The powerful universal 3D lighting, rendering and shading tool V-Ray, developed by the Bulgaria-based Chaos Group, will see a major artist inspired update in its latest offering – V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max, that was demonstrated yesterday in Delhi and will continue to be showcased in multiple Indian Cities.
V-Ray first debuted in 2002 and since then has topped the like list of artists for its speedy lighting, shading and rendering capabilities, thus being able to nab the attention of 30 000 artists globally in the Architectural Industry, Product Design, Automotive Industry, Animation, VFX and Gaming.
Indian Animation and VFX Studios who are already working with the V-Ray pipeline inlcude Prime Focus, Prana Studio, Reliance Animation, Tata Elxsi, Digital Media Imaging Ltd, Makuta VFX and Krayon Pictures.
So what is the highlight of Chaos Group’s V-Ray Roadshow in India? We hear this from Maria Padalski, Marketing Manager, Chaos Group. “We see immense potential in the Indian market and we are going to focus even more on the area by working closely with our partners from ARK/ to provide the artists and companies from the regions with solutions that suit the specific market needs.”
International studios like Digital Domain, Pixomondo, Zoic, ILM, Method Studios have also used actively V-Ray to create the special visual effects for movies like Star Trek Into Darkness, Pacific Rim, The Lone Ranger and Game of Thrones The Avengers, Battleship, Snow white and Huntsman, Spider-man and Looper.
“Diving into the fresh add-ons in V-Ray 3.0, we have Progressive Rendering in which an intuitive one-click action allows artists to set up a scene in seconds and iterate quickly, even when using V-Ray’s most complex features. With the new Production Presets and Quick Settings, users can now fine tune quality and speed from the start of their design process, helping them be more efficient. Talking about VRMats – it is a new XML, cross-application material that can be universally transferred across multiple V-Ray host applications.”
“We want artists to spend more time creating and iterating and less time worrying about the technical aspects,” adds Maria.
The features gallery continues with Open Shading Language (OSL) support in w
hich users can now write their own V-Ray Shaders. Hair Shader Improvements gives out 5x-15x times faster Hair rendering with reduced memory load.
V-Ray RT GPU improvements include support for Render Elements, Motion Blur; instancing and support for open source technologies like Alembic, OpenEXR 2.0 and Deep Image Data, OpenColorIO, and OSL are a must try! Maria adds, “With the new features and major improvements in 3.0 artists can focus on the creative process and worry less about performance as V-Ray 3.0 is there for them.”
With the release of V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max, Chaos Group introduces new licensing options. In V-Ray 3.0, the Workstation License and Render Nodes are licensed separately. This allows unified licensing across applications and reduces the cost for the individual User licenses.
“The unified licensing starts with V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max and in the future, V-Ray will also be introduced for Maya, Softimage, Rhino3D and SketchUp.” Maria adds further.
V-Ray users range from individual artists to small teams, and taking this fact into consideration, Chaos Group is focused on providing businesses with a number of ways to be successful. This is the reason they’ve introduced DOWN THE PRICE on workstation licenses and added a NEW RENTAL POLICY that will help them scale on demand. With this policy, the company has decided to drop the workstation license price by more than 20%.ie. from EUR 1000, the plugin will now be available for EUR 750 in India.
Elaborates more, “Whether it is a small studio or very large production company, our new policy is designed to offer plenty of options for upgrading workstation and/or render node licenses, so studios can take into account timing, scaling and new hires.”
Chaos Group in association with ARK Infosolutions has big plans for the Indian Market with the introduction of V-Ray education and training services to mass audiences.“We are going to focus on establishing a network of V-Ray Training Centers in India so users can easily learn how to efficiently implement V-Ray in their workflow,” concludes Maria.
V-Ray 3.0 will be released for Autodesk Maya in the early days of next year.
VRAY 3.0 Showcase will be held in the following cities:
• Hyderabad – October 16 – Hotel Aditya Park- Ameerpeth Hyderabad
• Chennai – October 18-19 – Hotel Pride – Kilpauk, Chennai
• Bangalore – October 21-22 – Ramada, Park Road Bangalore
• Pune – October 23 – Royal Orchid Kalyani Nagar Pune
• Mumbai – October 28-29- Raheja Classique Club, New Link Road Andheri (West)
All the events start at 6.00 PM. For more information, please contact Percy Daruwalla by emailing him at percy.d@arkinfo.co.in.