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"V" for V-Ray

If you have done any work with Autodesk 3dsmax, chances are you have already heard about V-Ray - a 3rd party render engine, if not *the* render engine for 3dsmax. Although popular, little is known about the history of this inordinate product.

In the beginning, there was the ray caster - AtmosBlender

Bathroom Still - Cristea Adrian

The first pieces of code that would later become the V-Ray rendering engine, sprang to existence at the end of the year 2000, as part of a small in-house project at Chaos Group (www.chaosgroup.com). This project was called AtmosBlender and its purpose was to allow different atmospheric effects to blend properly, as this was an issue. AtmosBlender included a small number of sample atmospheric effects and a simple ray caster was required for the proper calculating of the shadows for these effects. This ray caster, originally named SDTree (from space SubDivision tree), became the heart of what is now known as V-Ray.

It quickly became clear that the ray caster was much faster than the built-in raytracer of 3dsmax and could be used for faster raytraced shadows, reflections, refractions and so on. At the same time, it became obvious how impossible it would be to integrate efficiently these effects into the existing scanline renderer, the materials or shaders. The decision was to write a completely new render engine that would fully utilize the power of raytracing. Hello V-Ray.

A year of intensive research followed. The state-of-the-art solutions for photorealistic rendering were examined in detail. The programmers at Chaos Group quickly realized that the existing techniques were either too slow or unreliable to be used in production, which required the development of completely new algorithms for many aspects of the rendering process. A great deal of innovation was required to make the task of rendering with global illumination within the limited computer resources achievable. The end result was a set of original methods for calculating global illumination, which became the foundation for the success of V-Ray.

Finally, at the end of 2001, the first public beta versions of V-Ray were made available, followed by the 1.0 release in March of the next year. The rest, as they say, is history.

R/evolutionary design

A bad digestion from fireflies José María Andrés Martín

Writing a photorealistic renderer was a major undertaking. It was impossible to foresee neither the obstacles along the way, nor what their solutions would be. In that regard, the development cycle of V-Ray was different from that of traditional software products, where the set of requirements is fixed in advance and the product is coded to strict specification. Instead, many parts were constantly rewritten to address different propblems and user demands, while keeping the software working at all times. This made the architecture of V-Ray a very flexible and modular one, where different parts can be replaced. The developers were not afraid to deviate from traditional, but ineffective or plainly wrong solutions and ideas in computer graphics. Whereas competitors tried to resemble already established solutions, V-Ray has strictly kept to its design goals – physically-based photorealistic rendering without compromises, but with the possibility for the occasional cheat. Apparently the extra effort has paid-off well, since now competing products have started adopting many concepts originally introduced in V-Ray.

Two steps ahead

Grid - Lars Mårtensson

V-Ray introduced rendering with global illumination with unmatched speed and ease of set up. This fomented its implementation by many large-scale productions, including big-screen movies like The Last Samurai, and Final Destination II, computer games Onimusha 3 and music videos of Nine Inch Nails and many others. In addition to being an excellent animation renderer, V-Ray has also become practically the standard solution for photorealistic architectural visualization. Its streamlined architecture, specifically designed to handle effects like area shadows, glossy reflections etc., combined with very efficient global illumination solutions and ease of setup, have left it practically without competition in this area.

One aspect that has set V-Ray apart is the communication between its users and developers. The result is a software that is well adapted to the need of its users. The official V-Ray forum is a great place to find answers to any questions related to V-Ray, ask for comments, or simply share an opinion.

Built on the foundation of the already existing rendering engine, the brand new 1.5 version of V-Ray introduces many new features. Among these are accurate daylight simulation through the new V-Ray sun light and sky environment, physical camera that allows users to take virtual photographs and set up parameters like in a photographic camera, extended support for render elements, new materials and shaders, as well as an SDK that allows to extend or replace practically all aspects of the rendering engine.

To the future

What does the future hold for V-Ray? Many exciting things:

A still from Plumber - Richard Rosenman

- faster image rendering algorithms. The need for higher quality images is never ending and V-Ray is determined to deliver quality in the shortest times possible. Simulating the complete intricacies of light interaction within our real world is beyond the power of today's computers; however, we can get you very close - as close as you want to.

- multi-platform support. Although originally developed for 3dsmax, V-Ray is now ready to jump to other applications. A standalone version of V-Ray and V-Ray for Autodesk Maya are on the way to hit the public beta, V-Ray for Softimage XSI is evolving too, and the V-Ray implementation for Rhinoceros, for which Chaos Group is working in collaboration US-based company ASGVis (www.asgvis.com) is already available.

Bottles - Jesus Selvera

- V-Ray sales have boosted 9 (nine) times over the past 3 years. This led to the expansion of the Chaos Group team, which would allow it to provide 24-hour support over e-mail as well as hot telephone lines, new offices, and last but definitely not least – ever-improving software solutions.

Visit Chaos Group at Siggraph 2007 – San Diego Convention Center, booth #221