Designers will now be able to ray trace every part of their scene in V-Ray from their native Unreal project materials thanks to new support featured in V-Ray for Unreal update 1.
Viewport rendering has also been added in this first update to the realtime renderer, making it easier than ever to produce photorealistic beauty shots and reference checks from within Unreal.
“As the need to create custom applications and configurators continues to grow, the design industry needs more power in one place,” said V-Ray for Unreal product manager Simeon Balabanov. “With support for native Unreal materials, V-Ray for Unreal can offer 100 per cent ray traced accuracy to all workflows, so V-Ray quality is always available, no matter where your project starts.”
Unreal materials are now automatically converted into V-Ray equivalents at render time, allowing all projects to use V-Ray from the Unreal Editor.
This should allow new users to access V-Ray’s quality and light baking without adjusting their established workflow, blending the best of real-time and ray tracing into a single pipeline.
New 1:1 support for Datasmith material translations, means that Update 1 also makes it possible for CAD designers to utilise the full power of V-Ray technology and its physically based materials, giving them reliable representations.
Users will now be able to render interactively as they iterate, seeing the results of changes to lights and materials directly in the Unreal viewport. As looks develop, users can activate V-Ray to produce beauty shots or cycle through options at the highest fidelity possible.
Physically based lighting also allows V-Ray for Unreal to act as a reference tool, providing designers with a realistic view of how their assets will look in a real-world situation.
Numerous optimisations for speed and hardware have been added across the board, including better memory usage around large data sets and scenes with millions of polygons.
Light baking is also now up to 60 per cent faster without sacrificing quality.
V-Ray for Unreal Update 1 is free and available now to current customers. Update 1 also adds support for Unreal Engine 4.22. New seats can be purchased by a variety of methods including monthly ($80), annual ($470) and education pricing, which comes as a flat $99 fee for students, educators and universities.
