Chaos V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max

About this release

V-Ray has been the default answer for production rendering out of 3ds Max for so long that the workflow around it is effectively the industry standard workflow. It installs as a renderer inside the host application, adds its own material, light and camera types to the existing menus, and takes over the render setup dialog while leaving everything else about the scene alone.

Two engines share one scene. The processor engine is the reliable, exhaustively tested path that final frames and long animation sequences go out through, and the graphics card engine renders the same scene far faster for lookdev and client review. Materials, lights and settings are shared between them rather than being separate setups, so switching engines is a dropdown rather than a rebuild.

Interactive rendering is where the day is actually spent. A live window updates as the scene is changed, resolving progressively while lights are moved, materials are adjusted and the camera is framed, which removes the guess and wait cycle that offline rendering used to force. The frame buffer carries a full set of colour correction, exposure, curve and lens effect controls that apply after the render without going back through it.

The supporting pieces cover everything a visualisation job needs. A physically based material library with thousands of ready scanned surfaces, proxy geometry for scattering vegetation and crowds without collapsing the scene, physical camera controls in real photographic units, light types including sun, sky, dome and mesh, and render element output for handing a shot to a compositor. Distributed rendering shares a frame across machines on the same network.

What it does

Two engines, one scene

Processor and graphics card rendering share materials, lights and settings, switchable from a dropdown.

Interactive rendering

A live window resolves progressively while the scene is edited, removing the render and wait cycle.

Frame buffer corrections

Exposure, curves, colour balance and lens effects applied after the render without re rendering.

Scanned material library

Thousands of physically based surfaces ready to assign rather than built from scratch.

Proxy geometry

Scatter vegetation, crowds and repeated detail without loading the full mesh into the scene.

Distributed rendering

Split a single frame across machines on the same network from inside the host.

Changed in this version

• Graphics card engine gains closer parity with the processor engine on complex materials.
• Faster light cache calculation on large interior scenes.
• New thin film and layered coating controls in the standard material.
• Frame buffer gains improved compositing of render elements.
• Reduced memory use on scenes with very heavy proxy scattering.

System requirements

Install order

1. Install and launch the host application once before running this installer.
2. Unpack the archive to a path without spaces.
3. Run the installer and include the material library and render node components.
4. Open the host, set the renderer in render setup, and let the material library index build.

Worth knowing before you start

File details