New VRay version released! (2.40.01)

In secret Chaosgroup has released a new VRay version 2.40.01 on Feb 06, 2013. Only the chaosgroup forum speaks about it...

Continue reading to see the complete changelog...

New features:

• VRayHairFarmMod: Added support for rendering HairFarm 2.0 with V-Ray
• VRayProxy: Support for Alembic .abc files
• V-Ray RT: Support for instancing
• V-Ray RT: Support for Forest Pro instancing
• V-Ray RT CPU: Faster update when adjusting VRayLights
• V-Ray RT GPU: CUDA speed optimizations and optimizations for GK110 cards
• V-Ray RT GPU: Support for the ColorCorrection texture
• V-Ray RT GPU: Support for the Mix texture

Modified features:

• V-Ray: Added include/exclude object lists for different color channels to the MultiMatte render element
• V-Ray: Added option to the VRayExtraTex render element to avoid auto-renaming the element when the texture is changed
• V-Ray: Default memory limit for dynamic geometry changed to 4000 MB for x64 versions
• V-Ray: Fixed issue that was slowing down multi-core rendering for VRayProxy objects
• V-Ray: Optimized multi-core rendering for OpenEXR textures
• V-Ray: Optimized unnecessary velocity calculations when no velocity channel is needed
• V-Ray: V-Ray components now register in the respective menus across different language 3ds Max builds
• V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayHairMtl
• V-Ray RT CPU: Added support for VRayFur
• V-Ray scene converter: Added mr_Sun/mr_Sky lights in export to VRaySun/VRaySky respectively
• V-Ray scene exporter: Added subdivided geometry export
• VRayEdgesTex: Improved the round corners algorithm
• VRayAmbientLight: Made some of the parameters animated
• VRayFur: Added "Level Of Detail" option to reduce geometry along the distance from the camera
• VRayHDRI: Added "Color space" section and moved the "Gamma" option there
• VRayIESLight: Added an option to override the IES shape
• VRayIESLight: Made selecting both the light and it's target when clicking on the line between them
• VRayLight: Added a preview of the "directionality" parameter of VRayLights in the viewports
• VRayLight: Added "targeted" option for rectangle VRayLights
• VRayLight/VRayIESLight: Added textured lighting in Nitrous viewport, for Dome light enabled by an environment variable VRAY_DOME_VIEWPORT=1
• VRayMeshGeom: The sample plugin was extended to create V-Ray Standalone shaders on the fly
• VRayMtl: Made "Fog color" mappable
• VRayMtl: Made reflections to affect the alpha of matte objects
• VRayMtlGLSL: Added ability to save and load compiled shaders
• VRayMtlGLSL: Added cubemap texture support
• VRayMtlGLSL: Added viewport color parameter
• VRayMtlGLSL: Added vr_brdf_light builtin BRDF support
• VRayProxy: Support for flipping of Z/Y axis
• VRayProxy: Support for visibility lists for .vrmesh and .abc files
• VRaySphereFade: Added support for box and cylinder gizmos
• ply2vrmesh: Added option to specify the name of the velocity attribute (-velocityAttrName)
• ply2vrmesh: Added support for .hclassic and .bhclassic files produced by Houdini 12
• ply2vrmesh: Added support for color sets from .bgeo files
• ply2vrmesh: Added support for exporting the face and vertex normals in .geo and .bgeo files
• ply2vrmesh: Added ability to store the V-Ray user attributes when creating a proxy

Bug fixes:

• Hair&Fur: Fixed crash when lit by VRayLightMtl with Direct Illumination on
• Hair&Fur: Fixed incorrect result with VRayHairInfoTex texture in "Position along strand" mode
• Hair&Fur: Fixed random swap of custom materials between different Hair&Fur modifiers when reloading a scene
• Hair&Fur: Fixed memory leak after rendering a frame since V-Ray 2.3
• imapviewer: Fixed crash when incrementally loading irradiance maps
• V-Ray: Enabled by default all channels in the MultiMatte render element
• V-Ray: Fixed crash when pressing the "Remove" button in the VRayLightSelect element with empty lights list
• V-Ray: Fixed export of objects with ':' in the names, failing to compose file name
• V-Ray: Fixed incorrect normals for ParticleFlow systems with ShapeInstance where the instanced object has explicit normals
• V-Ray: Fixed issue causing random crashes when updating material swatches with VRayCarPaintMtl material or bitmap textures
• V-Ray: Fixed issue causing white edges on matte objects lit with 3ds Max lights with area shadows
• V-Ray: Fixed issue with V-Ray object properties not applied when changing more than one at a time
• V-Ray: Fixed misspelled "caustics_autoSave" maxscript property
• V-Ray: Fixed some warnings that appeared incorrectly due to 3ds Max 2013 Unicode support
• V-Ray: Fixed standard lights' "Atmosphere shadows" option of doesn't work properly with area VRayShadows
• V-Ray: Fixed UI issue with MultiMatte render element RGB channel names
• V-Ray: Fixed V-Ray materials' to appear in the respective categories in the material editor
• V-Ray RT: Fixed Maxscript access for .warn_unsupported property
• V-Ray RT: Fixed VRayBlendMtl as coat of another VRayBlendMtl to render properly
• V-Ray RT: Mirroring instance of VrayIES light using Offset spinner while running RT sent the light to wrong coordinates
• V-Ray RT: GI multipliers by object which are greater than 1.0 were not working in RT
• V-Ray RT CPU: Fixed artifacts in layered materials
• V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed calculations precision on CUDA and OpenCL rendering causing artifacts
• V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed crash with 8-bit texture mode and light textures
• V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed OpenCL issue with wrong transparent shadows with motion blur
• V-Ray RT GPU: Fixed OpenCL issue with motion blurred dome lights
• V-Ray RT GPU: Scaled IES lights produced different result from the production renderer
• V-Ray scene exporter: Fixed photometric lights conversion to IES lights
• V-Ray scene exporter: Fixed Render Elements manager retrieval when selected ActiveShade rendering
• VFB: Fixed issue with multithreaded ICC profiles loading, that could cause either miscalculations or crash
• VRayCarPaint/VRayFlakesMtl: Fixed issue with the flakes layer not respecting the global reflection depth limit
• VRayDisplacementMod: Fixed crash when "Edge length" option is set to 0,0
• VRayDisplacementMod: Fixed incorrect displacement result on mirrored geometry when using Noise modifier and motion blur
• VRayDistanceTex: Fixed to work as bump map
• VRayFlakesMtl: Fixed wrong buckets when rendering with DMC sampler
• VRayGLSLMtl: GLSL materials were receiving no GI when evaluating shaders executed in light loop mode
• VRayHairMtl: Fixed random crash in case when applied to normal geometry
• VRayHairMtl: Optimized material sampling
• VRayIESLight: Fixed an issue preventing the light to be selected in the viewport with no IES profile assigned
• VRayIESLight: Fixed "Autogrid" option in creation mode
• VRayIESLight: Fixed crash when setting ies profile through MaxScript
• VRayLensEffects: Fixed issue with remaining render elements in the VFB when the effect is deleted
• VRayLight: 3ds Max crash with dome light
• VRayLight: Fixed incorrect tab order of UI controls
• VRayLight: Fixed issue causing the UI to disappear when switching the light type in 3ds Max 2013
• VRayLight: Fixed issue causing the UI to malfunction when toggling "enable HW lighting" during creation
• VRayLight/VRayIESLight: Fixed issue with enabling/disabling Nitrous viewport lighting
• VRayLight/VRayPhysicalCamera: Fixed issue with instanced targeted Vray cameras and lights causing flickering of "target distance" parameter
• VRayLightMtl: Fixed issue when in X-Ref'd scene with direct illumination mode on
• VRayMtl: Fixed "Affect shadows" option to work with enabled caustics
• VRayEnvironmentFog: The "fog height" parameter could not take negative values
• VRayOrnatrixMod: Fixed issue concerning hairs collections with varying number of guide points per strand
• VRayPhysicalCamera: Fixed the "Horizontal offset" and "vertical offset" options showing different result in the viewport and the render
• VRayPhysicalCamera: Fixed issue with animated zoom and motion blur
• VRayPlane: Fixed rendering with VRayBPTracer
• VRayStereoscopic: Fixed shade map improperly generated file names
• VRayBlendMtl: Displacement in the base material was not rendered
• VRayFastSSS2: Fixed artifacts when rendering point-cached motion-blurred geometry with displacement
• ply2vrmesh: Fixed crash during RealFlow .bin files conversion
• ply2vrmesh: Fixed crash when converting .obj file containing face definitions with negative indexes