For those who don’t know the tool: Redshift from Maxon is a GPU renderer for Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini and Katana. It targets final-frame GPU rendering and USD Solaris pipelines, sitting at lookdev and lighting in production.

Consolidation, not features

Maxon has released Redshift 2026.3.0. The build includes plugins for Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini and Katana. It is a maintenance release focused on stability, host compatibility and incremental displacement updates. No new headline rendering features are introduced.

On Apple hardware, Redshift now requires macOS Sonoma 14 or higher. Maxon recommends macOS Tahoe 26.2 as the latest officially supported version, while noting known rendering artefacts on Intel CPU plus AMD GPU systems on Tahoe. On Windows and Linux, updated NVidia driver minimums apply, including specific requirements for Blackwell 50xx GPUs. Linux requires glibc 2.28 or higher.

Texture displacement cleaned up

Texture displacement receives performance improvements and several correctness fixes. The update resolves holes in meshes, vertical artefacts in the software ray tracer and cases where displacement disappeared on tessellated meshes without UVs.

Support for smooth normals has been added to texture displacement. The UV Context Projection node gains a new camera selection mode for camera projection mapping.

Additional fixes address deformation motion blur with displacement, incorrect auto-bump behaviour, and noisy details on scaled meshes. Material blending issues involving stacking and the Material Blender shader have also been corrected.

Hydra and Solaris updates

Redshift adds support for Houdini 21.0.559 and 21.0.596 and drops support for 20.5.654 and 21.0.440. The Hydra delegate now supports the Solaris 21.0 statistics panel in the latest Houdini 21.0 production build.

Hydra 2.0 fixes include motion blur limitations, primvars sampling issues, light linking problems, nested instancing errors and live updating of custom light and camera parameters. Support has been added for USD implicit surface primitives, USD mesh lights via the Geometry Light LOP, and updated USD and Alembic procedurals. AOV-related bugs affecting ObjectID, Depth, cryptomatte, deep and Refractions Light Groups have been fixed.

Redshift 2026.3 is a stabilisation release aimed at removing pipeline friction introduced in earlier 2026 builds. As always, new tools and innovations should be tested before use in production.

// Redshift 2026.3.0 Release Notes
// https://support.maxon.net/hc/en-us/articles/Redshift-2026-3-0-2026-02-February-10-2026

The post Redshift 2026.3 fixes displacement headaches first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The highlight of Redshift 2026.2 is Texture Displacement, a new geometry-altering method that allows artists to render highly detailed surfaces directly from displacement maps while receiving near-real-time viewport feedback. Displacement is now governed by a global render-settings switch, replacing the slower, tessellation-heavy process used in earlier builds. The feature works in both GPU and CPU modes, automatically adapting to scene scale and camera distance. For production artists, this finally brings interactive sculptural surface depth comparable to native displacement workflows in offline renderers.

UV Context Projection: procedural mapping inside the shader

A new UV Context Projection node provides direct control over projection type, scale, rotation and translation inside the Redshift shading graph. It eliminates many round-trips to the DCC host for UV adjustment and supports both conventional UVs and triplanar mapping. By integrating coordinate management at shader level, the node enables consistent material behaviour across host applications such as Cinema 4D, Maya, Houdini, 3ds Max and Hydra/Solaris.

Lighting improvements and colour fidelity

Redshift 2026.2 updates its IES light implementation, letting users override light intensity either by luminous power or by peak intensity, improving physical accuracy for architectural and product-visualisation work.
The Sun and Sky model produces smoother shadows and more accurate low-angle lighting, addressing the flicker and banding visible in earlier versions. Volumetric rendering has been corrected to handle light transmission behind zero-opacity geometry, and spotlight textures now maintain sharpness when soft shadows or fog are active. Together these refinements make photometric lighting behaviour more predictable and compositing-friendly.

Broader GPU support and Metal refinement

The renderer now officially supports AMD RX 9000 Series GPUs, widening the available hardware base for Windows and macOS users. Both CUDA and Metal back-ends have been re-tuned for lower IPR latency, with improved hardware ray-tracing throughput on supported cards. On macOS, Maxon fixed instability in the texture-baking pipeline and restored full OSL shader matrix output, ensuring parity with other platforms. Artists on Apple M3 and M4 systems should see markedly fewer driver-related IPR crashes.

Integrated Substance access

Redshift 2026.2 introduces the Substance Sampler connector, shared with Cinema 4D 2026.1. This allows Substance textures to be imported directly into Redshift material graphs, streamlining material creation for look-development tasks and product visualisation. Exposed Parameters in Substance get also fully exposed in Cinema4D / Redshift , if you expose them before export.

Platform-wide refinements

Across DCC integrations, Redshift 2026.2 delivers smaller but practical updates. Cinema 4D gains a viewport preview light for the Sun and Sky object, new default settings for Light and Cloud primitives, and fixes to AOV handling when adding or deleting passes. Maya improves render-layer stability and updates RS Cloud defaults for more balanced scattering and transmittance. 3ds Max corrects data corruption in the RS Brick shader and adds a new default Map ID of 1 in RS Maxon Noise. Houdini and Hydra/Solaris now support version 21.0.512 while dropping legacy 20.x builds, adding Resolution Mode and husk headlight parameters to the Redshift LOP.

Engine-level reliability

The underlying renderer benefits from multiple engine-wide corrections. Shader baking has been repaired for non-centimetre scene units, and depth AOVs now respect global unit scaling. Ray Switch and cylindrical-projection bumpmapping artefacts are resolved, as are incorrect lighting results in IPR when Camera Space Render is active. Sun-sky shadow quality is improved, greyscale texture projections now output correct colour channels, and OSL shader validation blocks unsupported closure loops. Hardware Ray Tracing back-ends deliver faster interactive previews and concurrent shader-ball rendering, while IES and cloud lighting computations now yield physically consistent results.

Bug fixes and stability

The December 2025 release closes an extensive list of stability issues across all hosts. Network-stored textures no longer trigger crashes on macOS, and IPR behaviour for wind-animated RS Clouds is fixed in both Maya and 3ds Max. Volume-clipping errors caused by incorrect scene-scale calculations are corrected, and motion-blur handling for sprite baking now produces accurate results. Data corruption in older RS Brick parameters has been resolved, though affected shaders may require manual rebuilds. Together, these maintenance fixes make Redshift 2026.2 significantly more predictable for heavy-render workloads.

Availability and update guidance

Redshift 2026.2 ships with Maxon App 2025.12 and is included in all Redshift and Maxon One subscriptions.
Because this version alters displacement and shader parameter storage, studios should re-validate existing materials and test render nodes before migrating active projects.

Download a free trial

The post Redshift 2026.2: Texture Displacement and UV Context Arrive first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

When a group of architectural illustrators set out to test Chaos Vantage, they planned a few small real-time experiments. Instead, they built Unbox, a fully animated short film where an architectural cube folds open like a mechanical puzzle. From “a few little minis,” it grew bigger – there are worse outcomes for a stress test.

DP: What was the initial spark for testing Chaos Vantage and why risk it on a narrative short instead of a comfy archviz sizzle?

Peter Stulz: Honestly, at first we intended to do a few little minis in Vantage… and then the second test spinned out of control and grew bigger each day. But no regrets, we embraced the prospect to develop a narrative architectural piece ourselves.

You see, we are architects and not an animation studio. So this was a massive learning journey for us: sequencing shots in an attractive manner, telling a story, how to reveal information and how to retain it… Vantage was fantastic, because it allowed us to be quite experimental here, make mistakes and learn while working on it.

DP: Give us the pipeline in one breath: DCC(s), renderers, interchange (Alembic/FBX/USD), and the editorial path from storyboard/animatic to picture lock.

Peter Stulz: Natively we use 3ds Max in our studio, still the main tool for architecture. Our studio mostly renders in Corona Render, but I feel very home in Vray. For asset creation I use Blender which then sent to Max via FBX. The animation was rendered in Vray CPU – 5 months was tight enough and I know Vray as an engine that delivers without funky surprises.

For the creative part, I drew initial sketches and the storyboard in Procreate. We were lucky to have my friend and cinematographer Olaf Aue (LinkedIn) on board, who was kind enough to share some of his Know-How. The storyboard was straight away sequenced in Resolve with some stand-in SFX and music, just to get a feeling for timing. The stills were then replaced with Vantage Previz shots; the iteration frequency could be kept fastpaced due to Vantage, that was a tremendous relief. Finally for that project we also familiarized ourselves just enough with character creator and Iclone to pull off a somewhat decent protagonist – which then is mostly kept out of focus anyhow :).

Depth of field and lighting are crucial in linear storytelling formats. Vantage allows for having these available during the early layout phase, enabling us to evaluate the flow and precise timing of edits early on, resulting in fewer iterations and more streamlined communication, features that Olaf, as a cinematographer, found lacking in the animation feature films he previously worked on.

DP: Hardware reality check: what exactly were the two workstations (CPU/GPU/VRAM/RAM/storage), and how did that cap scene size, proxies, and iteration speed?

Peter Stulz: There are two parts to this, the GPU and CPU specs: For working with Vantage, I had a 4060TI with 16GB. It was mainly the ground displacement in Vantage that was the key factor for VRAM necessity. Otherwise Vantage is smart when scaling to smaller GPUs. You don’t need massive GPUs to get started with Vantage.

For the final CPU rendering – we have several AMD 9950x in our studio with 64GB Ram, totally unspectacular workstations. In fact rendering moved between machines, whatever was available, the bottleneck was that we had just two render licenses available. Another thing, that I really appreciate about Vray CPU – it stays pretty consistent even if you throw in an older architecture.

DP: How did you keep the master scene nimble?

Peter Stulz: 3ds Max can become a real chore, when scenes get too heavy. I wholeheartedly hate unresponsive scenes – anything that breaks the creative flow has to be solved. Technically, there are several approaches: obviously using Proxies for heavy assets is a must; staying parametric if possible also keeps my scenes small; my modifier stacks can get quite impressive and I avoid baking them.

I xref wherever it makes sense, especially if parts of your scene are used in different settings. If I find the time, I localise heavy textures and reduce them – tedious but worth the effort later. Ideally the Master Scene only contains the camera, the lights and a few key assets. All the heavy load is loaded from external files. These scenes mostly are only a few MB in itself – helping with autobackups.

DP: Camera language before pixels: how did boards/animatic evolve once you could “walk the set” in Vantage?

Peter Stulz: It was important to develop a storyboard outside of 3D first to avoid thinking as a 3d designer. The environment was conceived like a sandbox, so we could freely explore the set with different lenses and angles. The superfast iterations we could do with Vantage really helped to test alternatives. That felt very powerful. Obviously some storyboard shots were then adapted or omitted. Vantage was great to secure we are on the right path.

DP: Lighting in Vantage: What translated 1:1 to finals, and where did parity crack?

Peter Stulz: At first it is scarily impressive how close Vantage can feel to the final look. We did a few final shots directly in Vantage and realised afterwards we could have done more in Vantage to prove the point. The extra turntable animation is done 100% in Vantage, but we really had to go deep in the settings to get rid of some flickering.

You have to understand, Vantage works like this: It downscales automatically to achieve close-to realtime speed and then gradually refines the look. But that logic causes limitations: For example GI depth in tricky setups might cause visible flickering. If you want to get rid of unwanted artefacts like these, you have to go deeper into the settings; and then you get these Vray 2010 vibes again :). Apart from that the denoiser might create some artefacts, textures are getting blurry, VDBs were not possible etc.

DP: Materials & lookdev: which shader features were non-negotiable, and what did you simplify for real-time parity?

Peter Stulz: Since we decided to use Vray CPU for finals, we just accepted that some stuff for Previz looked different – we knew it would be ok in the finals. But to answer the question we used Vantage for a another client project and it became clear again: If you want to produce in Vantage you can not set stuff up in Vray and hope for the best. In that case we had a semitranslucent ocean setting and that looked quite diffferent in Vantage and had to be especially adapted.

DP: The moving house: How was it rigged , and what broke first under real-time playback?

Peter Stulz: The architectural cube is in fact one scene with 2000 frames of animation. No cheap tricks – nothing appears magically out of thin air – it’s all in there. Only the initial cube with the rough surface is a different prop because it had a tricky blending shader which was animated ( animating materials in 3ds Max is a disaster …).

The rig for the unfolding was very basic and was built out of a lot of nested helpers. That was the most simple way to avoid the “locked axis” problem. What is this? Well, rigging a rubics cube is in fact not so straightforward as it seems: after a few twists the individual parts start to move quite unexpectedly – try it yourself, it’s actually pretty hard. The nested helpers solved this, now it was a matter of adjusting the right timing; how fast is the right speed for a massive 12m cube? You want to correspond a certain weight without boring the viewer. At the end we sprinkled some subtle secondary movements on top.

DP: Performance metrics: What were typical FPS for look-dev in Vantage and per-shot render times? Both for Vantage previews and V-Ray finals?

Peter Stulz: We could render out playblasts in Vantage (+/- 200 frames) over a toilet break in 1.5k resolution at 1:2.39. For finals in Vray I attempt to stay around 10 minutes / frame. If you want to use Vantage for final quality in FullHD, you crank up the settings to 1 minute / frame. If there was any noise left, the Resolve temporal denoiser is the last polish.

DP: The famous 95%: where did Vantage land “close enough” to V-Ray and what are the missing 5%?

Peter Stulz: Every “resolution” in Vantage is more coarse. I am not only talking textures, but sampling, atmospherics, global illumination. Obviously the denoiser also tends to smear everything. Everything is just lower definition than in Vray / Corona. That’s why oldschool rendering is still very valid to achieve that crispy level of detail.

DP: Editorial rhythm: how often did you re-cut while “shooting in engine,” and what told you a shot was edit-locked before triggering finals?

Peter Stulz: In our case that answer is quite simple: the presentation date was coming up, so we had a very strict timeframe when shots had to be done. Only thing we updated in the last days, we extended a few shots by 30 frames, because they felt rushed in the beta cut. That little change improved the rythm quite substantially.

DP: Pitfalls & fixes: three things that wasted time before you found the trick and what was the trick?

Peter Stulz: Vantage is built in a way that it actually could be used as a standalone loading in VrayScenes. Since I had my friend Olaf Aue as a cinematographer on board we tried to use it in that way. Theoretically that works, but with a lot of drawbacks and very limited editing and getting the changes from Vantage back into 3dsMax is hard.

We omitted that concept and resorted to live link only with 3ds Max. But actually that standalone option is not so bad – Chaos could really focus there more.

DP: If you rebuilt “Unboxed” today at 100% Vantage, what would the delivery plan look like? QC, shot classes that stay real-time, and the shortlist that still goes offline?

Peter Stulz: I know, that there are more shots that could be realised in Vantage directly. But if you plan this, it is smart to set up the whole project more focused on Vantage directly. Switching to Vray, if needed, is easy, the other way can be frustrating.

DP: What did “Unboxed” change in how you scope, price, and pitch real-time narrative work to clients?

Peter Stulz: We can offer fast animation works more easily which don’t need very high quality or are visually suitable for Vantage (clay shots).

DP: Wishlist to Chaos: What are the top parity/features that would let you ship more shots straight out of Vantage next time?

Peter Stulz: I would like easier quality settings if you intend to use Vantage as final renderer. We had to do a lot of tweaking for specific scenes or even change the 3d scene to avoid artefacts. Additionally Vantage ships with specific assets like a water surface or animated plants. These are great, but in LiveLink they are hard to be used, because there is not way to insert them in your Root Scene.

DP: For Vantage newcomers: What is your “first-day” checklist?

Peter Stulz: Familiarize yourself with the basic UI and do some stress tests to find the limits. Additionally I would look for a study project that comes close to a client environment. There is no point in having all the bells and whistles, if in a real production case you are missing the crucial components.

DP: One more hypothetic: with one extra week or one extra GPU, which single area would you invest in—and why?

Peter Stulz: Funny alternatives. As described above a half-decent GPU is good for previz which was the main usage in “Unbox”. Having a week extra is always great – so I would opt for that!

DP: Where exactly did you keep the “cube layer” for the whole piece: did we start life on the Blender Default Cube, and how much of that origin survived?

Peter Stulz: It sure was great that we could hire the mighty default cube as a support role. It didn’t even mind too much to be shipped into another 3d-suite – what a humble character and it really outshined itself in our short. 3d-artists should show more appreciation to have it per default all free!

DP: The cube’s side text: What does it say, and why?

Peter Stulz: The cube text gives instructions how to mix the perfect Daiquiri as it is served on Kepler 5 but it is quite explicit so I can’t go into depths here. But if you look for easter eggs, we have hidden various personal items in the architecture. Talking about audio my friend Olaf had a lot of fun browsing through his SFX library and pull out quite unusual sounds for the cubes inner mechanics.

The post The Cube Moved: Go for the Chaos (Ad) Vantage first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

XPU grows up

Pixar has pushed its hybrid CPU/GPU renderer, XPU, into full production status with the beta of RenderMan 27. XPU, introduced as experimental in earlier releases, now supports final-frame rendering. The engine adds interactive denoising for live look feedback, deep compositing outputs, and holdouts/mattes for layered workflows. Checkpointing allows partially saved renders, useful for iterative approval cycles. XPU also gains multi-GPU support, extending performance across several cards, and now runs OSL (Open Shading Language) filters. Limitations remain: no Cryptomatte support, no texture or light baking, no NURBS/quadrics rendering, and reduced performance with thousands of lights. macOS users must wait for a later dot release to run XPU at all.

RIS heads to retirement

RIS, RenderMan’s long-standing CPU-only engine, is still included but officially marked for deprecation. Pixar has not provided a removal version, but signals its intent to transition all users to XPU in the near future.

MaterialX integration

MaterialX, the open standard developed by ILM and adopted by the Academy Software Foundation, arrives in RenderMan 27. XPU can evaluate MaterialX shading graphs, allowing interchange between applications that support the format. This addresses a key demand for studio pipelines that rely on cross-software asset exchange.

Stylized Looks expand

Pipeline features

RenderMan 27 continues Pixar’s effort to fit modern VFX pipelines. The update improves checkpointing and adds output flexibility for deep compositing passes. Support for mattes and holdouts makes it easier to combine live-action and CG layers, or to generate masks for postproduction.

Smaller additions

The release also improves interactive workflows with enhancements to the IPR (Interactive Preview Render). Users can now update shaders and geometry with fewer restarts, reducing iteration time. XPU’s viewport responsiveness has been tuned for lookdev, even on large assets. Another area of focus is light transport and filtering. XPU gains extended support for OSL filters, giving TDs more granular control over pixel output during rendering. This makes it possible to implement customised passes or in-house filtering logic without rewriting the core renderer.

Plugin updates

The release ships with updated plugins for Houdini, Katana, Maya, and Blender. Integration is designed to expose XPU features directly within host DCC applications, keeping lookdev and shot work inside familiar UIs.

Historical context

RenderMan has been Pixar’s in-house renderer since the late 1980s, originally built on the Reyes architecture optimised for micropolygon rendering. RIS, introduced in 2014, replaced Reyes with a path tracer better suited to global illumination. With version 27, Pixar signals the next phase: shifting from CPU-centric RIS to the hybrid CPU/GPU XPU engine, reflecting the industry-wide migration towards GPU acceleration. RenderMan 27 is available as a beta for registered users.

The post RenderMan 27: XPU graduates, RIS retires first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.

Flag Visuals has released DomeMaker 1.0, a lightweight tool that automates complex HDRI-based dome setups for 3ds Max with V-Ray. Co-developed with lighting specialist Jonas Noell, the plugin turns his manual “custom HDRI dome” method into a single-click workflow that builds the environment, matches a floor plane, and exposes practical controls for projection, scale, rotation, and exposure, all while previewing accurately in the viewport and rendering identically on CPU and GPU. The current vendor price is $30.

DomeMaker accelerates look-development in a few key ways. First, an integrated HDRI browser thumbnails your HDR folders so you can swap domes at speed and see how assets sit under different lighting without re-wiring maps. Second, you can decouple light intensity from the visible background to brighten subjects without lifting the plate, or keep it physically locked when accuracy matters. A white-balance control acts at the HDRI level (not as a post filter), temporarily hides the floor for responsive scrubbing, and then re-matches the floor color so everything lines up again.

On the rendering side, DomeMaker flips seamlessly between V-Ray CPU and V-Ray GPU, matching reflections, bump, and shadowing either in a separate IPR window or directly in-viewport. For faster iteration, you can temporarily minimize render elements to the essentials needed for denoising and restore the full set for final frames. When you need a clean comp plate, an invisible-background mode preserves HDRI lighting and reflections while hiding the dome, with a material/background panel for quick vignettes or solid-color backdrops that won’t break the scene’s light feel.

Floor integration receives special attention. The tool auto-matches a floor plane to the HDRI but lets you nudge brightness or hue and define the transition where the floor blends into the dome. For contact and realism, you can add calibrated reflections and a projection-derived bump with quick controls to keep it subtle. A dedicated Water Effects block adds parameterized wetness and puddles (regular or fractal modes) with seed variation, edge detail, brightness/tint and bump intensity, designed to track closely between CPU and GPU so a look developed on one engine renders equivalently on the other.

For presentation, a camera hub lists scene cameras, supports create-from-view, and exposes depth-of-field with click-to-focus directly in the viewport. A turntable helper can orbit a chosen camera around your object while rotating the dome for complementary light motion, with distance and height controls to dial the orbit.

From an editorial standpoint, DomeMaker is the “don’t think; just render” version of Noell’s widely shared manual setup. If you’ve been assembling HDRI domes by hand, the parity between CPU/GPU output, the HDRI-level white balance, and the rapid floor re-match will probably be the features you notice first. For anyone doing product shots, archviz stills, or asset reels, the speedup is immediate and the results are predictable.

Requirements, installation, support

Flag Visuals lists 3D Studio Max 2024, 2025, 2026 (English) and V-Ray 7 as the current baseline. Installation runs through the FV Tools Manager: after purchase you receive access to the manager, which you drag-and-drop into a 3ds Max viewport, log in with the email and order number tied to your account, select DomeMaker from the dropdown, activate with the emailed key, and let the manager fetch the versioned module. Dropping the downloaded .mzp into the viewport completes the install and places an icon in the main UI toolbar. If you encounter errors during install, launch 3ds Max as Administrator and, if necessary, run scripts via the Scripting → Run dialog.

Learn more / developer context

DomeMaker formalizes Noell’s Custom HDRI Dome workflow for V-Ray and was announced alongside a feature walkthrough. If you want the “why” behind the tool (or to revisit the manual method it replaces) start with Noell’s Patreon announcement and the earlier Custom HDRI Dome tutorial notes.

The post DomeMaker 1.0 streamlines HDRI dome lighting for 3ds Max (V-Ray) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

cebas has introduced finalRender Free, a no-cost version of its rendering engine for Autodesk 3ds Max. This edition allows users to render using either the CPU or GPU, but not simultaneously. While it’s free for commercial use, certain features are reserved for paid versions.

Single-Device Rendering: CPU or GPU, Not Both

finalRender Free operates on a single-device basis. Users can choose between CPU or GPU rendering, but the hybrid rendering feature, known as trueHybrid, is disabled in this version. This means simultaneous utilization of CPU and GPU resources is not available

Exclusions: No finalToon and Network Rendering

This free offering does not include finalToon, cebas’ non-photorealistic rendering tool. Additionally, network rendering capabilities are absent, limiting rendering tasks to a single machine.

Registration Required

Accessing finalRender Free requires users to create a free account with cebas. This registration ensures users receive updates and important bug fixes when they become available.

Compatibility and Requirements

finalRender Free is compatible with 3ds Max versions 2022 through 2024. For GPU rendering, it demands modern NVIDIA graphics cards with CUDA 10.2 support and Shading Model 6.x.

License Terms: Non-Exclusive and Non-Transferable

The license granted for finalRender Free is non-exclusive and non-transferable. Users are permitted to install and use the software on only one computer at a time. Commercial Use Permitted – Users can employ finalRender Free for commercial projects, making it a viable option for professionals seeking a cost-effective rendering solution within the specified limitations.

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finalRender Free is available for download directly from the cebas website.

The post finalRender Free: A Renderer That Costs Nothing but Demands Something first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

iRender presents a cloud render farm solution specifically designed to address the hardware constraints encountered by Redshift users in demanding VFX and post-production environments. The platform provides remote access to high-performance GPU servers, effectively replicating a high-end local workstation experience without the associated capital expenditure.

Hardware Specifications and Performance

The platform employs NVIDIA RTX 4090 cards, with some configurations incorporating RTX 3090 options, to ensure efficient handling of intensive Redshift projects. This GPU-centric architecture is intended to reduce render times significantly, thereby improving workflow efficiency under stringent production deadlines. The system’s performance metrics, as highlighted in the sources, are geared towards meeting the demands of modern VFX pipelines, where precise computational power is essential.

Integration with Cinema 4D

iRender extends its utility by offering Cinema 4D licenses within its cloud service. This integration, backed by an official partnership with Maxon, simplifies software management and ensures a seamless connection between the render farm and the popular 3D software suite. This inclusion is particularly valuable for users whose pipelines rely on Cinema 4D for modeling, animation, and rendering tasks.

Software Compatibility and Workflow Flexibility

Beyond Redshift and Cinema 4D, iRender demonstrates broad software compatibility, supporting additional 3D applications such as Houdini, Blender, and Octane. This flexibility enables professionals across various departments—from rigging and shading to editing and color grading—to integrate the service into diverse production workflows without compromising on stability or performance.

Considerations for Implementation

For production professionals, the adoption of any new technology warrants thorough evaluation. Users are advised to conduct trial runs with iRender to ensure that the cloud render farm aligns with the specific technical and operational requirements of their projects. It is critical to verify that the platform’s capabilities meet current production standards before full-scale integration.

iRender’s cloud render farm solution thus represents a technically sound option for Redshift users aiming to mitigate hardware limitations. Its combination of advanced GPU hardware, seamless Cinema 4D integration, and broad software support makes it a noteworthy consideration for enhancing rendering efficiency in professional VFX and post-production settings.

The post iRender Cloud Render Farm Enhances Redshift Workflows first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In its latest update to the V-Ray family, Chaos Group has released V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max. This release amps up the feature set with flexible material management, GPU-enhanced rendering power, and refined ray tracing capabilities.

V-Ray 7 introduces a new material override function, allowing users to apply a substitute material across entire scenes without disrupting existing lighting, reflections, or other render-critical elements. This feature simplifies testing and material revisions, making it ideal for artists fine-tuning a scene or switching out assets in time-sensitive environments *cough* “Client is panicking”. Optimized for GPU use, the material override provides the control artists need to make iterative adjustments without losing the context of complex setups.

V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max further enhances the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB), making it a more versatile hub for rendering and post-processing adjustments. With the expansion, users can define custom-shaped render regions, allowing for selective rendering of specific areas within a frame—ideal for focusing on key details without re-rendering the entire image – let’s call it a pixelfucking-protection. A new vignette layer effect, customizable by shape, lets artists easily add stylized camera effects to their renders. Additionally, new colour-correction presets in the VFB offer quick ways to experiment with various looks, streamlining the design refinement process.

The update also introduces powerful tools for instance management via the Chaos Scatter aids. The new Instance Brush allows for precise control when populating scenes with instances, enabling users to add detail or remove elements with ease. Complementing this, the new distribution maps library provides different density options, helping designers craft realistic scatter distributions. For complex, instance-heavy scenes, Chaos Scatter now benefits from procedural management in V-Ray 7 Standalone, significantly reducing export times during network rendering or submissions to Chaos Cloud.

GPU-Accelerated Rendering for Fast Turnarounds

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V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max introduces several optimizations that significantly reduce rendering wait times and improve interactivity. The Faster Time to First Pixel feature brings new efficiencies to scatter rendering, texture-heavy scenes, data uploads, and geometry compilations, resulting in quicker production and interactive rendering experiences. Additionally, Caustics Support on V-Ray GPU now allows for realistic reflections and refractions with caustics based on photon mapping, optimized to leverage GPU hardware for faster results than CPU-based caustics. Out-of-Core Textures further improve performance in texture-heavy scenes, enabling artists to add complex details without sacrificing shading quality.

In other updates, V-Ray 7 offers Selective V-Ray Scene Conversion, letting users convert specific objects, update materials with a new Material Process, and convert textures to .TX files—all of which enhance performance and streamline scene management. The release also expands USD Support to the latest version, USD for Autodesk 3ds Max 0.9.0, enabling access to new features and improvements. Finally, OpenPBR Support now available in V-Ray 7 ensures consistent shading across applications, integrating a new shading model aligned with OpenPBR standards in 3ds Max 2025.3. This update reduces the need for manual adjustments when switching between compatible software, boosting overall production efficiency.

Procedural Clouds and Sky Model: Realism in Real-Time

V-Ray 7 expands its environmental realism with a new procedural cloud system integrated into the Sky model. This feature lets artists generate realistic, customizable cloud formations that adapt dynamically to changes in lighting and time-of-day settings, creating immersive atmospheres with minimal setup. For productions dealing with multiple lighting conditions, the procedural clouds offer flexibility without the need for heavy manual adjustments, cutting down on setup time while improving realism in rendered results.

Unified Chaos Cosmos Integration: Streamlining Asset Management

V-Ray 7’s Chaos Cosmos sees significant upgrades, adding efficiency and realism to asset management and lighting. A new addition, V-Ray Luminaires, brings speed to lighting fixtures in Chaos Cosmos, with each light fixture properly illuminating itself and distributing light realistically within scenes. This luminaire integration streamlines scene population with realistic lighting, reducing setup time and improving render speeds. Additionally, Asset Variants Support offers seasonal asset options, such as summer and autumn versions of vegetation models, allowing users to select and customize variants before or after import. These updates give artists greater flexibility and control over lighting and assets, making it easier to achieve varied, realistic environments in a fraction of the time.

License Options and Pricing

For VFX studios, Chaos Group offers flexible licensing options, including monthly, annual, and perpetual licenses. V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max is priced at $1,180 for a perpetual license, with other subscription options available on the Chaos Group website. Studios and freelancers alike should assess the best fit based on their project demands and budgets. For a Solo-Seat-version, it is about 450€ a year. And, of course, there is a 30 Day free trial if you never played with Vray – – including Vray for 3ds Max, Maya, SketchUp, Rhino, Revit, Cinema 4D, Unreal, Houdini, Nuke, as well as Phoenix Simulation, Chos Scans and Cosmos, and the Chaos Player.

The post Chaos Group Unleashes V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Gerrit Corsmeyer.

All established methods are based on recognising details in successive individual images and use these to calculate motion vectors. This is then used to calculate the displacements of pixel groups for the intermediate images. This works best if the images have little blurring and good contrast. In addition, such slow motion is usually better if the source material has already been recorded at 50 fps or more. The algorithms primarily have difficulties with uniform patterns where the direction of movement can be incorrectly recognised. They also have problems with segmentation, i.e. distinguishing between moving foreground elements and the background or intersecting movements.

The typical artefacts are “ghost images”, i.e. additional elements where there were none in the image, and the dragging of the still background or opposing movements. We therefore used a hyperlapse over a rice field with a drone as “evil” test material, as in previous tests in the DP, i.e. lots of sharpness but repetitive structures. Then women stamping rice and dragon dancers on Chinese New Year because of the fast, criss-crossing movements. Finally, as a technical object, a helicopter extinguishing a fire, fast-flowing water and a close-up of rice stamping. For the last subject, we had a quadruple slow-motion shot from the camera with reduced resolution.

The opponents

We have already tested Topaz Video AI (TVAI for short) and the equally CPU-intensive “Speed Warp” from DaVinci Resolve (DR for short) (DP 23:01). However, version 4 of TVAI is now available with the new AI model “Aion”, which is supposed to be optimised for precisely this task. On a Mac, it only runs from Ventura onwards and should at least be fed with HD. A new addition is Twixtor version 8 as a public beta, which has long been established as a plug-in for Optical Flow. The new version for the first time also uses a neural network called “DNN – model 1” . As a plug-in, Twixtor has a specific problem: you have to create space for the extended result because DR does not support this as elegantly as its own Speed Warp.

To do this, you can either repeat the clip on the timeline until it corresponds to the new length, or place a coloured area (solid) of the desired length on the lower track and the clip above it. The whole thing is selected and a Fusion clip is created from it. Then add Twixtor and set the desired slow motion in the inspector. Speedramping with keyframes is also possible, and the Pro version also allows masks for better segmentation.

Performance

We tested material in HD and UHD on a MacBook M1 Pro. An eightfold slow motion was calculated, so the software had to create seven synthetic images per real image. The AI processes required significantly longer computing times than conventional Optical Flow. All of them rely on fully utilised GPU cores, the CPUs have hardly anything to do. The values always refer to the result at 40 seconds: In HD at 25 fps, Optical Flow Enhanced Better in DR needs just under a third, Speed Warp on the other hand needs eight times the runtime, TVAI Aion needs just under 10 and Twixtor a factor of 17. With a source in UHD at 50 fps, Aion needs a factor of 74, the relative values of the other methods are similar.

Quality

The examples, some of which are also available for download(is.gd/slow motion files, with the test files and the images), clearly show how much the results depend on the subject. The women stamping the rice are an extreme example: fast, intersecting movements with motion blur and small, complex patterns of clothing remain a challenge for all methods.

Here you have to perform pixel peeping frame by frame to identify differences. Speed Warp, which can achieve amazing results with other subjects, is only slightly superior to the much faster, non-neural algorithm here. Twixtor’s DNN delivers better results, but at the cost of enormous computing times. In our opinion, Aion also looks better than Speed Warp and is only slightly slower.

Our other test series with dragon dancers at the Chinese New Year brought even better results with the AI-based processes. You have to look closely to even notice the deformations in crossing movements or in the background. Here too, Aion looks at least as good as Twixtor. However, it has the disadvantage that this does not yet work in the plug-in for DR, but only in the standalone version. Twixtor and Aion did not quite pass the endurance test with the rice paddy either, with Twixtor showing fewer artefacts with local blurring, while Aion produces large-scale distortions in the same place.

Finally, the helicopter did not show the ghostly rotor blades as with conventional Optical Flow, but instead the rotors became pulsatingly shorter and longer. The AI just doesn’t understand anything about rotors in lateral perspective ;-) However, it also became apparent here that fast-flowing or falling water is rather uncritical. A river shot with intensive movements confirmed this: here, the human eye can hardly notice the weaknesses of the artificial slow motion. A close-up shot in 720p at 100 fps, which we scaled to HD with TVAI and slowed down to twice the length, also looked quite good: The rice flour dusts quite convincingly.

A higher frame rate during recording is therefore the better alternative despite the lower resolution. TVAI can even do this in one go, as it also scales very well. DR Studio delivers similarly good results with SuperScale Enhanced and Speed Warp, but both processes require enormous computing times. Only a powerful PC with a strong power supply and the Nvidia 4090 would help. However, TVAI does not yet use TensorRT in Aion and obviously processes the AI models one after the other, as it is almost twice as slow as DR when doing scaling plus slow motion.

Since differences can only be recognised with extreme pixel peeping, DR is sufficient here if you don’t want to go from “small” HD (720p) to UHD. You should also get good results if the camera is only capable of HD in slow motion and is scaled to UHD in the same way. After all, it is a typical use case that the artificial slow motion is deliberately added in order to limit extreme resolution losses or lack of light in camera based slow motion.

Commentary

In the ratio of computing time to performance, TVAI with Aion beats the new AI in Twixtor. To be fair, it has to be said that Twixtor 8 is still a beta version. In terms of quality, both outperform Speed Warp in subtleties, but the differences recognisable by the general audience depend heavily on the subject. No AI can currently replace real slow motion from the camera, but the combination of high-quality upscaling of the camera shot and a milder slow motion in post looks very good. And here again the link to the material: is.gd/slow-motionfiles

The post The discovery of slowness first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.