Chaos Group has released V-Ray 2.0 for SketchUp. This is the biggest expansion to V-Ray for SketchUp’s rendering capabilities which will provide SketchUp designers with faster rendering, better lighting tools, and the ability to create and visualize complex scenes. The combination of the V-Ray’s rich feature set and SketchUp’s intuitive tools and interface lets users visualize their ideas with upmost quality and realism.
This new version introduces dramatic improvements to visualization workflow (V-Ray RT®), image based lighting quality (V-Ray Dome Light), and a designer’s ability to quickly manage complex scenes with highly detailed models (V-Ray Proxy).
Rendering engines
V-Ray RT CPU & GPU– a revolutionary rendering engine providing instant feedback and streamlining scene setup. Because V-Ray RT is built upon the same robust core as V-Ray, it is seamless to transition between V-Ray RT and
production rendering. For the everyday user this s a very powerful interactive rendering solution that allows them to simultaneously work and render inside of SketchUp. The instant visual feedback makes for quicker design, material, and lighting decisions.
Retrace Threshold – reduce Light Cache artifacts and improve the appearance of glossy reflections and refractions when using the time saving feature – Use light cache for glossy rays.
Lights
Dome Light – creates simple, artifact-free image-based lighting using the Dome Light. Its powerful importance sampling analyzes HDR images and optimizes light tracing and GI precision. This new feature will streamline your workflow when using image based lighting in your scenes. It will not only save you setup and rendering time but it will also increase the quality of the image based light and shadows.
Lights as Components – V-Ray lights can now be part of a SketchUp component, making the process of changing the design and settings of multiple lights at once much easier.
Sphere Light – create spherically shaped area light.
Geometry
V-Ray Proxy – an indispensable tool for managing scene memory and efficiently rendering massive amounts of geometry. V-Ray Proxy objects are dynamically loaded and unloaded at render-time, saving vital RAM resources. Use V-Ray Proxy to render millions of polygons at maximum memory efficiency and increase the amount of detail and complexity of your SketchUp scenes.
Faster Parsing Times – major speed improvements have been made when processing the SketchUp scene for rendering with V-Ray.
V-RAY FRAME BUFFER IMPROVEMENTS
Render History – this option allows you to save your rendered images and load them directly in the V-Ray frame buffer.
Compare Tool – a new option to easily compare two rendered images directly in the V-Ray frame buffer.
V-Ray Lens Effect – allows you to achieve bloom and glare effects in your renderings.