Chaos Group showed a complex scene with 800,000 polygons and multiple bounces of global illumination rendered with V-Ray on the GPU with 6-7 frames per second at VGA resolution

The Chaos Group team announced 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 Windows, Mac OS X, and Red Hat Linux and Fedora operating systems in their 32-bit and 64-bit versions. V-Ray runs with Autodesk Maya 2008, 2009 and 2010 versions.

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.

Demonstration of GPU-based V-Ray

"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.

V-Ray for Maya advantages and key features:

Chaos Group improves 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.

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.

V-Ray for Maya is US$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 one 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.

The Chaos Group licenses full computers, not CPUs! The more CPUs you have per computer, the better you utilize our single license! Also, 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 US$299 / EUR249 per computer.

Also, if you missed the SIGGRAPH news, Chaos Group also made a number of significant announcements at SIGGRAPH 2009. V-Ray for Maya and V-Ray RT got their public presentation. Without any doubt the most remarkable among Chaos Group announcements was a full presentation of GPU-based V-Ray solution during the V-Ray User Event on August 6th. Chaos Software revealed test results showing that the new upcoming technology already features rendering speeds and quality that exceed existing GPU accelerated raytracing applications.

More than 150 attendees at the New Orleans Marriott Hotel at the Convention Center followed the demonstration of test rendering performed by V-Ray on GPU.

More Information at www.chaosgroup.com. Image and Video Courtesy of Chaos Group and Lukkien