After what seemed like years of anticipated waiting, Chaos Group have released V-Ray Service Pack (SP3).

Chaos Group officially announced the availability of the latest update to their fantastically popular renderer this morning in an email sent to all existing owners and forums members.

In the limited time I have had to experiment with the update I have already found that it is performing very well and the new features are really very impressive.

When I have had some more time to play over the weekend I will be uploaded some examples of the various new functions and eventually a full review.

For now though, here is is the  change log from V-Ray 1.5 SP3

Change log :

Build 1.50.SP3 official (1 March 2009)
(cumulative change log since build 1.50.SP2)

===================

New features:
(*) VRayFastSSS2 material for simulating accurate sub-surface scattering;
(*) VRayEnvironmentFog atmospheric effect;
(*) VRayLightMtl has options to generate direct light;
(*) VRayLight has a “Mesh” mode to allow geometric lights;
(*) Support for the 3ds Max Arch&Design material (most basic options are supported);
(*) Support for vector displacement in VRayDisplacementMod;
(*) Global ambient occlusion for all supported GI engines (irradiance map, light cache, photon map);
(*) Added VRayVectorDisplBake material and VRayNormalMap textures to help produce and use textures for vector displacement;

Modified features:
(*) V-Ray requires a SSE2-capable processor even for 32-bit versions;
(*) Reduced flickering for time-interpolated irradiance maps;
(*) Support for volumetric irradiance maps, light cache and photon maps;
(*) VRayFur uses volumetric irradiance maps/light cache to speed up rendering;
(*) VRaySun is never visible to GI rays (removes spots from the sun in the irradiance map);
(*) The “Default lights” option now has three possible values – “off”, “on” and “off with GI”;
(*) Added MaxScript access to the include/exclude lists of VRayLights (including VRaySun and VRayIES) through the “excludeList”, “includeList” and “inclExclType” MaxScript properties;
(*) Camera information (transformation, FOV etc) is written to .vrimg and OpenEXR files when using the “Raw image file” option of the V-Ray VFB; vrimg2exr also translates this information;
(*) Support for region rendering directly in the V-Ray VFB;
(*) The “Affect alpha” option of VRayMtl has been replaced with “Affect channels” option and allows propagation of all render elements, not only the alpha channel;
(*) The alpha channel is correct for glossy refractions that have the “Affect channels” option set to “Color+alpha” or “All channels”;
(*) The “Use irradiance map” option in VRayMtl materials now concerns the light cache too;
(*) VRayDirt texture has include/exclude options for objects that should affect and should be affected by the dirt texture;
(*) The default Distribution parameter of VRayDirt is set to 1.0 (corresponds to using the dirt for ambient occlusion);
(*) Camera overrides (e.g. spherical, box etc), work when rendering through a VRayPhysicalCamera, picking the exposure from it;
(*) Added another preview option to VRayProxy (preview from file as faces instead of edges);
(*) Added animation export parameters to the meshExport() MaxScript function;
(*) Option to specify the maximum number of faces in the preview of exported .vrmesh files;
(*) VRayProxy has the possibility to extract the geometry from the .vrmesh file as a 3ds Max mesh;
(*) When exporing a .vrmesh file, V-Ray will put up a warning if the file already exists;
(*) In VRayProxy objects, a sequence of ‘#’ characters in the file name is replaced with the current frame number;
(*) Added “Horizontal offset” and “Vertical offset” parameters to VRayPhysicalCamera;
(*) Added “Horizontal shift” parameter to the physical camera;
(*) The MultiMatte render element has an “affect matte objects”;
(*) The MultiMatte render element works with transparent objects;
(*) The VRayZDepth render element works with transparent objects (when “Enable filtering” is ON);
(*) The VRayZDepth render element has filtering enabled by default;
(*) Added “Affect matte objects” option to VRayExtraTex render element;
(*) VRayExtraTex render element works with transparent objects;
(*) Render element names reverted to VRay* (without underscore);
(*) Option to restart render slaves for DR after the rendering completes;
(*) The distributed rendering settings window can be resized now;
(*) Check/uncheck all selected servers in DR settings dialog;
(*) Support for the incremental modes of the irradiance map in distributed rendering;
(*) V-Ray will transfer the 3ds Max gamma settings for DR rendering;
(*) Some small changes in the network code to see if DR is more reliable;

Bug fixes:
(*) Textures saved from RTT were black;
(*) Fixed an error in the V-Ray materials conversion script for Raytrace materials;
(*) Camera transformation sampling for motion blur now matches that of scene objects for the same number of geometry samples;
(*) Camera motion blur now works when rendering frames outside the current animation range;
(*) VRayFastSSS2 material was not visible in the VRayMtlSelect render element;
(*) Fixed issues when using alternate licensing servers;
(*) VRay2SidedMtl material did not list the translucency texture map in Track View;
(*) VRayLightMtl did not work with color and transparency mapping when the “Direct illumination” option was enabled;
(*) VRayLightMtl did not work with the “Emit on backside” option when the “Direct illumination” option was enabled;
(*) VRayEdgexTex did not keep its name when saved to a material library;
(*) Running the V-Ray material conversion script on scenes containing Arch&Design materials produced an error;
(*) Crash if using an override material with interpolated reflections/refractions;
(*) Orthographic views render straight lines instead of curves when using PowerNurbs;
(*) Fixed crash with displacement;
(*) VRayFur density map did not work with Falloff map in Distance blend/Object mode;
(*) The exposure slider in the V-Ray VFB could be moved out of the color corrections window;
(*) Exposure correction in the VFB was not applied when 3ds Max scene is loaded;
(*) New thumbs could be added to the exposure slider;
(*) V-Ray generated z-depth channel in the GBuffer did not match the scanline renderer;
(*) Velocity channel info not correct for moving cameras if the motion blur parameters of V-Ray are not the default ones (even when V-Ray moblur is off);
(*) Fixed a crash when unloading dynamic geometry;
(*) VRayCompTex did not list its textures as sub-anims to 3ds Max;
(*) The browse file dialog for VRayIES lights now uses the *.ies filter by default;
(*) VRayToon did not support the 3ds Max atmospheric gizmo access methods;
(*) Crashes with VRayHDRI while rendering with open material editor;
(*) Incorrect with W mapping coordinate of VRayFur;
(*) Changing the color mode of VRayIES to “Temperature” did not enable the temperature spinner until the light is re-selected;
(*) VRayFastSSS did not list its textures as sub-anims to 3ds Max;
(*) V-Ray evaluated all objects at time 0 before starting the rendering – this is now done only when using the irradiance map animation modes;
(*) VRayProxy .vrmesh files not archived when using File > Archive is 3ds Max 9 and later;
(*) VRayHDRI maps not archived when using File > Archive is 3ds Max 9 and later;
(*) VRayIES profiles not archived when using File > Archive is 3ds Max 9 and later;
(*) VRaySimbiont shaders not archived when using File > Archive is 3ds Max 9 and later;
(*) Issues exporting .vrmesh files with the ‘#’ character in the names (now these are replaced with ‘_’);
(*) Object properties not preserved when objects are automatically converted to proxies during .vrmesh export;
(*) Issues animating the vertical shift using the “Guess vertical shift” button;
(*) DR slaves could hang in an indefinite state while rendering;
(*) DR slaves rendered black buckets if rendering was cancelled while receiving the .max scene of a previous render;
(*) Incorrect sampling rate with the Adaptive subdivision image sampler and the “Don’t affect final colors” option on;

Welcome to my blog. Hopefully a few people will find what I have to write interesting, informative & mainly just plain helpful!

I will be covering a fairly broad spectrum of news, reviews, tips & tutorials from the world of 3D and visual effects.

If you have any comments drop me an email!

Happy reading!