Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 11, 2013. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The End User Event took place in Utrecht in the Netherlands. According to Vladimir Koylazov, the new features are intended primarily to increase brute-force rendering speed. An error that often occurs with brute-force path tracing is known as "fireflies". These are individual overexposed pixel artefacts, and the new Max Ray Intensity parameter is intended to reduce this problem drastically.
The new Image Sampler Progressive Rendering is intended to work just like a real-time preview. And because V-Ray is often used for characters with a lot of hair and fur, hair rendering in V-Ray 3.0 has been optimised in particular.
Open Shading Language as well as Deep Images and OpenEXR 2.0 are also intended to be supported. Further features include metaballs, V-Ray RT in the Maya viewport, Vismat materials and vertex merging.
Chaosgroup has not yet communicated exactly when V-Ray 3.0 will appear, but it could still be this year. At Siggraph 2013, which takes place from July 23 to 25, Chaosgroup will show a preview with presenters from ILM, Digital Domain, Pixomondo, Methos Studios, Scanline VFX and many more.
All further information about V-Ray 3.0 is available here.
Image: Render with vertex merging/V-Ray 3.0/ Chaosgroup
