Section Contents
o Renderer
o Camera
o Render Output
o Animation
o Environment
o Material Override
o Swarm Settings
o Raytrace | Anti-Aliasing
o Global Illumination Settings
Brute Force Settings
Irradiance Map Settings
Light Cache Settings
o Caustics
o Volumetric Environment
o Switches
o Rendering Tools and Utilities
V-Ray Image to EXR Converter
Standalone Denoise Tool | vdenoise
Page Contents
o Overview
o Initializing Rendering
o Settings
o Interactive Rendering Off
o Interactive Rendering On
Overview
Initializing Rendering
UI Path: ||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Render Settings A V-Ray render can be initialized in several ways:
UI Paths:
||V-Ray Toolbar|| > Render
CAMERA
Page Contents
o Overview
o Basic Standard Camera Parameters
o Standard Camera
o Depth of Field
o Effects Type – Specifies the type of the camera.
o Example: White Balance Standard – A standard pinhole camera.
o Example: Vignetting VR Spherical – Spherical camera with independent
o Advanced Standard Camera Parameters
horizontal and vertical FOV selection that is useful for
o Depth of Field generating latlong images for spherical VR use.
o Bokeh VR Cube – A variant of the Box camera with the cube
o Effects sides arranged in a single row. Unlike the Box camera's
o Example: Exposure Control: Film Speed (ISO) output, Cube6x1 does not produce an empty space in the
o Example: Exposure Control: F Number
output image and is useful in generating cubic VR output.
o Example: Exposure Control: Shutter Speed
Stereo – Enables or disables the Stereoscopic rendering
mode. Stereoscopic images will be rendered "side-by-side" or
"one on top of the other" based on the Output Layout option.
You do not need to re-adjust the image resolution as it will adapt
Overview automatically.
Example: Vignetting
ISO is 400
Bokeh
Enable Bokeh effects – Defines the shape of the camera
aperture.
Blade Count – Enabled this option to simulate the polygonal
shape of the aperture of real-world cameras. When this option is
off, the shape is assumed to be perfectly circular.
Center Bias – Determines the uniformity of the DOF effect. A
value of 0.0 means that light passes uniformly through the
aperture. Positive values mean that light is concentrated
towards the rim of the aperture, while negative values
concentrate light at the center.
Rotation – Specifies the orientation of the aperture shape.
Anisotropy – Allows the stretching of the bokeh effect
horizontally or vertically. Positive values stretch the effect in the
vertical direction. Negative values stretch it in the horizontal
direction. ISO is 800
Effects
Vignetting – Specify the amount of the vignetting effect,
where 0.0 is no vignetting and 1.0 is normal vignetting. For
more information, see the Vignetting example below.
Vertical Tilt – Simulates vertical tilting of the camera, allowing
perspective corrections or achieving a "2-point perspective"
look.
ISO is 1600 F Number is 6.0
Note: All the images from the following examples are rendered
using the VRaySunSky set with their default parameters.
This parameter controls the aperture size of the virtual camera.
Lowering the F Number value increases the aperture size and
so makes the image brighter, since more light enters the
camera. In reverse, increasing the F Number makes the image
darker, as the aperture is closed.
Shutter speed is 60.0, ISO is 200, Vignetting is on, White
balance is white.
F Number is 4.0
F Number is 8.0
Render Output
This provides details on output settings for rendering.
Page Contents
Shutter speed is 125.0
o Overview
o Dimensions
o Match Viewport
o Output Layout
o Custom
o Save Image
o Image Options
o Notes
Overview
Dimensions
Save Image
Output Layout File Type – Sets the image file type. The following file
type options are available:
png
bmp
tga
hdr
sgi Bits per Channel – Specifies the amount of data per
jpg channel for the .png, .sgi, .exr, and .tif file types. The
exr following options are possible depending on the file
pic type:
tif
vrimg 8 bits
16 bits
16 bits (half-float)
The File Type option becomes active after a valid File 32 bits
Path has been set.
Compression – Specifies the image compression type
for the .tga and .exr file types. The following options
are possible depending on the file type:
Image Options
Default
No compression
Run-length
RLE
ZIPS
ZIP
PIZ
pxr24
Quality(%) – Specifies the image quality as a
percentage when saving with the .jpg file type.
Multichannel – When saving the output as an .exr,
Options for .png files enables the render elements to be saved as different
channels in a single .exr file.
Notes
Animation
Alpha – Determines how the Alpha channel will be
handled. This option is available for the following
formats: .png, .tga, .sgi, .exr, .pic, and .tif. Page Contents
Page Contents
o Overview
UI Path: ||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Render Settings > o Parameters
Animation rollout o Environment Overrides
Parameters
Overview
Notes
Background – Sets a color or a map to act as a
background during rendering. Press the checkerboard
o The Use Camera Path setting of the Irradiance button to select a texture. If a texture is selected, it will
Map and Light Cache GI engines can be enabled in override the color as long as the texture checkbox is
order to calculate the GI samples for the entire camera enabled.
path of the animation instead of just the current view.
Environment Overrides
Overview
Tags
Multiple colors within a single pixel. What color should Interactive Off and Progressive On Advanced UI
the pixel be?
Optimizations
GPU Textures
o Overview
o Indirect Illumination (GI) Parameters
o Ambient Occlusion
o Example: Ambient Occlusion
o Example: Light Bounces
With Interactive turned off shows the most commonly
used options needed for a rendering.
Enabled – Turns ambient occlusion on or off.
With Interactive turned on shows the most Radius – Determines the amount of area (in Scene
commonly used options needed for an Interactive units) where the ambient occlusion effect is produced.
rendering.
Occlusion Amount – Specifies the amount of ambient
occlusion. A value of 0.0 will produce no ambient
occlusion.
Ambient Occlusion
Page Contents
o Overview
o Parameters
Overview
Parameters
Section Contents
o Irradiance Map Viewer
Page Contents
o Overview
o Parameters
o Irradiance Map Optimizations
o Disk Caching
Overview
The Advanced view.
Use Camera Path – When enabled, V-Ray will Single Frame – Default mode. Computes a new
calculate the GI samples for the entire camera path irradiance map for each frame of an animation.
instead of just the current view. This option is available From File – The irradiance map is loaded from a
only if there is an animation set up in the project. file. No new irradiance map will be computed.
Use Camera Path can be enabled to save the cached Incremental Add to Map – V-Ray will use the
map by only rendering the first frame of an animation. irradiance map that is already in memory and will
The map can then be loaded and used for each frame, only refine it in places that do not have enough
saving a considerable amount of time. detail. This mode is useful when compiling an
irradiance map to render multiple views of a static
scene or a fly-through animation.
Keep File – When enabled, the last irradiance map
map calculated will stay in memory after the rendering
Irradiance Map Optimizations has finished. Disable this option to automatically delete
the map (and thus save memory).
Save – Saves the irradiance map currently in memory
for later re-use.
Auto-Save / File – When enabled, V-Ray will
automatically save the irradiance map to the specified
file at the end of rendering. This option is particularly
useful if the irradiance map will be sent for rendering
on a different machine through network rendering.
Subdivs – Determines how many paths are traced Example: The Subdivs Parameter
from the camera. The actual number of paths is the
square of the subdivisions (the default 1000 subdivs
mean that 1 000 000 paths will be traced from the The Subdivs parameter controls the number of rays
camera). For more information, see the Subdivisions that are shot into the scene and the "noise" quality of
Parameter example below. the light cache samples.
Sample Size – Determines the spacing of the samples Here is a scene rendered with different settings for
in the light cache. Smaller numbers mean that the the Subdivs parameter (all other settings are the
samples will be closer to each other, the light cache same). As more samples are added, the noise is
will preserve sharp details in lighting, but it will be more reduced, but the render times increase. When
the Subdivs parameter is increased twice, the light
cache takes approximately 4 times as long to
calculate.
Subdivisions = 2000
Subdivisions = 500
Example: The Sample Size Parameter
Subdivisions = 1000
Sample size = 0.01 Sample size = 0.0
Notes
Without retracing, light cache samples from the bright
exterior are mixed with the dark samples in the exterior
o Do not apply perfectly white or near-white materials to
causing light leaks. the majority of the objects in the scene, as this will
cause excessive render times. This is because the
amount of reflected light in the scene will decrease
very gradually and the light cache will have to trace
longer paths. Also avoid materials that have one of
their RGB components set to maximum (255) or
above.
o The Light Cache calculation cannot be distributed
among several machines for distributed rendering.
o Overview
o Caustics
o Disk Caching
Overview
Mode – Controls the mode of the irradiance map: In order to calculate the caustics effects, V-Ray uses a
New map – When enabled, a new photon map technique known as photon mapping. It is a two-pass
will be generated. It will overwrite any previous technique. The first pass consists of shooting particles
photon map left over from previous rendering. (photons) from the light sources in the scene, tracing
From file – When enabled, V-Ray will not them as they bounce around the scene, and recording
compute the photon map but will load it from a the places where the photons hit the object surfaces.
file. Hit the Browse button on the right to specify The second pass is the final rendering, when the
the file name. caustics are calculated by using density
estimation techniques on the photon hits stored during
Keep File – When enabled V-Ray keeps the photon the first pass.
map in memory after the scene rendering has finished. Caustics are not support in VR Camera and Stereo
When disabled, the map is deleted and the memory it Camera modes.
shot (and thus get smoother results) while keeping the
size of the caustics photon map manageable.
Caustics
Volumetric Environment
center, and its radius is equal to the Search
distance value. Smaller values produce sharper, but
potentially noisier caustics; larger values produce
smoother, but blurrier caustics. This page provides details about the Volumetric
Environment rollout in the V-Ray Asset Editor.
Max Photons – Specifies the maximum number of
photons that will be considered when rendering the
caustics effect on a surface. Smaller values cause less Page Contents
photons to be used and the caustics will be sharper,
but perhaps noisier. Larger values produce smoother,
o Overview
but blurrier caustics. The special value of 0 means that
o Parameters
V-Ray will use all the photons that it can find inside the
o Aerial Perspective
search area.
o Example: Visibility Distance
Max Density – Limits the resolution (and thus the o Example: Visibility Height
memory) of the caustics photon map. Whenever V-Ray o Example: Affect Environment Rays
needs to store a new photon in the caustics photon o
map, it will first look if there are any other photons o Environment Fog
o
within a distance specified by this parameter. If there is
already a suitable photon in the map, V-Ray will just o Scatter GI
add the energy of the new photon to the one in the o Affect
map. Otherwise, V-Ray will store the new photon in the o Affected By
photon map. These options allows many photons to be o Notes
Overview
The Volumetric Environment section in V-Ray render
parameters is where you can see and adjust the Aerial Perspective
settings of the volumetric effects Aerial Perspective
and Environment Fog.
The V-Ray Aerial Perspective atmospheric effect
simulates aerial perspective - the effect that the Earth
atmosphere has on the appearance of objects that are
viewed from a distance, and which is similar to fog or
haze. The atmospheric effect works together with the
V-Ray Sun to calculate an approximation to the aerial
perspective effect.
VRayEnvironmentFog is an atmospheric effect that
allows the simulation of particle media like fog,
atmospheric dust, and so forth.
Affect
Affect Camera Rays – Enables or disables the
tracing of Camera rays through the volumetric.
Affect Background – Enables or disables the tracing
of background rays through the volumetric.
Affect Secondary Rays – Enables or disables the
tracing of secondary rays through the volumetric.
Affected By
Lights – This option allows you to specify which lights
will be considered when rendering the environment
fog. It is used when you have certain lights affecting
just specific objects in the scene while another group
of lights is affecting the environment fog.
All Lights – All lights in the scene will affect the
environment fog.
No Lights – The lights in the scene will not affect
the environment fog.
Selected Lights – Only the lights selected from
the list will affect the environment fog.
Color – Defines the color of the fog when it is
illuminated by light sources.
Emission – Controls the fog emission (self-
illumination). You can use this parameter to substitute
the ambient illumination inside the fog, instead of using
GI.
Emission Multiplier – A multiplier for
the Emission parameter.
Notes Geometry
o Note that Aerial Perspective is faster to calculate than Displacement – Enables (default) or disables V-Ray's
the V-Ray Environment Fog atmospheric, although the displacement mapping. Note that SketchUp's
result is just an approximation. However, the V-Ray displacement feature is supported.
Aerial Perspective atmospheric cannot produce
volumetric shadows.
o Environment Fog is not supported in GPU render
mode yet. Lights
Switches
Lights – Enables lights globally. Note that if disabled,
V-Ray will only use Global Illumination to light the
This page provides details on the parameters found in scene.
the Switches render settings rollout. Hidden Lights – Enables or disables the usage of
hidden lights. When this is checked, lights are
rendered regardless of whether they are hidden or not.
Page Contents When this option is off, any lights that are hidden for
any reason (either explicitly or by type) will not be
o Overview included in the rendering.
o Geometry
o Lights
o Usage Statistics
Usage Statistics
Overview
Send anonymous usage statistics to Chaos
Group – Collection and transmission of usage statistics
The Switches rollout globally controls various aspects by Chaos Group can be disabled or renewed at any time
of the renderer. through this toggle.
Section Contents
o V-Ray Image to EXR Converter
o Standalone Denoise Tool | vdenoise
Page Contents
o Overview
Overview
Input File... – Specifies the .vrimg/.exr image or Save config – Saves the current denoise configuration
sequence of images to denoise. Wildcards (?) can be into an .xml file.
used to define a sequence. For example, if the images Load config – Loads a previously saved .xml denoiser
in the sequence are configuration.
named anim_0001.exr, anim_0002.exr, etc., the
question mark (?) replaces the digits in the sequence's Denoise – Denoises the selected frame(s).
file names. In this case - anim_????.exr
Specify Frame Interval – When enabled, specifies
which frames to process.
Start – Specifies the start frame. Command Line Usage
End – Specifies the end frame.
The denoiser can also be used as a command-line
By – Specifies the frame increment step. utility without GUI display. Simply run the executable
with one of the following commands to denoise an
Blend Frames – Specifies the number of image or a sequence of images from within your
adjacent frames to use when denoising command-line interface. You can also change the
animations. This reduces flickering between settings and behavior of the denoiser through CLI. To
adjacent frames. do so, please refer to the Denoiser Options tables
below for a list of all available options.
Switch Description
-frameBlend=N Specifies the number of adjacent frames to use when denoising animation
reduce flickering between adjacent animation frames. The default is 1, wh
before and one frame after the current frame.
-oclquery="<string>" Explicitly specifies which OpenCL devices should be used for denoising. E
-oclquery="nvidia" - Use only NVIDIA OpenCL devices.
-oclquery="fiji" - Use only Fiji-based AMD OpenCL devices.
-strips=N Forces image to be split into N strips for processing. The default is -1 (neg
algorithm to automatically determine the optimum number of strips.
-threshold=N Specifies a threshold for denoising when the noiseLevel Render Element
typically equal to the noise threshold for antialiasing in V-Ray. If this switch
relies on the noiseLevel Render Element and a threshold of 0.001 is used
-memLimit=N Forces the GPU memory usage limit to N gigabytes. The default value of 0
available memory be used.
Output
Notes