The main focus of the new version appears to be faster CPU rendering, much faster GPU rendering, and AI/Machine Learning-based features (Nvidia denoising, smart skydome sampling, and other features).
One of the takeaways here, it appears that AI is really starting to become a major deal in the world of rendering (to the point where other techniques to speed things are being tossed aside).
Now one thing people here looking at the new version might not like so much is the pricing, a new license costs over 1180 dollars and it’s 580 dollars to upgrade (not a big deal for studios, but pricey for individual artists and indie studios). There’s also a rental option (which so far has not displaced perpetual ownership).
Then there’s the fate of Corona, it is clear here that Chaos Group will keep Vray as their flagship product, so perhaps they will not want to add too many new features to the former.
Yes that is a lot of money. The good thing with Vray is that the user can expect a lot of service releases (with new features) during the lifetime of the software.
Vray 3 (for 3ds Max) was released in February 2014, and since then there have been 6 service packs each with a substantial mix of new features.
Concerning the future of rendering - in general and in relation to Vray - it will also be interesting to see how Chaos Group’s take on cloud rendering will work out (it is still in beta).
From the keynote from Total Chaos 2018 (Chaos Group event) there was a introduction of Vray Cloud (it starts 1.10.30 into the video).
And there are also a podcast from earlier this year with some technical details.
The problem is not the price of single liscense but the price of the render nodes if you need them.
Anyway, I allways liked VRay back in my 3ds Max days.
I didn´t mean the price of Max but the pirce of a single VRay liscense. The 1500€ for VRay + 5 Render nodes is ok but but 5 render nodes are not really enough if you want to render animations. Esspecially not since customers want 4K videos these days.
I mean, a single render node is 250€ (plus VAT) so if you want to get 20 additional render nodes you´ll have to shell out 5K. That is the price for Vray 3. The new version is supposed to be more expensive but I don´t know how much more.
One year of 3ds max subscription is 1600 (plus VAT). I agree that that is way too much.
Agree with you. I was thinking more about myself and archviz - then Vray is not so much, but 3dsmax costs are slowly killing you. But yeah, with animations it paintful to your wallet.
It will be interesting to see how GPU rendering will change this in the comming years. With its potential for more ‘bang for the buck’ for each render node.
I think Render engine companies like these need to be very carefull, Yes Vray has a good rep, but as there are now quite a few free rendering engines that are gaining better and better features like quality GPU rendering with out of core features, Denoising, Multi GPU rendering, Network rendering in the cloud with AWS (if you can be bothered to set it up, Blender already has an experimental patch for this) then why would you waste huge amounts of resources on render engines that are no more complete than many open source or free renderers.
Id rather spend the money on getting the renders done as quick as possible in the cloud with cheap AWS clusters when I need that extra power that poor money down the drain on a hiked renderer license, same goes for DCC apps…
Like the big commercial players in DCC apps, I don’t think the big vendors of rendering technologies have any fear of FOSS eating away at their space (or otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing this constant upward trend in pricing). They can also easily afford to lose a number of hobbyists and some of their smaller customers since the big moneymaker is selling to large studios (fortunately, hobbyists have far better options than they used to have).
But yeah, with animations it paintful to your wallet.