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V-Ray NEXT directly from the scene we’re working with. And we’re using that person’s own machine to do that learning.” Scene Intelligence is an umbrella term applied to several different technologies for 3ds Max inside V-Ray. The first were introduced in V-Ray 3.X and included the Adaptive Lights algorithm, which learns about the scene by analysing the Light Cache data and determining which lights to sample preview and which to ignore. V-Ray NEXT introduces two new features powered by Scene Intelligence — Adaptive Dome Light and Automatic Camera Exposure & White Balance. Adaptive Dome Light is designed to deliver faster, cleaner and more accurate The latest version of the popular design viz renders when using HDR environment renderer uses scene analysis to optimise images to light a scene. It can be used for exteriors or interiors, but it’s especially rendering and gives GPU rendering the same good at interiors, says Grohs, adding that it can make image-based environment standing as CPU rendering, writes Greg Corke light renders between two and seven times faster. “In the previous generation, at each of the windows and openings where you wanted light to come into your interior space, you would add something called a skylight portal,” he explains. “That sky-

V-Ray has become the industry- group of technologies that allow V-Ray to light portal was basically a rectangular standard renderer for architec- ‘learn’ from a scene to help cut render times. area of light that saw out to the environtural design visualisation. The Then there’s a completely new GPU ment and tried to optimise the light or software is primarily used rendering architecture called the multi- bring more rays in through that opening. alongside 3ds Max, the tool of choice for kernel, which is based on Nvidia CUDA. “But it was a little bit cumbersome and arch viz artists, but in recent years it has “It does parallel processing a lot faster - a little bit tedious and not quite exact and spread its wings into 3D CAD and BIM about two times faster than the previous so, with the adaptive dome light, that all with versions for Autodesk Revit, gen,” says Grohs. More importantly, he goes away. You don’t have to set up skySketchUp and Rhino, as well as other 3D believes that its V-Ray GPU renderer (pre- light portals anymore – at all – and modelling tools. viously called V-Ray RT) is now on par what’s even better is the adaptive dome

Chaos Group has now launched a with V-Ray itself in terms of quality. It can light does a much better job of bringing brand-new version, V-Ray NEXT, which be considered properly production-ready. light in through those portals.” will be made available first Chaos Group is also for 3ds max. It’s a break from the traditional numerical naming conven‘‘ Smart algorithms that analyse the current scene using Scene Intelligence to help make renders as close to ‘point and shoot’ as postions, but the company and then optimise calculations accordingly mean sible. With V-Ray’s justifies this by saying that the new branding sig- that hardware can work harder on the things Physical Camera, you can imitate all the effects of an nifies a significant leap that really matter SLR, but historically, forward in terms of both technology and capability. And, as Chaos Group CCO Lon Grohs ’’ you’ve had to properly understand all the camera settings – F-stop, shutter speed, depth of admits, “V-Ray 4 for 3ds max didn’t Scene Intelligence field, lens distortion and so on – as all sound right.” In other words, the number Scene Intelligence is not unlike machine adjustments were manual. ‘4’ followed by the word ‘for’ would have learning, in that it analyses a scene and With the new Automatic Camera been a bit of a mouthful. then decides the best way to optimise Exposure & White Balance controls, The new version is very much focused lighting calculations, sampling and so on. V-Ray looks at the entire scene to autoon performance. “It is about 25% faster However, it’s not considered to be matically determine the proper expojust as a baseline. That’s everything – all machine learning in the true sense, as this sure and white balance, just as a modray tracing calculations are going to speed generally means processing a huge pool of ern camera would. However, it can also up,” says Grohs, adding that this is down data on a powerful server or cluster in automatically adjust the ISO value to optimised code. order to ‘learn’ and refine actions based without changing the F-stop or shutter

On top of that, the developers have been on that learning. “Ours is that on a micro speed, which lets you control depth of working on Scene Intelligence, a collective level,” explains Grohs. “We’re learning field and motion blur separately.

GPU rendering 1 City scene “If I’m working in my viewFor some years now, V-Ray has rendered in V-Ray port and I’m setting up lighting supported two renderers: the NEXT for 3ds max and shading and materials, traditional CPU renderer and 2 V-Ray for 3ds max now includes instead of it looking like a V-Ray RT, a so-called ‘real lighting analysis grainy render, in real time it’s time’ GPU renderer that can making it look smooth,” also run in hybrid mode on CPUs. For explains Grohs. “Now, it does kind of fuzz this release, V-Ray RT has been re- up some of the details a little bit, but from named V-Ray GPU to reflect its new a workflow standpoint, it does a tremenstanding within the software. dously good job.”

“Speed is the new hallmark here, but This is machine learning in the true also with support for a lot more features sense, insofar as it uses data that has that people can use in production,” says been previously learned from thousands Grohs. “We’re seeing some really great of rendered images and not just the renstuff done in architecture, big scenes, dering it is currently working on, as is interior scenes, all done on the GPU and it’s pretty awesome.”

Volumetric effects like smoke, fire and fog have been added to V-Ray GPU. There’s also been a significant update to the UI, not least to remove confusion when rendering. “When you are working in V-Ray GPU, you only have access to the features that are supported by V-Ray GPU.” Previously you were able to select a feature in the V-Ray GPU UI that was only relevant to the CPU renderer and it simply wouldn’t work.

For preview renders, the new release introduces an AI Denoiser, which uses Nvidia’s OptiX technology to denoise the ray tracing. It’s not a production solution; instead, it is designed to give a best guess, very quickly, of what the software thinks the final image might look like. the case with Scene Intelligence.

Chaos Group currently uses a set of data from Nvidia that has already been calculated. However, Grohs acknowledges that it could be re-trained with new sets of images. “We do have some ideas about the possibility of looking at our own set of data,” he says.

He admits that, while V-Ray GPU now offers just as good quality as V-Ray, there are still some inherent limitations in GPU rendering in terms of scene size and memory. But these are being addressed, he insists.

“We tried to combat that in the previ-

ous (3.x) version. We included automatic mip-mapping, which adjusts your texture resolution and allows your textures to be a lot more memory-efficient,” he explains. “Textures were the thing that took up most of the GPU memory, so that really opened up the floodgates to having a lot more on [the GPU].

“We are working on a solution for ‘out of core’ rendering and that basically means that if you go beyond your GPU memory, we’ll have a way to cycle the data in and out. That’s not in [V-Ray] NEXT yet but it is something we are working on.”

Memory size on physical GPUs is also increasing. The new Nvidia Quadro GV100, for example, features 32GB of high-bandwidth memory. And two Quadro GV100 cards can be combined using Nvidia NVLink interconnect technology to double that to 64GB.

If memory size is still an issue on large scenes, particularly for users who can’t afford two GV100s at £15,000+ a pair, then it’s still possible to fall back on the CPU, as Grohs explains. “If I set up my scene in V-Ray GPU and it turned out that my scene got too big, I can still render that with V-Ray GPU on the CPU, or I can take it all over to my V-Ray renderer and let that render on the CPU as well.”

Lighting analysis In previous versions of 3ds Max, when mental ray was included in the software, architects and interior designers were able to do lighting analysis using a specialist tool.

Now, that mental ray has been removed from the software and Chaos Group has developed its own lighting analysis tools, which allow designers to both measure and analyse light levels in a scene.

Grohs told AEC Magazine that the new tool is comparative to the mental raybased technology in terms of accuracy, but maybe has a bit more functionality.

Exploring materials V-Ray NEXT for 3ds Max now includes a much easier way to explore materials as part of the design process. With the new V-Ray Switch Material, multiple materials can be applied to a single object and then selected for output at render time.

“The way to tackle that before would be to set up all those materials and then you just dragged into that object and applied it when you were ready to render,” says Grohs.

“[With Switch Material], I can now apply wood, granite, marble all to the same kitchen counter top, for example, then just check the box that I want when I render the scene.” 3 Interior scene ing in more intelligent ways,

This feature can also be used to rendered with rather than simply throwing add random variations or for creV-Ray GPU NEXT more processing power at a probating extra passes for compositing. lem. Smart algorithms that anaGetting more from the cloud calculations accordingly mean that hardOne of the challenges that 3ds max users ware can work harder on the things that have when it comes to cloud rendering is really matter. that the software is Windows-only. It’s The GPU has also been elevated in stapossible to render with Windows in the tus and its highly scalable compute power cloud, but as Grohs explains, it can be is starting to be used to full effect. The AI two to three times more expensive than denoiser, for example, has the potential to doing so on Linux. accelerate preview renders dramatically.

V-Ray users can get around this by And, if users do need more power, they moving the scene into V-Ray standalone, can simply add additional GPUs to workwhich works with Linux. However, while stations, PCIe lanes permitting. many elements of the scene move across While most of the developments in smoothly, others are incompatible, as this new release are under the hood, Grohs explains: “Some things are out of there are also some great workflow our control – it depends on what feature enhancements. The V-Ray Switch set you are using in max and, honestly, Material, for example, looks to be a simwhat other plug-ins you are using.” ple but effective way for architects to To improve this workflow, Chaos explore materials during the design proGroup has developed a new ‘cloud check’ cess. We hope this technology is rolled utility that offers advice on what users out to Revit, Rhino and SketchUp, where might need to change. Previously, if there it can be most effective. were any incompatibilities, it just lyse the current scene and then optimise wouldn’t work. V-Ray NEXT for 3ds Max will be out soon. Grohs estimates that the new rendering engine Conclusion will be available for Rhino, SketchUp, Revit With V-Ray NEXT, Chaos Group is look- and others by the end of the year. ing to help viz artists accelerate render- ■ chaosgroup.com/vray/3ds-max