Chaos has announced V-Ray 7, Update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching that slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Artists can now work with the same V-Ray scene from early look development and real-time exploration through virtual production and final rendering, with path-traced feedback available directly within supported digital content creation applications.
The release also introduces Gaussian Splat relighting, giving artists an easy way to blend scanned, real-world environments into 3D scenes; expands Chaos Arena’s real-time toolset for virtual production; and delivers faster CPU and GPU rendering, more artist-friendly workflows, and broader hardware and platform support, including AMD GPU rendering and V-Ray for Blender on Linux.
Used across visual effects, animation, product visualisation and advertising, V-Ray gives artists physically accurate lighting and rendering tools for developing shots and producing final images. V-Ray 7, Update 4, connects more of that work within the artist’s existing application, allowing the same scene and assets to move through production with fewer conversions and less rebuilding.
“Artists lose time when a scene has to be converted or rebuilt as it moves between tools,” said Allan Poore, Chief Product Officer at Chaos. “V-Ray 7, Update 4, keeps the same asset moving from early exploration to on-set production and final rendering. That means faster feedback, fewer technical interruptions and more time to focus on the shot.”
Real-Time Rendering, Right in the Viewport
Artists can now use Chaos Vantage to explore and assemble V-Ray scenes in real time within supported digital content creation viewports, without exporting assets to a separate game engine.
The workflow is available through a Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini and an enhanced Maya Live Link, with 3ds Max integration introduced earlier this year. Support for Blender is coming soon through Live Link, and Chaos is also developing an OpenUSD Hydra Delegate to bring Vantage’s real-time rendering and V-Ray’s offline rendering into other host applications, including Nuke and Katana.
Blending Real and Virtual with Gaussian Splat Relighting
Scanned environments usually capture lighting as part of the original image, making them difficult to match with a 3D scene. Gaussian Splat relighting allows artists to adjust the lighting of captured environments in Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max and Vantage, enabling them to be used from previsualisation through final delivery without recreating the location or relying on complex workarounds.
“Gaussian Splats have opened up incredible creative possibilities, but lighting has always been the difficult part,” said Vlado Koylazov, Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at Chaos. “Now artists can bring a real, scanned environment into their scene and light it exactly as the shot requires, instead of being restricted by the lighting captured in the scan.”
Better Creative Control for Virtual Production
The same V-Ray scene can also move into Chaos Arena for LED wall shoots, giving crews more control over materials, focus and colour while cameras are rolling. New features include:
- Real-time material editing: Adjust shaders on the LED wall without interrupting the shoot.
- Real-time depth of field: Match focus between physical and virtual cameras.
- Decal colour corrections: Adjust specific areas of the digital background to match physical props and set pieces.
- Lens encoder support: Carry focal length and focus changes from the physical lens into the virtual camera.
Faster Rendering Across CPU and GPU
Performance updates help artists receive feedback and complete final renders sooner. GPU interactive previews can now begin up to twice as fast, while CPU rendering is up to 13 per cent faster on supported configurations.
Light Cache Denoising produces cleaner interactive previews more quickly, out-of-frustum displacement reduces memory use for complex surface geometry outside the camera view, and Distributed Rendering 2 removes previous machine-count limits for larger jobs.
New Tools for Artistic Control
V-Ray 7, Update 4, also introduces new artist-friendly tools and workflows designed to reduce the time required to achieve the desired look and final frame, including:
- V-Ray Parallax Texture: Add depth to distant buildings using textures rather than full 3D geometry, reducing modelling work and scene weight.
- Quick caustics: Create light-refraction patterns without the set-up required by the traditional photon-based workflow.
- V-Ray Displacement Material: Build and combine displacement effects within a material that can move between V-Ray integrations.
- AI-assisted concept exploration: Speed up early concept exploration with new AI tools in V-Ray for Maya, Chaos Vantage and the commercial version of V-Ray for Blender.
- AI Material Generator: Generate physically based rendering materials from photographs.
- AI Upscaler: Upscale low-resolution renders into presentation-ready images.
Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 7, Update 4, is available now. Full pricing information is available on the Chaos pricing page.
The free V-Ray for Blender Community Edition remains available for Windows and macOS through the product page, with a Linux build now also available for download.
Visit https://www.chaos.com
