V-Ray for Maya - The Countdown is over!

V-Ray for Maya: The Countdown is over! One of the most eagerly expected products in the 3D world is officially released to turn over a new l...

V-Ray for Maya: The Countdown is over! One of the most eagerly expected products in the 3D world is officially released to turn over a new leaf in the rendering processes.


V-Ray for Maya revolutionizes rendering times, stability and ease of use to achieve remarkable pipeline efficiency.

Chaos Group team is excited to announce the official release of V-Ray for Maya. The comprehensive set of features provided by V-Ray for Maya includes true 3D Motion Blur, Sun & Sky procedural lighting system, Physical camera for matching life footage, Environment Fog, a set of Sub-Surface Scattering shaders and many others. V-Ray for Maya is supported on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora operating systems in their 32-bit and 64-bit versions (other distributions also work). V-Ray runs with Autodesk Maya 2008, 2009 and 2010 versions.

Aimed at improving quality and efficiency in the production processes of the VFX and Film industry, V-Ray for Maya now enables the rendering of larger scenes with greater complexity while at the same time artists can rely on a faster rendering stage without compromising on the quality side of their work.


“Having used V-Ray in production for many years, and having been involved in large Maya centric pipelines, it was great to finally put the two together. Now that V-Ray can work inside Maya in virtually the same way that it operates in 3ds Max, it allows for a more flexible pipeline that would allow for the same high quality output that you expect from V-Ray. Being centered on a solid V-Ray Standalone pipeline allows you to use V-Ray within Maya, and have your whole renderfarm operate outside of Maya. It also operates nicely within a Windows or Linux or Mac pipeline which allows for even greater flexibility regardless of the size of your project” says Christopher Nichols – VFX Supervisor.


“I evaluated V-Ray for Maya by running it through the pipeline and with an intense VFX schedule where we are sometimes required to render hundreds of thousands of frames. V-Ray had proven itself to be most reliable, we had little to no issues with it during the productions, and when we did have challenges Chaos Group's Development Team was more than willing to help us out, which made us feel very much a part of the whole process” explained Dmitry Vinnik, Technical Director and founder of Silhouette Images Inc.
V-Ray for Maya Advantages and Key Features:

Faithful to its ultimate vision for extraordinary speed and quality, Chaos Group empowers users to improve render times by taking advantage of the V-Ray for Maya licensing. Each V-Ray for Maya license allows the usage of up to 10 additional render nodes, running either in Maya batch mode or as standalone render servers through the V-Ray Standalone application. The Standalone application allows rendering to occur independently of Maya and is considered as an outstanding option to boost the speed for both standard and distributed rendering.

Robert Nederhorst, VFX Supervisor at Radium/ReelFX in Santa Monica, explained his experience with V-Ray for Maya "Working V-Ray as a fully adaptive system allows our VFX team to deal with every glossy calculation as an antialiasing issue which makes setup so much easier and render times actually faster! It's the ease of setup and simple methods to deal with common problems that are great for VFX. All of us in the industry have less and less time to work on things these days so being able to rapidly get to our vision is important. V-Ray absolutely helps in that."

“I personally love the simplicity and some of the key factors in V-Ray which sets it apart from other renderers in Maya:

1. DMC sampler;
2. Easy to use and very well developed GI system;
3. True 3D motion blur, which works with transparencies (a key to fast rendering with accurate results without major headaches and cheats);
4. Very simple and powerful baking system;
5. Powerful multipass architecture,”

added Dmitry Vinnik, from Silhouette Images Inc.

The beta version of V-Ray for Maya has been used in numerous productions and VFX studios, and the feedback received during the development stages enabled Chaos Group to create a product focused on real needs and challenges in everyday rendering operations.
Pricing and availability

The suggested retail price(SRP) of V-Ray for Maya is USD 999 or EUR 719 per license, depending on the region of purchase. Purchasing one V-Ray for Maya license gives a lot more than just a single rendering license. It allows the rendering in interactive Maya environment of 1 computer and another 10 computers running as render nodes. These render nodes can run in Maya batch mode or as standalone render servers through the V-Ray Standalone application, independently of Maya. These can also be used for the simultaneous rendering of a single frame across 10 computers through the Distributed Rendering mode. If the users require having more than 10 rendering nodes – additional licenses can be purchased for V-Ray Standalone which can be used as standalone or through the Maya batch mode. It does not get any more flexible than that, does it?

And remember! We license full computers, not CPUs! The more CPUs you have per computer, the better you utilize our single license!

V-Ray for Maya is distributed through electronic download only. A hardware lock is required for the licensing system and is provided upon purchase.

Additional V-Ray Standalone licenses are available for purchase with suggested end user price of USD299 / EUR249 per computer. Outrageous volume discounts are applicable for all V-Ray products. Order prices in US Dollars or Euro is applied depending on specific country of order placement. Please, contact our sales representative or distributor for pricing information at sales.software@chaosgroup.com
Trademarks and copyrights

V-Ray and the V-Ray logo are registered trademarks of Chaos Software Ltd. in Bulgaria and/or other countries. Autodesk and Maya are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows and Windows XP are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Apple, Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Features:

Core Architecture

Multi-platform object-oriented API
Fully multithreaded core
Unified sampling system based on Schlick sampling
Distributed rendering
Efficient shading system specifically optimized for raytracing
Modular architecture - many components of the system can be replaced with custom ones
Geometry

Efficient geometry handling
True instance rendering
On-demand dynamic geometry creation (.vrmesh files, converter for .OBJ, .PLY, .GEO files included)
On-demand geometry loading from disk files
Displacement mapping
Catmull-Clark and Loop subdivision surfaces
Extensible with custom geometric primitives through the V-Ray SDK
Particle rendering & particle istancer
Image Sampling

Three different image sampling methods
Full-scene anti-aliasing
Progressive path tracing
Support for additional render elements (diffuse, reflection, GI, etc)
Advanced color (tone) mapping controls
Extensible with custom image samplers through the V-Ray SDK
Illumination

Physically accurate full global illumination solutions
Different GI algorithms: path tracing, irradiance cache, photon maps, light cache
Reusable GI solutions for accelerated rendering of walk-through animations and animations with dynamic objects
Physically accurate area lights
Efficient illumination from HDR environments
Procedural sun & sky models
Extensible with custom lights through the V-Ray SDK
Shaders

Physically plausible materials
Blurry reflections/refractions
Accurate hilights
Set of fast Sub-surface scattering shaders
Support for efficient material layering
Extensible with custom shaders through the V-Ray SDK
Camera Effects

Depth-of-field with bokeh effects
Accurate motion blur
Physical camera model
Extensible with custom cameras through the V-Ray SDK
Extras

Extended matte/shadow capabilities
Texture baking of any render element (GI, lighting, etc)
Frame buffer

V-Ray specific frame buffer with integrated color corrections and display of multiple rendering elements
Direct rendering to disk for extremely large images, either as OpenEXR files or as .vrimg files
Integration with Maya

All features accessible from within Maya (no external applications required) Standalone version included (10 licenses)
Support for many of the standard Maya shaders, lights, materials, procedural and utility textures
Supported Autodesk Maya platforms

Autodesk Maya 2008, Autodesk Maya Complete 2009, Autodesk Maya Unlimited 2009, Autodesk Maya 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit)
System Requirements

A computer with Autodesk Maya 2008, Autodesk Maya Complete 2009, Autodesk Maya Unlimited 2009, Autodesk Maya 2010 software;

Supported OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP1 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP2 or higher), 32-bit or 64-bit versions (64-bit is recommended); Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.3 WS (64-bit) ; Fedora™ 8 operating system (32-bit and 64-bit) ; Apple® Mac OS® X 10.5.7 or higher operating system (32-bit and 64-bit);

Intel Penium III or compatible processor at 400 MHz minimum (dual Pentium IV or AMD Opteron or later recommended);

Minimum 128 MB RAM and 350 MB swap. For best performance are recommended 4 GB or more RAM, 4 GB or more swap file.

Intel Penium III or compatible processor at 400 MHz minimum (dual Pentium IV or AMD Opteron or later recommended);

Minimum 128 MB RAM and 350 MB swap. For best performance are recommended 4 GB or more RAM, 4 GB or more swap file.
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Related links:

chaosgroup.com