V-Ray - 1.50.SP2 (1.50 service pack 2) - New Release

Bulgaria, People's Republic of (Press Release) April 21, 2008 -- The V-Ray 1.5 Service Pack 2 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max 2009® and Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009®.

The update also includes several new features, for example VRayIES photometric light; VRaySimbiontMtl material for direct rendering of DarkTree materials; VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard light for reduction of flickering of VRayFur; the VRay_ExtraTex render element for generating ambient occlusion passes, UVW channel passes etc. There are many modifications and improvements of existing features. The complete list with all details can be found in the changelog file, part of the installation and customers can be also referred to the information provided in the V-Ray help index.

Build 1.50.SP2 (11 April 2008)
(cumulative changelog since build 1.50.SP1)
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New features:
(*) Compatibility with 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009;
(*) Support for animated deforming meshes to .vrmesh files and the VRayProxy object;
(*) Support for Lighting Analysis Overlay render effect in 3ds Max 2009;
(*) VRayIES light;
(*) VRaySimbiontMtl material (allows rendering of DarkTree materials directly by V-Ray);
(*) Rectangle VRayLights can be mapped with a texture map, similar to dome lights;
(*) VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard lights (useful for reducing flickering of VRayFur in animations; works with all V-Ray geometry objects like proxies, fur etc.);
(*) VRay_Illuminance render element;
(*) VRay_SelfIlluminationMap texture baking element;
(*) VRay_BumpNormals render element and VRayBumpNormalsMap bake render element to extract bump-mapped normals;
(*) VRay_ExtraTex render element to store the result from the calculation of any extra texture map on shaded surfaces without the need to actually apply the map in their materials (can be used with VRayDirt for AO pass, or with Vertex Color map for UVW channels pass, or with Falloff map for custom z-depth pass or top/bottom etc);
(*) VRay_SampleRate render element to show the image sampling rate into a separate element;
(*) The installation includes MAX.vray Defaults profile for 3ds Max;

Modified features:
(*) Added "Preserve tweaks on load" option for VRaySimbiontMtl;
(*) DTE components now included with the installation;
(*) Support for "Show map in viewports" of VRayMtl can be disabled by setting the environment variable VRAY_SHOW_MTL_MAPS to 0;
(*) Added hidden parameter "option_clampTextures" to VRayMtl, which is true by default for newly created materials (old scenes render as before);
(*) Faster and multithreaded preparation of texture-mapped VRayLights;
(*) Improved sampling of texture-mapped VRayLights;
(*) Added more white balance presets to the VRayPhyscal camera (D50, D55, D65 and D75 corresponding to the CIE standard illuminants);
(*) The default white balance preset for the VRayPhsycal camera is now the D65 illuminant;
(*) More reliable memory handling for the V-Ray VFB for large images;
(*) Mapped rectangle lights now use the alpha of the texture map for transparency;
(*) The information in .vrmesh files is now compressed by default (makes newly created proxies incompatible with older versions);
(*) Reduced memory requirements in certain situations;
(*) In RTT (render to texture) mode, V-Ray now always creates floating-point frame buffers for the bake elements;
(*) vrimg2exr tool flushes the standard output more regularly;
(*) Added "Soften" parameter to the BRDF parameters of VRayMtl;
(*) vrimg2exr tool has an option for gamma correction;
(*) vrimg2exr tool can convert non-RGB channels (velocity, zdepth etc) when used with the '-channel' option;
(*) Added a hidden parameter lightcache_minPathsPerSample to control usage of light cache samples during the light cache calculation phase (reduces bias in the light cache when a small number of subdivs are used);
(*) VRaySun target line is now dimmed in the viewports when the sun light is off;
(*) VRayProxy objects have a new "point" display mode;