Chaos releases V-Ray 7 for SketchUp

Chaos has released V-Ray 7 for SketchUp, the latest version of the renderer. The release adds native support for rendering 3D Gaussian Splats and luminaires for realistic interior lighting. It also updates V-Ray Scatter, V-Ray Sun and Sky, V-Ray GPU, and the VFB. V-Ray 7 for SketchUp is cutting-edge 3D rendering software that helps create the most photorealistic images for your 3D models. With V-Ray 7, you can create immersive virtual spaces with natural and artificial lighting and incredibly accurate details. It is one of the leading 3D rendering tools on the market and is widely used in architecture, interior design, and many other fields.

In this blog, iRender will discuss what’s new in V-Ray 7 for SketchUp. 

V-Ray 7 is the first raytracer on the market to leverage the Gaussian splats technology, enabling users to easily incorporate and render captures of complex 3D environments and objects. Gaussian splat rendering allows for more efficient handling of multiple-point data and complex layouts, reducing rendering times while maintaining good image quality. This feature reproduces smooth and natural details in images, significantly improving sharpness and lighting in complex scenes.

Although there are free third-party add-ons for rendering 3DGS data in Blender, Unity, and Unreal Engine, V-Ray is one of the first CG applications to support the technology natively. Chaos tells us that it expects the functionality to appeal to both architectural visualization and VFX studios, particularly as a way of creating detailed background environments.

Changes to lighting and rendering in V-Ray 7 include support for luminaires. Explore the latest optimized light fixture assets in Chaos Cosmos, designed using V-Ray Luminaires technology. These assets are now much easier to sample and render at faster speeds.

The V-Ray Sun and Sky system has been updated to support the PRG Clear Sky model used in Corona, Chaos’s other major production renderer. With the updated PRG Sky, you can create vibrant, richly saturated blue skies and realistic sunsets. You can even render the sky at various observer altitudes, reaching up to several kilometers.

With V-Ray 7, there is improved support for caustics in GPU rendering. This enables more realistic light interactions, such as reflections and refractions that create light patterns on surfaces. V-Ray GPU, V-Ray’s hybrid CPU and GPU renderer, gets initial support for rendering caustics, bringing it closer to feature parity with the main CPU render engine. Users can adjust the settings for caustics to either prioritize speed or quality, depending on their project requirements. This configurability is crucial in allowing artists to manage render times while achieving desired visual effects.

The V-Ray Scatter tool creates instances of objects using the surfaces and edges of other objects or splines to generate points. New features include camera clipping, to limit scattering to areas within the camera view, and edge trimming to clip away parts of instances outside the boundaries of their host surface.

V-Ray Scatter in version 7 likely received numerous optimizations aimed at enhancing the performance of scattering operations, allowing for faster distribution of objects without compromising system performance. V-Ray Scatter continues to improve on instancing techniques. Efficient instancing allows for the rendering of large numbers of objects without a heavy performance hit, making it suitable for large-scale scene environments.

As well as the changes common to other editions of V-Ray 7, the update also includes changes specific to V-Ray 7 for SketchUp, including new options for material overrides. Users can now perform partial overrides, with options to override refractive materials independently, or to preserve key properties like bump and refraction while overriding.

Other improvements to materials and texturing include support for layered textures, a built-in mix curve to control falloff effects, and the option to apply color gradients to textures. The Light Mix render element, for relighting renders inside the VFB, now supports emissive materials as well as conventional lights

V-Ray 7 for SketchUp is designed to empower designers and architects with enhanced tools and capabilities to create stunning visualizations more efficiently. For the most up-to-date information, specific feature lists, and tutorials, it is recommended to check the Chaos Group official website and their release notes for V-Ray 7 for SketchUp. They provide comprehensive documentation and updates that are valuable for users to maximize their use of the software.

iRender is a perfect option to render projects in PC optimization for rendering tasks, CGI, and VFX with over 30.000 customers. To bring the best experiences for customers, iRender has been improving the quality and updating the newest technology every day. We provide high-configuration dedicated servers (physical computers/machines) specifically optimized for GPU rendering.

If you’re a Sketchup enthusiast who wants to learn and utilize the newest capabilities but your computer configuration is still constrained, iRender will offer you a solution that will fully solve your issue. One special advantage is using the iRender server as if it were your computer, completely controlling its setup and capacity. You only need to set up SketchUp and V-Ray once and everything is stored for later use.

With iRender, you can select the ideal server package for your renderer from various single-GPU and multi-GPU RTX 3090 packages. iRender offers from 1/2/4/6/8 RTX 4090s and 3090s. In addition to offering powerful configurations, all servers at iRender are also equipped with AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 3955WX @ 3.9 – 4.2GHz or AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, 256GB RAM, 2TB Storage NVMe SSD. These are configurations of multi-card GPU servers that you should take into consideration if you want to have great performance with V-ray.

Reference source: chaos.com