V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini and Maya, along with Chaos Vantage 3.1, are now available, offering enhanced look development, previsualization, and animation workflows for VFX artists.
Vantage, our 100% path-traced real-time renderer, is now available in the Houdini and Maya viewports. For VFX artists using Houdini, that means access to production-quality real-time rendering via the new Vantage Hydra Delegate. And for Maya users, an enhanced Live Link also streams high-quality real-time output from Vantage straight into the Maya viewport, with Vantage running in the background.
Additional new features include V-Ray Night Sky, Gaussian splats clipping, and new AI tools for image enhancement, upscaling (Maya), and material generation (Houdini and Maya). Read on to learn about the latest updates in Vantage 3.1 and V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini and Maya 🍿.
Feature highlights
- Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini: Real-time, fully path-traced rendering in the Houdini viewport.
- Enhanced Vantage Live Link in Maya: High-quality real-time rendering in the Maya viewport, also on Linux and macOS through a remote connection.
- Real-time fluid simulator in Vantage: Simulate explosions, fires, exhaust trails, fog-like effects, and more.
- V-Ray Displacement Material in Maya: Create complex surfaces with less effort and easily blend displacement across materials.
- Pyro-ready volume shader in Houdini: Achieve fire, smoke, or explosion effects with the new V-Ray Volume Shader.
- Faster volume rendering in Houdini: Numerous volumetric sampling improvements for faster volumetric rendering.
- V-Ray Night Sky in Houdini and Maya: For realistic and accurate night skies using real-world inputs, including date, time, and geo-location.
- Gaussian splats clipping in Houdini and Maya: Trim unwanted areas and replace with 3D models that blend naturally with the new clipping functionality in V-Ray.
- AI Material Generator in Houdini and Maya: Turn photos into PBR materials with all necessary maps in just a few clicks.
- AI image enhancement and upscaler in Maya: Improve image quality and turn low-res outputs into stunning 16k renders.
> Download Chaos Vantage 3, update 1
> Download Vantage Hydra Delegate builds for Houdini*
> Download V-Ray 7 Maya, update 2
> Download V-Ray 7 Houdini, update 2
Not yet using V-Ray or Vantage? Learn more about V-Ray, our award-winning photorealistic renderer, and see what our real-time ray tracing renderer, Vantage, has to offer VFX artists.
*Note: An active Chaos Vantage license and a clean installation of the Vantage Hydra Delegate build are required to run the plugin in Houdini. Users who have an older Vantage version installed should download the latest version.
Vantage 3.1 updates
Real-time rendering plugin for Houdini
The new Chaos Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini introduces a real-time rendering plugin for Houdini. This gives Houdini artists instant access to production-quality real-time rendering for their lookdev and previz workflows. We plan to expand Vantage Hydra-based integrations to other DCCs as host applications continue to advance their Hydra support.
Vantage Live Link enhancements in Maya
The updated Vantage Live Link now streams real-time, path-traced rendering directly into the Maya viewport. Linux and macOS users can also see Vantage in the viewport with the addition of support for a remote Vantage host.
Real-time fluid simulator
Vantage now includes a real-time fluid simulator so you can simulate smoke and fire. Add explosions, fires, exhaust trails, fog-like effects, chimney smoke, fireplaces, and more to your scenes using Vantage. It’s designed for instant feedback, making it easier to test ideas, preview effects, and create quick volumetric interactions before committing to heavy offline simulations.
Splittable side panels
The Vantage interface now supports splittable side panels, which saves you from having to scroll so much and gives faster access to key settings. Split the left or right panel into two columns and adjust widths, giving you more room to work.
> Learn more about Chaos Vantage
V-Ray 7.2 for Maya updates
Enhanced Vantage Live Link in Maya
Maya users now get access to true real-time rendering with 100% path-traced quality directly in the Maya viewport with the enhanced Vantage Live Link. This is also available on Linux and macOS through a remote connection.
With this update, you can create high-quality playblasts and animation previews within your usual workflow, without the need to use additional tools. You can also get instant real-time feedback for layout, lighting, and lookdev. Plus, render USD and MaterialX setups alongside your native Maya geometry (partial support for now).
V-Ray Displacement Material
The new V-Ray Displacement Material makes it easier to create complex surfaces. Blend displacement across materials, apply it to individual V-Ray proxy objects, export materials with their displacement, and more.
Gaussian splats clipping
The new clipping functionality in V-Ray makes it possible to customize your Gaussian splats within Maya itself, without regenerating data. Trim unwanted splat areas and replace them with 3D models that blend naturally. This is ideal for when integrating real-life scanned environments with 3D assets.
V-Ray Night Sky
Build realistic night skies using real-world inputs such as date, time, and geo-location. You can also create day-to-night timelapses, define the position of stars and the Moon, all without having to rely on HDRIs.
New AI rendering tools for Maya
Three new AI-powered visualization tools are now available in beta for V-Ray for Maya users.
AI Enhancer: Part of Chaos Cloud Collaboration, the AI Image Enhancer quickly improves the realism of certain elements like vegetation, people, and terrain. You can even select and fine-tune specific objects individually, such as clothing, by adjusting a few settings. It’s also possible to see what has been enhanced in your scene by moving the before and after slider.
AI Material Generator: Create PBR materials from photos, including all maps, in just a few clicks. Part of Chaos Cosmos, the material generator is ideal for creating secondary materials that are not the main focus in your scenes.
AI Upscaler: Turn low-resolution images into high-quality visuals up to 16k in a single click. Available in Chaos Cloud Collaboration, you can boost the resolution of your drafts or low-res renders and also sharpen textures and finer details. Learn more about the Chaos AI Upscaler here.
Extended Maya USD support
V-Ray 7 for Maya, update 2, adds support for the latest MayaUSD versions: 0.33.0, 0.34.0, and 0.34.5.
Distributed Rendering 2 (DR2)
DR2 removes machine limits and offers speed and stability improvements for both progressive and bucket rendering. The more machines you add, the faster your renders become. It reduces bottlenecks for large scenes and gives teams more control by using a dispatcher machine.
Note: DR2 is set as the default build. If you would prefer to continue using the legacy DR, access the builds here.
> Learn more about V-Ray for Maya
V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini updates
High-quality, real-time rendering in Houdini
Your pre-production workflows are now smoother than ever with the new Chaos Vantage Hydra Delegate for Houdini. Enjoy great quality real-time previsualization for scene layout and lookdev right in the Houdini viewport.
Vantage runs headlessly and streams fully path-traced pixels straight into the Houdini viewport. No new controls or workflows need to be learned. Plus, with USD and MaterialX support in place, viewport updates happen automatically as you work.
V-Ray Volume Shader improvements
V-Ray’s volume toolset for Houdini gets an upgrade with the Pyro-ready volume shader. Artists can achieve any fire, smoke, or explosion effect with more control, and volumetric sampling improvements deliver faster renders across the board. Deep output support, volumetric holdouts, and enhanced Light Path Expressions give users more compositing control.
AI Material Generator (beta)
Create render-ready PBR materials from real-world photos in just a few clicks with the AI Material Generator, which is available within Chaos Cosmos. It’s ideal for fast shading of background elements or secondary materials where heavy art direction isn’t required.
Gaussian splats clipping
Artists can trim 3D Gaussian splats directly in Houdini without regenerating the data. This makes it easier to blend scanned environments with 3D assets and remove unwanted splat areas cleanly.
V-Ray Night Sky
V-Ray Night Sky offers a procedural way to build realistic night skies without relying on HDRIs. Use real-world settings or animate full day-to-night transitions. You can also take full manual control of the Moon and stars placement to match any creative direction.
Houdini 21 support
The V-Ray 7.2 release adds support for Houdini 21.
Additional improvements in V-Ray 7.2 for Houdini
- Resolution-independent bump mapping: Change the resolution of your renders without having to tweak bump mapping.
- Acceleration blur support: Add natural-looking blur effects to anything that speeds up, slows down, or changes direction.
- Mip.map level object overrides: Render textures more efficiently without compromising quality. Ideal for when rendering heavily blurred and mid-to-background objects.
> Learn more about V-Ray for Houdini