New Features

Intro

Vray 5 is a large step up from our current 3.6 version. Start by watching this webinar. The full feature list is quite extensive and can be found here. From our point of view the features that have the biggest immediate impact are summarised below. For a quick overview go here and here. Vray 5 specific - here.

Please note that the information on this page will be regularly updated as we are still learning about Vray 5 in production. These are initial findings. If anything is incorrect please discuss with VM or SP and we will amend the information. 

The new adaptive dome light in Vray 5 introduces faster sampling when using image based lighting (including vray sky). This is particularly useful for interior sets as it samples the importance of the rays at openings. This also removes the need for Sky Portals. Read more about adaptive dome light here. 

• Add vray dome light to scene and apply an IBL texture (either HDRI using VrayBitmap or vray sky). 

• Vray sky has a New model which is much better at lower sun positions and is the default type. On legacy sets please change the type in the sky parameters.

• Set the multiplier to 1 for vray sky and for properly calibrated HDRI, or adapt the multiplier to the HDRI if it has not been calibrated (you can render a quick pass with vray sky and compare to the overall brightness of the HDRI then adjust the multiplier to match brightness roughly.

• Make sure the adaptive checkbox is on

• Change the tex resolution to 2048 (needs more testing).

• In legacy sets, delete all sky portals and use a physically accurate glass material for your openings.

There are multiple material changes in vray which you can read about here. The key changes to highlight are to the Vray Material. It now has:

• Presets - this is a new feature that gives you a quick starting point for many common material types. Keep in mind that this will reset  your current material settings if selected. 

• Metalness workflow - read about it here. The materialism article will be updated with new PBR workflow shortly. For now a key thing to note is that the old falloff/complex fresnel workflow is still applicable. We will transition to the new metalness workflow in the next month or so.

• Sheen - this is an implementation of sheen for fabrics. This replaces the need for using falloff in the diffuse channel. Please note that sheen is not the same as falloff in diffuse as it is applied to the specular channel and its energy preservation is more accurate. 

• Coat - there is now a clearcoat option in the Vray Material which removes the need for using blends for clear coats. It is faster and has more accurate energy preservation.

• Vray Bitmap texture - this replaces the Vray HDRI texture. Legacy sets detect that automatically. There is also a converter for max bitmaps on right click context menu.

• Linear workflow - our workflow is still applicable. Read all about it here. The only thing to keep in mind for legacy sets is that the old Linear Workflow checkbox has been hidden but is still accessible through RPM and via script. You can turn it off in RPM manually or our LWF converter script will do that for you. 

• UVW mapping - there is a new map vrayUVWrandomiser, which introduces novel ways for mapping tiling textures including stochastic tiling. This is an interesting new avenue that can help massively when there are texture tiling issues, or for the creation of randomisation in structured non-stochastic maps. Please read about it here. 

Vray also introduces a new material preview directly in the material editor which is a much more accurate material representation. There is also a new vray material library which at this point in time we will not utilise as the presets seem to be much poorer than our own material library. Please note that our material library needs to be updated to new metalness workflow. 

The new VFB in vray 5 introduces a completely new interface. This is a step change and requires us to understand the workflow well before we can adapt our own workflow to it. More detail can be found here. The key things to keep in mind are:

• New layer based system allows for quick compositing

• Settings are saved in the History tab including vray render settings as well as all the layer adjustments

• Full back to beauty workflow is available in the VFB as well as interactive de-noising and lens effects

• Transferring adjustments to Fusion for full production compositing needs more research.

The new Lighmix is a render element that allows you to group lights in a variety of ways. During or on completion of render (either IPR or production) the VFB exposes them as separate adjustable layers. The full light contribution is taken into account which allows for flexibility in light intesity and colour adjustment post render. Lighting changes can be transferred back to the vray lights in 3D for final rendering and continuity. Please read more about it here. 

• Vray light mix is different to vray light select. It is one render element that exposes the light mix layers in the vray VFB only

• Full lighting contribution including GI is taken into account when adjusting the light mix

• Pushing intensity up may introduce noise due to under sampling of low intensity lights. So it is better to go down than up.

• Modifying sky and sun systems in light mix may introduce physically inaccurate result. 

Vray has two options for de-noising outputs. Vray denoiser has been improved drastically in Vray 5 and can help achieve huge time savings during rendering. More testing and research is needed to find best practices but please check this link for more detail.

• Use the Nvidia AI denoiser when doing quick IPR previews. It updates interactively in the VFB and helps you get you iterate faster on the bigger picture stages of production.

• Use the Vray denoiser for full production. It can be turned on and off in the VFB and the un-denoised version can also be saved. Vray denoiser automatically creates all the passes needed for de-noising which was a barrier in the past.

• For animation there is vray-standalone denoiser. This can help us achieve drastic rendering speed gains as the potential artefacts of de-noising are less noticeable on moving image. 

Its back. 

• Use the vray physical camera on new sets

• On legacy sets make sure you convert your old cameras and disable the environment exposure effect.

• Auto exposure and white balance is a new feature and you can read about it here. Please use this with caution as our colour workflow using the virtual colour checker is more accurate and auto exposure will disrupt that and give results that are difficult to verify or control. 

• Auto exposure can help with setting initial settings sometimes but you will then have to use the virtual colour checker to make sure your scene is exposed and white-balanced correctly. 

IPR rendering was introduced in vray 3.6 but never lived up fully to the expectations of corona users. Vray 5 IPR is a big step change and needs to be an integral part of every artist's toolset for quick look development, lighting and composition. Please check out the new improvements to debug IPR here. 

• IPR is faster when GI is set to bruteforce bruteforce

• IPR can now be started directly in viewport - with full object interactivity

• Debug IPR gives new options for render-debugging that were much more labour intensive before

Since VrayNEXT chaos group have integrated ACEScg primaries into the engine. This has a big impact on how colours and textures are rendered as well as light transport and of course output gammut. As this is a big subject we will transition to this as a separate exersise. For now you can read about it here. In the mean time we will continue to use sRGB primaries and workflow. 

You can also read about it in more depth about the theory in this excellent article.