V-Ray version 1.5 Chaos Group will release the first official pre-release of V-Ray, version 1.5. The New version will be revealed at SIGGRAPH 2006, in Boston, USA. V-Ray 1.5 builds on the existing foundation of the V-Ray rendering engine, extends its capabilities and adds many new features:

  • Full render elements support inside 3dsmax with nearly 30 render elements available;
  • Physically based sun and sky for simulating the natural daylight illumination of the Earth;
  • Physically based camera model with real-world parameters (exposure, distortion etc);
  • New material types (VRayBlendMtl for layering materials in an efficient manner, VRay2SidedMtl for simulating thin translucent surfaces, VRayFastSSS for simulating subsurface scattering in translucent materials like humnan skin, and more);
  • Detail enhancement for the irradiance map – a blend between the irradiance map and QMC GI to bring the best of both worlds;
  • Adaptive path tracing;
  • VRayDirt texture map for simulating dirt or ambient occlusion;
  • Improved distributed rendering;
  • Improved V-Ray virtual frame buffer;
  • Multi-platform SDK for extended virtually any part of the rendering engine;

V-Ray had enourmous success on the market and it become the renderer of choice in big production studios across the globe. LINK: http://www.chaosgroup.com/