0 |
| TCP/IP | Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported |
The following table shows the versions of Autodesk Maya and operating systems on which V-Ray is supported. Note that V-Ray is only supported for 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit versions of Maya.
| Version of Maya | Supported Operating System |
|---|---|
|
Maya 2015 x64 |
Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux® 6.2 WS, Fedora™ 14, or CentOS 6.2 |
|
Maya 2016 x64 |
Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux® 6.5 WS, or CentOS 6.5 |
| Maya 2017 x64 |
Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux® 6.5 and 7.2 WS, or CentOS 6.5 and 7.2 |
| Maya 2018 x64 | Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux® 6.5 and 7.2 WS, or CentOS 6.5 and 7.2 |
Please make sure that your system fulfills these requirements before installing V-Ray. Note that V-Ray is only supported for 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit versions of Maya.
| System requirements for Mac OS X version of V-Ray for Maya | |
|---|---|
| Processor |
Intel® Pentium® IV or compatible processor with SSE3 support. |
| RAM |
4 GB RAM and 4 GB swap minimum – recommended 8 GB or more RAM, 8 GB or more swap file |
| USB Port | Required for hardware lock, preferably USB 2.0 |
| TCP/IP | Only IPv4 is supported. IPv6 is currently not supported |
The following table shows the versions of Autodesk Maya and operating systems on which V-Ray is supported. Note that V-Ray is only supported for 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit versions of Maya.
| Version of Maya | Supported Operating System |
|---|---|
|
Maya 2015 x64 |
Apple® Mac OS® X 10.8.5 and 10.9.x |
|
Maya 2016 x64 |
Apple ® Mac OS ® X 10.9.5, 10.10.x, and 10.11.3 |
| Maya 2017 x64 |
Apple ® Mac OS ® X 10.10.5 and 10.11.x |
| Maya 2018 x64 | Apple ® Mac OS ® X 10.10.5 and 10.11.x |
*Check also the Maya system requirements page: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya.html
