Overview
Chaos Group provides state of the art rendering solutions for the Visual FX, Film, Media and Entertainment, Architecture, Automotive design, Product design, Television, and other industries. The V-Ray rendering engine was acknowledged for its ability to deliver high quality photorealistic images in the shortest time possible. This state of the art raytracing technology is capable of reducing costs in every production pipeline due to the doubled rendering power and saving in terms of human, time and CPU resources.
Now, V-Ray for Maya enables the rendering of even larger scenes with greater complexity and artists can rely on a faster rendering process. The comprehensive list of features provided by V-Ray for Maya includes true 3D Motion Blur, Sun & Sky procedural lighting system, Physical camera for matching live footage, Environment Fog, a set of Sub-Surface Scattering shaders and many others. With official release of V-Ray for Maya in August 2009 V-Ray rendering solutions confirmed their image of indispensable tool that is always there help artists transform even the most ambitious creative visions into reality for both less time and lower cost without sacrificing quality.
V-Ray for Maya Key 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)
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.
Running the installation
Before installing V-Ray for Maya, make sure that you have first installed the V-Ray license server on a machine in your network.
To install V-Ray for Maya, simply run the installation. Before copying the files to you system, the installer will ask for installation directories for the various components of V-Ray for Maya. For detailed installation instructions and troubleshooting, please see the installation PDF guide.
The installer file for V-Ray for Maya has a name of the format vray_adv_15000_mayaNNNN_PPP.exe, where NNNN is the Maya version, and PPP is a string that identifies the operating system platform (for example, x86 for Windows 32-bit, x64 for Windows 64-bit, darwin_x86 for Mac OS X etc). For example, the name of the installer could be something like vray_adv_15000_maya2009_x64.exe.
Windows XP
To install V-Ray for Maya on Windows XP, please follow these steps:
- Extract the contents of the installation .zip archive;
- Make sure that you have administrator privileges;
- Double-click the installer to run it;
- Follow the instructions of the installer.
Windows Vista
To install V-Ray for Maya on Windows Vista, please follow these steps:
- Extract the contents of the installation .zip archive;
- Make sure that you have administrator privileges;
- Right-click the installer and select the Run as Administrator... option.
- Follow the instructions of the installer.
Linux
To install V-Ray for Maya on Linux, please follow these steps:
- Extract the contents of the .zip archive to a suitable directory;
- Open a console window;
- Navigate to the installation directory using the cd command;
- Use the su or sudo command to run the installer;
- Follow the instructions of the installer.
For example, the sequence of commands might look like this:
| $ cd vray_install_dir $ su $ ./vray_adv_maya2008_linux_x64.exe .... $ exit |
Mac OS X
To install V-Ray for Maya on Mac OS X, please follow these steps:
- Extract the contents of the .zip archive to a suitable directory;
- Open a Terminal window;
- Navigate to the installation directory using the cd command;
- Use the sudo command to run the installer;
- Follow the instructions of the installer.
For example, the sequence of commands might look like this:
| $ cd vray_install_dir $ sudo ./vray_adv_maya2008_darwin_x86.exe .... $ exit |
Setting up the license
Before you can use V-Ray for Maya for rendering, you must set up the V-Ray license. If the license server with the dongle is installed on your local machine, it is enough to make sure that it is running. If the license server is installed on a different machine in the network, you will need to tell V-Ray where to look for it. To do this, please follow the steps below. See the installation PDF guide for more details and troubleshooting information.
Note that this setting is shared between all versions of V-Ray (i.e. V-Ray for 3ds Max, V-Ray RT, V-Ray for Maya and V-Ray Standalone) but may be different for 32- and 64-bit builds.
Windows
The V-Ray for Maya installer will automatically ask you for the license server information at the end of the installation of V-Ray for Maya. If you did not enter the correct information there, you can do that if you go to Start menu > All Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for Maya > Change license settings. Enter the IP address or the name of the computer where the license server is running.
Linux
Open a Terminal window and enter the following at the command line.
| /usr/autodesk/mayaNNNN/vray/bin/setvrlservice -server="serverName or IP" |
where NNNN is the Maya version (2008, 2009 etc), and "serverName or IP" is the name or IP address of the computer where the license server is running.
Mac OS X
Open a Terminal window and enter the following at the command line:
| /Applications/Autodesk/mayaNNNN/Maya.app/Contents/vray/bin/setvrlservice.exe -server="serverName or IP" |
where NNNN is the Maya version (2008, 2009 etc), and "serverName or IP" is the name or IP address of the computer where the license server is running.
Loading the V-Ray for Maya plugin
When you install V-Ray, initially it will not be loaded by Maya automatically. To load the V-Ray for Maya plugin, follow these steps:
- Start Maya;
- From the main Maya menu, go to Window > Settings/Preferences... > Plug-in Manager...
- Scroll down to the bottom of the dialog in order to see the vrayformaya plugin entry;
- Click on the Load and Auto-load options.
If V-Ray for Maya is loaded successfully, you should be able to choose it as a renderer in the V-Ray settings dialog. If you do not see the V-Ray renderer, check out the Script Editor for any errors. Consult the installation PDF guide for more information.
