New Features

Parallax Texture

• Added the new Parallax texture VOP

• Added support for importing assets using the new Parallax texture from Chaos Cosmos

Caustics

• Added new Quick Caustics parameters on the V-Ray material for common scenarios such as pools and water features, allowing for believable light patterns without the overhead of full photon tracing

Volumes

• Added a Multiple Importance Sampling option for Volumetrics to the global V-Ray Render Settings

• Added a "Vol. Step Rate" parameter for volumetrics under the Render Geometry Settings LOP

• Added a "Volume Velocity Scale" parameter for the V-Ray Object Properties and Render Geometry Settings LOP

• Added an automatic Step Size control for the V-Ray Environment Fog, which should help reduce render times

• Exposed a control for switching to the new volume integrator for Environment Fog, which should be used by default to produce cohesive results when mixing the Environment Fog and the new Volume Shader

Gaussian Splats

• Added support for relighting Gaussian Splats

Crowds

• Reduced memory usage and time to first pixel for crowd simulations

Solaris

• Added support for motion blur coming from animated camera focal length

• Significantly improved memory usage for nested instancing

• Added Night Sky controls to the V-Ray Atmosphere LOP

• Added support for Acceleration Motion Blur when using the p@accel attribute

• Added Stereoscopic Camera support

• Added support for the husk executable's --threads argument

• Added pattern matching support for lights in the /stage context

• Added multipliers for Velocity, Widths and Scale under the Render Geometry Settings LOP

USD/Hydra

• Exposed the V-Ray Render Settings for usdView/Hydra

• Added support for the latest version of Nuke for the V-Ray and Vantage delegates

• Added support for the latest version of Katana for the V-Ray and Vantage delegates

• Added support for usdView and usdRecord for the V-Ray and Vantage delegates

• Added support for USD v26.x support

• Added support for USD v25.11 Python 3.10

• Added support for USD v25.05 and Python 3.11 for Linux/RHEL8

• Added support for the MeshLightAPI in USD v25.x

• Added OpenPBR support for USD

• Added viewport selection support for the Vantage delegate

• Added support for dynamic parameter aliases in Hydra

• Added LightLinker support for USD v25.x

Displacement/Subdivision

• Soalris: Add global out-of-frustum control

• Expose additional control for overriding the tessellation of Out of Frustum geometry when using Displacement or Subdivision

MaterialX

• Added native support for MaterialX in Vantage

• Added support for MaterialX v1.39 and further

• Added support for overriding parameters with primvars

V-Ray

• Increased the maximum number of V-Ray light selects to 256

• Scene Light Path Expressions will be converted to V-Ray Light Selects where possible to improve performance

• Added daemon mode for Vantage to be used for Live Link with V-Ray for Houdini

• Added Intel Open Image Denoiser support

• Added support for V-Ray Cylinder camera type in the Projection VOP texture

• Added Option for AI features in the installer

• Added a Chaos Account window in the V-Ray top menu bar

Modified Features

• Changing the rendering resolution will no longer affect the strength of bump mapping

• The "Velocity Blur" parameter value from the V-Ray Object Properties or Render Geometry Settings LOP will now correctly affect volumetrics (assuming usage of a vector "vel" field)

• Improved VRMat memory usage when loading encapsulated shading graphs

• Improved Time to First Pixel when rendering subdivided/tessellated hair

• Modified the Cosmos asset loading to support farm rendering with Cosmos assets

• Improved OCIO texture performance

• The V-Ray Frame Buffer Lens Effects can now affect the Background layer

• Added additional functionalities to the V-Ray Frame Buffer Background layer

• Moved the Highlight Burn option from the Exposure layer to the Filmic Tonemap - linear

• Improved the functionality of the masks in the Exposure layer

Bug Fixes

Solaris

• AOV bind output is incorrect if material is applied with GeomSubsets

• Pattern ID node is broken

• Make instanceable slow IPR update

• DOF is disabled when using render region

• Viewport render setting may override production

• $F tag not exported correctly

• Instance flickering

• Different translucency export for brdfvraymtl in volumetric mode between Solaris and Vanilla

• Turning off or disconnecting a texture sets parameter to default color and gets bugged after reconnecting

• Material flickering

• Faceted faces when using VrayMtl SSS

• LightFilter signed in light LOP is not exported in vrscene

• V-Ray Atmosphere HDA for Houdini 21 lights api schema

• 19.5 shader translator regression

• TexOCIO not written into USD when used via FileImage node

• Moon's viewport preview is not updated based on geographic coordinates

• Broken normals in a test scene with 7.3

• BumpNormals written wrong into EXR

• TriPlanar with rest broken

• Cryptomatte is not working with 2-sided material

• Fog and Aerial Perspective interaction with volumes

• Denoiser not applied in viewport when set in Render settings LOP

• Implement projection modes for coord sys camera projection

• Different timesamples exported for geo

• Cubic curves appear different between Houdini 21 and Houdini 20.5

• Moon and stars not rendered by default in Houdini 20.5

• Collect node doesn't pick up switch node correctly

• OSL not working

• SSS color shift with AOVs

• Material Path Cryptomatte is different in Houdini 21

• Geometry light V-Ray parameters error

• Volume viewport picks wrong field

• Houdini 21 coordsys issue

• Visualize with Blend Mtls

• Viewport selection is not shown

• Nested instancers are always unpacked for husk

• Remap node value

• Incorrect Acceleration blur for instances for a specific scene

• Shader referencing Mtl Builders not working

• Float outputs are all RGB

• Rendergeosettings Renderable toggle does not affect GeomMayaHair

• Float ExtraTex AOV not working

• Lights affect Environment Fog regardless of Light Link settings

• Gaussian Splat Clipping mask distance - not working

• Transform VOP node animation

• DOF toggle doesn't work

• Invalid depth channel values

• Vray Sun turning on Geographic position > Zone produces error

• Default signature of a parameter is no longer working

• Houdini 21 Light filters not working

• VRayScene LOP disable preview not taken into account

• VRayScene import mode is wrong when left on default value

• Sun is not exported for TexSky

• VFB is not shown for husk

• Incorrect offset with overscan

• AI Upscaling doesn't work for all resolutions

• Wrong displacement scale for instances when prototypes have non-default transform

• NVidia AI Upscale parameter causes flickering of viewport render

• Rayserver instancer with Node with ExtMapChannels causing black render

• VDBVolume doesn't work with vector fields

• beauty pass half float not supported

• GPU: Subsets material is not rendered for instances

• Wrong render settings are used for render

• 16-bit TX files crash

• Crash rendering to MPlay

• Crash in a specific user setup

• Material crash with instances 20260427

• Denoiser crash

• Crash with specific USDZ file when V-Ray is started in the viewport

• Switching between materials from VRMat node with loaded .vrscene causes a crash

MaterialX

• Rendering issue with ND_crosshatch

• Anisotropy values closer to 1 causing dark results

• Different results when importing certain .mtlx file from MtlVRmat and directly importing from Houdini

• MaterialX dependency causes a conflict with non-default Houdini installation when loading V-Ray

Volumes

• Rendering extremely slow when a volume has empty channels

• Crash with new volume shader and deep output when Deep Merge Mode is set to 3

IPR

• Env fog is not updated in IPR in Houdini 21

• V-Ray Light parameters on basic USD lights do not update in IPR for USD >= 25

• IPR shader anims don't update

• Primvar name IPR update does not work

• IPR update crash while loading bitmaps

• Crash when assigning material during V-Ray viewport IPR

• TexDistance may not be updated in IPR

• Gaussian splats relighting does not update in IPR

• Houdini 21: Light parameters IPR update is not working

• Support for more than one output in a V-Ray Material Builder

USD

• Standalone differences

• Glossy refraction in Standalone

• Half-float primvars support

• Unicode names crash

• Nested rayserver instancers may evaluate wrong material

• USD 25.x: Dirty primitives are not updated for USD v25.x

• Missing textures for USDZ file when using usdView

• Invalid depth channel in Katana

• Broken materials in V-Ray standalone with USD 0.25.05

V-Ray

• Render fails when output path exceeds 260 characters

• Installer doesn't prompt you to close Houdini app if it's open

• Rotation of Vignette layer > 45deg causes issues with offset UI handles

• GeomInstancer: Rayserver mode is missing hair shade data overrides

• Night Sky blueness parameter is missing in sunlight UI

• Implement parameter to ignore/restart on corrupt resumable render checkpoints

• Gaussian Splats on matte surface regression

• Deep Output: some deep samples in Z-Depth merge mode have alpha less than 1.0, causing artifacts with compositing

• TexMulti: Wrong export of random modes

• CryptoObjectPath cryptomattes change per frame with Instancers

• Hydra delegate ignores bump_amount when wrapping bump maps.

• The "Uninverted bump normals" option creates Hard Edge artifacts on alembics with negative scale

• Houdini 21: Camera parameters IPR update

• Render Elements: Coat and Sheen elements contain whole shader when VRaymtl is plugged into BRDFBump

• Linux: Installation issue with latest 7.2 builds for Houdini 21

• Shadow artifacts for instanced alembic

• Linux: "Disable AI features" checkbox is not well visible in the installer

• Linux installer doesn't delete vray_for_houdini.json from older installations

• Hydra 2: shaders do not work

• ply2vrmesh: GeomStaticMesh::face_mtlIDs are ignored

• RefShader: Referenced outputs may not be loaded

• Cloud: Export error for animated files

• VolumeShader: asterisk for vector volumes stopped working

• Not all instance data is exported into vrmesh

• Alembic velocity motion blur doesn't match with unpacked geometry

• VFB: Settings window falls behind Houdini window on Linux

• GeomInstancer: ND_heighttonormal doesn't work with rayserver mode

• BerconDistortion does not save dist_map connections

• Uninstaller Issues with V-Ray for Houdini builds on macOS

• Yeti cache files are not rendering properly

• Mirror tiling seams with triplanar texture into displacement or bump

• VolumeVRayToon: Wrong render of Rayserver instancer

• Ocean spectra crash with ICX

• Husk // Segmentation fault of specific frame

• MtlVRmat crash in a specific case

• Crash: Alembic hair with TexSampler::uvCoord

• GPU: shader_sets_list crash

• EXR textures render black

• VRayScene: material_override doesn't work for GeomInstancer

• NaN ray derivatives in a particular scene