V-Ray for 3ds Max update renders up to seven times faster

A new algorithm for dealing with complex lighting improves render time.

Chaos Group has released a major update to V-Ray for Autodesk 3ds Max, its popular rendering solution. The company says version 3.5 is up to 7 times faster at rendering, depending on the scene.

Chaos Group says its new Adaptive Lights algorithm “drastically speeds up render times.” In tests on architectural interiors and large environments with hundreds or even thousands of lights, the company claims benchmarking results show Adaptive Lights can be up to seven times faster, depending on the scene.

**Glossy fresnel rendering improves realism in a variety of environments. (Source: Dabarti Studio for Chaos Group)**

“We’ve been testing V-Ray’s new Adaptive Lights on the GPU, and we’re impressed by the results,” said Tomasz Wyszo?mirski, studio director at Dabarti. “In one of our scenes, render times were seven times faster than before – a 54 minute render dropped to 7.5 minutes with Adaptive Lights.”

Chaos Group continues to extend its ability to work with GPUs. In addition to the speed gains of Adaptive Lights, memory efficiency has been improved through on-demand mip-mapping, an intelligent way to load and render textures using automatic processing and the GPU.

Other new features or improvements in this update include:

Interactive production rendering – Fully interactive production rendering with immediate feedback.

Glossy fresnel – New, physically-accurate reflection model for increased realism.

Resumable rendering – Stop and continue rendering at any point, preserving work and saving time. Supports both progressive and bucket rendering.

MDL materials – NVIDIA’s universal material format is now supported by V-Ray, allowing designers to apply MDL materials authored in programs like Substance Designer to their assets and scenes.

Live VR rendering – Render directly to Oculus Rift or HTC Vive with full GPU acceleration. Visualize changes within the headset as they are made in 3ds Max.

V-Ray Scene node – Import and render complete scene files created in any V-Ray application. V-Ray scenes are render-ready assets and contain all geometry, lights, materials and textures.