Chaos Group Releases V-Ray for Unreal

Chaos Group releases V-Ray for Unreal,the fastest way for architecture, automotive and visual effects users to create immersive experiences from their V-Ray content. With V-Ray for Unreal, artists and designers can bring V-Ray scenes from 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino and SketchUp directly into the Unreal Editor easily, without needing to learn a new workflow. Once there, users will have access to the full power of V-Ray Next technology, making the process of creating accurate ray-traced visuals possible directly from Unreal Engine.

V-Ray for Unreal consolidates two separate workflows, making it easier to tap into the power of a game engine through a creative process users already know and trust. After designing a scene in V-Ray, V-Ray for Unreal imports every part of the scene file into the Unreal Editor. V-Ray lights and materials are automatically converted into their real-time equivalents and maintain a smart connection to the originals ensuring high-fidelity stills and animations at render time.

The official launch will introduce V-Ray Light Baking, a powerful feature that lets users bake V-Ray lights (including IES) directly into Unreal with full GPU acceleration. Unlike other light baking implementations, V-Ray Light Baking maintains V-Ray accuracy, ensuring a lifelike, physically based result for real-time experiences and VR.

V-Ray for Unreal will also introduce a new pipeline for CAD designers, who want to utilize the power of V-Ray rendering in their designs.

"By combining Datasmith and V-Ray for Unreal, industrial designers can easily add the accuracy of photorealistic ray tracing to their interactive designs without requiring V-Ray in their CAD tool. V-Ray for Unreal Engine unlocks new workflows that will fundamentally change how people visualize and experience their designs," said Ken Pimentel, senior product manager at Epic Games. "Now, all designers can benefit from both real-time interactivity and production-proven ray tracing within the Unreal Editor."

Other Features Include:

• Accurate Lighting – Render your Unreal scenes with physically accurate, ray-traced lighting that matches your designs.
• Global Illumination – Render realistic bounced light using V-Ray’s Brute Force and proprietary Light Cache global illumination.
• Rendering Animation – Render sequences from Unreal’s Sequencer to create V-Ray-quality, ray-traced animated cinematics. Deforming objects can also be rendered using V-Ray Proxy objects.
• GPU+CPU Rendering – Render on all your hardware, with support for CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, or a combination of both.
• Unreal Foliage Support – Compatible with Unreal's native foliage system for rendering large environments and landscapes. Support for animated foliage coming soon.
• V-Ray Proxy Support – Load high-resolution assets at render time using memory-efficient V-Ray Proxy objects.
• Render Elements – Supports a wide range of render elements for better artistic and technical control in compositing.
• Distributed Rendering – Leverage the power of multiple machines to speed up rendering and light baking.

Pricing and Availability

V-Ray for Unreal is available now and compatible with V-Ray for 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino and SketchUp. V-Ray for Unreal currently supports 4.19 - 4.20 with support for 4.21 coming soon. V-Ray for Unreal will be rapidly updated to keep pace with the Unreal Engine, so it will be sold through a subscription that always keeps the user up-to-date. The monthly rate will be $80, while the annual rate will be $470. Chaos Group also offers a flat annual rate ($99) for students, educators and universities. Visit the website for a free starter’s guide.