Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 27, 2012. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
One of the biggest improvements is the use of the GPU for rendering. This performance boost is evident, for example, when using a very large number of environment lights, which can also be placed in water. Not all renderers are able to render many environment lights in water correctly. The performance bonus is also impressive when using complex materials. If a material consists of several materials blended over one another, preferably through a Fresnel blend, the changes are visible almost in real time on a modern workstation.
Since the update, the use of procedural textures is also possible. Textures created with Substance AIR can therefore be used directly in Maya with V-Ray 2.0.
Two new material types also found their way into V-Ray. One is for toon rendering, while the other allows realistic car paint to be rendered.
Full Ptex support was established. Artists no longer need to worry about UV unwrapping and can instead simply switch to the established Ptex format. If texturing has already been done in Mudbox or MARI, these can also be imported without further effort. V-Ray 2.0 automatically recognizes the textures for the respective patches.
VFX artists can also rejoice, since Maya Fluids can now be rendered without exception.
Nothing stands in the way of stereoscopy either; when using Batch Render mode, even the stereo camera integrated into Maya can be used.
All new features in detail and the current price can be found here: http://www.vray.com/vray_for_maya/buy_vray_for_maya_upgrade.shtml
