Real-Time rendering with V-Ray 5 in Rhino and Sketchup

Chaos expands V-Ray 5 for Rhino and V-Ray 5 for SketchUp, helping designers get more done with real-time visualization. With dozens of improvements to V-Ray Vision and a new Live Link to Chaos Vantage, users can bring real-time rendering into more parts of their process, opening up faster workflows and feedback while working within Rhino or SketchUp.

“Whether it's real-time ray tracing with Chaos Vantage or game-quality graphics with V-Ray Vision, this new update makes it easier to apply real time to any stage of the design process,” said Konstantin Gaytandzhiev, V-Ray for Rhino and SketchUp product manager at Chaos. “And the best part is whatever tool you choose, the same lights, materials and scene setups will apply down the line, so designers never lose momentum.”

Designed to serve everything that comes before a final render, V-Ray Vision offers a real-time view of your scene that updates while you work. The latest update expands on its core feature set, bringing more options into its always-on viewport. New V-Ray Vision features include:

• Shareable 3D scenes — Users can package their V-Ray Vision scenes for others to experience in real-time 3D on their own machine — no license or additional software required. Just hit export and reviewers can experience your full scene with the full functionality of V-Ray Vision, including navigation controls, color correction parameters and more.
• Video recording — Users can now record their real-time experiences directly to video to easily share walkthroughs and presentations with others
• Sun animation support — New support for SketchUp, Rhino and Grasshopper sun animations enables quick solar studies.
• Grass support — A grass preset can now be added to any surface to help build realistic terrains in an intuitive way.
• IES lights support — Photometric IES light profiles can now be visualized within V-Ray Vision, adding real-world lighting into any interior.
• Highly efficient instancing — Scenes using multitudes of instances, such as forests, grass fields, packed parking lots and more, can now continue to operate at real-time speeds. 

If designers need higher fidelity, they can turn to Chaos Vantage, which can be now directly accessed through a new Live Link. With Vantage, even the most complex scenes can be explored in fully ray-traced real time with no extra setup. Vantage is currently free for all users.

New Capabilities

In addition to general improvements, the new update helps simplify tasks that would otherwise take users hours without these tools. These include:

• Scatter — The new scattering tool is perfect for building believable terrains and detailed scenes, as it can add hundreds to millions of objects and Chaos Cosmos models to any surface — all in an intuitive and memory-efficient way. Users can disperse multiple objects simultaneously while controlling their size, orientation and density for maximum realism.
• Decals — With the new V-Ray Decal, it’s easy to project unique materials onto objects of any shape without any extra mapping work, which makes it perfect for applying graffiti to walls or logos on products. Decals can also be used across multiple materials at once, making it easy to add elements like stickers, dust, stains and scratches to several objects within a scene without disturbing any underlying materials.
• New Chaos Cosmos materials — Chaos’ curated collection of render-ready V-Ray content now includes 200 new high-quality materials that you can use on any project. While each material can be applied immediately, users can also customize them as needed.
• V-Ray Material improvements — Complex realism for transparent and translucent materials is now possible with the updated V-Ray Material. Easily create glass materials for single-sided objects with the thin-walled option or set up translucent materials like plastic or wax with a few clicks through the SSS and Volumetric translucency modes.
• Light Gen improvements — Users can now add their own HDRIs to the hundreds of HDR environments included in the Light Gen library for even more lighting possibilities.

New V-Ray for Grasshopper Features

Several top features are also available for Grasshopper in Rhino. These include:

• V-Ray Scatter component for simplified scattering.
• Chaos Cosmos for quick 3D assets.
• Chaos Vantage Live Link for real-time ray tracing.
• IES, Spot and Omni Light components for more realistic lighting.
• Camera component improvements for fast, automatic exposure setups and more control over depth of field.

Pricing and Availability

V-Ray 5 for Rhino, update 2 and V-Ray 5 for SketchUp, update 2 are available now. Licensing is available at $350 (annually) and $60 (monthly). Both products are also included in V-Ray Collection, an annual plan that gives users full access to 15 Chaos products and services for $699/year.