Yeah, I agree. I am pretty much impartial to it as well. I just like to keep the thread alive for those who might care. Until the official release.
But I agree. I barelly see anyone using V-Ray outside archvis bubble with 3ds Max + V-Ray. And even this is changing since Blender + Cycles is a more attractive option for many artist. So it’s only smart to make a great integration for Blender if your core userbase is migrating from one DCC to another.
I think that you’re doing the right thing…
Cycles integrations is surely a big plus and this worths for any other render engine…so, if this is the only feature to evaluate for choosing a renderer or not, well… I think that there isn’t any other renderer to choose from.
About the quality, I quite agree with you that you can achieve, more or less, the same level but there are some scenarios that, with Cycles, if not impossible, are more time consuming to solve and those niche features start to enter the playground and help you.
What kind of cryptic parameter are you referring on? What V-Ray version are you still using today?
I haven’t used V-Ray for many years. I stopped using it around V-Ray Next release, but I highly doubt it has changed much since then. I checked the latest V-Ray for 3ds Max documentation, and the UI looks about the same.
I disagree.
At least for the render settings, the defaults are, more or less, enough for 95% of the scenarios. I agree that, in the past, you have to tweak many render settings to avoid splotches, GI flickering and so on…but today… no more Irradiance Mapping for primary rays…just BruteForce and LightCaching for the secondary.
In any case, as 3dsmax+Vray user I’m quite impartial about this as I’m quite used about the settings…but also as daily V-Ray forum reader I can quite confirm that is really rare to read questions about render settings.
The main issues are related to the features V-Ray offers that are quite wide to support the several CGI markets V-Ray covers.
For example…testing Octane with a real hobby project, I’ve found the same difficulties with settings that I had experienced in the older V-Ray versions.
So a mix of routine and number of features could conditions the user experience.
Then, assuming it will get released, the blender version it’ll support will already be outdated thanks to blender incredible change pace 
It was already this way for V-Ray Next. What you are talking about is like V-Ray 1.5-2. But even then, one still had to often deal with nonsense like dome light shenanigants for even most basic image based lighting or touch per-material/per-light sampling settings in some cases. Oh and VRayMTL, the UI was just messy and overcrowded.
Sorry but it’s not anymore like this.
You can’t set anything on lights or materials…so I think that this is another thing that you can put in archive of V-Ray history.
About the dome light, I can’t understood what “shenanigants” are… I really don’t know that word meaning and I can’t find any reference on dictionary. In any case, what nonsense are you referring on?
About VrayMTL, it’s still overcrowded but you have to consider that material is more than 20 years old and you can still load old project and you’ll find everything where it was. On top of this, it’s an ubershader that could cover so many material types and obviously this will lift UI complexity.
Additionally, the material has some optimize features that add another complexity level.
I think we could face the same looking to the first Cycles Diffuse shader and the Principled shader we have today.
It was a typo, I meant shenanigans.
There were numerous issues related to DomeLight being a physical light in the scene. I’ve posted many threads about it on the forums back in the day. Vlado always said they plan to fix it in the future but never did.
For example it took me like 5+ years to convince them that SkyLight should be full dome by default, so that entire HDRI is used for the illumination, not just the top half. This post is from 2013, 11 years ago: https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray-for-3ds-max-forums/v-ray-for-3ds-max-wishlist/52759-skylight-portal-mode-for-dome-light
Or this:
https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray-for-3ds-max-forums/v-ray-for-3ds-max-problems/73067-3-5-shadowcatcher-matte-still-does-not-work-with-dome-out-of-the-box
Or this:
https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray-for-3ds-max-forums/v-ray-for-3ds-max-general/60219-correct-workflow-if-cg-object-integration-onto-backplate
There were many more issues. The DomeLight used to be much worse and it took many forum posts and convincing to even get that fixed. But the main source of the problem was that VRay refused to use Max’s native environment map slot as a source for image based lighting.
I am double checking the documentation and the settings are still as messy as ever. It really hasn’t changed much since V-Ray next. Yes, you don’t have to touch those settings as much as you did in Vray 1.5-2, but they still are there cluttering the UI.
Principled BSDF is also an ubershader yet is nowhere near messy.
Anyway, my whole point is that Cycles is just on par with VRay these days. If you add better integration of Cycles and its $0 price tag, and compare it to the recently increasingly aggressive pricing of Chaos products, VRay is just a hard sell.
oh yes… I think that on this… there will be just Cycles…any other commercial renderer will be out of interest…but I’m quite sure that there are people that prefer to spend some money on something that works for his needs.
I’m not writing that Cyles isn’t able to satisfy users needs…I mean that some people, used to V-Ray, could be interested on evaluate this porting ro Blender…perhaps make real the willing to abandon 3dsmax.
There some people, at least on V-Ray forum, that would make the transition to Blender but they’re scared to not be able to use one of the main daily tool.
I’m not in the position to make a forecast abuot this for several reasons…one of these is that writing on a forum is so easy that I can write everything I want…but make the change is another thing…
About domelight seems that something is changed since your posts…surely it’s now full dome (if needed…or hemi dome…and this need extra setting buttons).
Well…but who cares if you don’t need to touch it?
I mean, also Cycles has many sub panels about render settings (and not just those…because you have some Cycles related features in the object and material properties)…but for the 90% of the time, you change just some of them.
Anyway…some of this thing are just personal taste and habit.
The key question is to check if they’ll find a way in the Blender ecosystem as commercial plugin.
If they restart the project from the ground, probably they’ll see some potential, otherwise they should continue as before or communicate that they tried in the past but, at the moment, they’re not interested on this market.
Let’s see
Chaos stopped Blender version, because of Autodesk. The truth never came out, but it was clear, with Vray for Blender, 3dsmax was close to death. But not only that, it would have brought Blender closer to Realtime ArchViz apps and that was a nightmare for Autodesk.
It’s clear that Chaos makes most money with 3dsmax users. Both V-Ray and Corona.
If you look at Archviz suppliers like Evermotion, 3dsky, etc. They all ignore Blender as much as possible. And keep in mind, most ArchViz artist do work in Asia. So they might not even care much for licenses.
I think by time, Chaos will have no chance than get Vray for Blender out, also because time is running against them, with Cycles getting better and better.
I agree. There is some kind of hidden agreement between Autodesk and Chaos Group to ignore Blender. In any case, Chaos missed a good moment and lost a lot of money. It is unknown whether Vrayforblender will become a hit, personally I would buy.
Would be time to compare Vray with Cycles.
I used Vray since 1999 and I’m happy now with Cycles. Also Vray is more reliable and advanced, its not up to date, especially GPU and denoising.
Also the company has changed a lot and behaves different and somehow greedy. There price model is horrible and almost four time more expansive like Octane or Redshift. Its also very limited on Nvidia hardware. The only version working on Mac is the C4D, but its lame and not many use Vray im C4D.
Looked into it, Monthly they demand for a SINGLE V-Ray license €89.13.
Annually for the SINGLE V-Ray license you have to cough up €541.21.
No perpetual licensing available.
I doubt it becomes a hit. Maybe for companies which have shifted away from the programs they support.
I am amused by the gall of them.
From the boldness and not looking around, I would say, they are a perfect fit for partnering up with Lightwave.
EDIT; I am purely saying this from the side of an Indie.
The problem in ArchViz is the amount of assets you need. Plants, grass, people, furniture, etc. and all perfect matching clients wishes. If you ever done a restaurant you know how massiv assets are needed. And now all this need to be in Blender format plus V-Ray or Corona and of course being GPU ready, no old materials with problems.
The advantage we had with the V-Ray for Modo version, was a Vray object importer that supported even complex shaders. So if anyone studio got 3dsmax, it could simple export the most complex scenes or assets as vrscene or object and got it all perfect to Modo. You could then adjust shaders, geometry etc. like in 3dsmax. And even that was quite some work. But it was the only V-Ray plugin that supported that. Not possible in C4D or Maya. And as we know, they dropped Modo support, that’s why they know have Octane incl. Which is a far better GPU render.
Also, I know studios in India and Asia in general. They all work with 3dsmax and they all crushed the markets in Europe or America by super low prices. I get weekly mails from India offering me help in 3dsmax, Maya or Nuke. And we all know how much this software cost? Yeap, one studio with 100 employees have exactly one license.
For any people would like to test the beta of Vray for Blender, Chaos had opened the testing phase.
At the moment is just for Win and Blender 4.2.
At the top of page I’ve linked, there is another link to a survey to collect data for, I suppose, evaluate which market could have Linux and MacOS.
At the moment there is any news about licensing costs or other commercial aspects.
I like the UI And how it’s integrated inside blender, it’s really cool but with the frame buffer and cosmos, it gets cluttered easily. On my laptop it’s unbearable, having all these floating windows.
Also, I couldn’t convert textures from cycles to vray and vice versa.
Finally. Great stuff. I hope it’ll help many archvis artists to transition from 3ds Max to Blender. Although, I think Cycles is planty capable these days.
Would love to hear about the experience from those who have access and testing the Beta now.
I’m not the best person to write something about this as I’m using Vray for more than 20 years.
In my opinion everything depends by the dog-tail loop (in Italy there is a general phrase that sound like “a dog that bites the his tail”) “how much will sell” < - > “how much resources Chaos will invest on it”.
The starting base it’s not bad.
At the moment, in my opinion, the worst missing feature is that the image file are not showed in solid mode, you have to force yourself to use the rendered viewport. I hope they’ll add as soon as possible.
Generally, for anyone interested on this, I suggest to test it and write down on Chaos forum.
In my opinion more voices speak, more clear they could listen and decide hat to do in the future.
What’s the deal on licensing?
Can you use your current ones, or do you need a specific license for Blender?
The first will make transitioning easier I guess.
Also 3dsmax + the plugin availability is a archviz powerhouse.