V-Ray Tab

The core of how V-Ray determines how to render your Cinema 4D scenes can be found within the VRay tab of the Render Settings window. Some basic information on each rollout can be found below, but for more details, please see the dedicated pages for each section.

UI Path: ||Render Settings|| > V-Ray > V-Ray tab

V-Ray allows you to use both CPU and GPU hardware for renders through the Render Engine rollout.

When the engine is set to V-Ray GPU, a number of options are exposed in the rollout.

Engine – Allows you to choose between the V-Ray and V-Ray GPU engines.

GPU Engine – Specifies which GPU platform to use for calculations - CUDA or RTX.

Rendering Devices – This button opens a window where you can specify which GPU devices are used for rendering. See more information at Rendering with V-Ray GPU.

GPU Resize Textures –Determines how textures' resolution/size are handled to help optimize memory usage. The possible values are:

Full Size Textures – Textures are loaded at their original size.
Resize Textures – Adjusts the size of high-resolution textures to a smaller resolution to optimize render performance.
On-demand Mipmapping – Instead of loading all the texture files at their default resolution (original or resized), V-Ray loads the textures as needed and automatically creates mip-map tiles for them, regardless of their texture type. As a result, the GPU memory consumption is decreased; textures that are not visible are not loaded, and textures that are further away from the camera are loaded with a lower resolution. During the texture-detection process, V-Ray GPU renders slower. Once it detects that all textures are loaded, it switches automatically to the traditional, faster mode, and a message about modes changing displays in the V-Ray log. This option is not available in Interactive Rendering Mode.
Compressed – Compresses the textures to optimize performance. Compression results in roughly a 75% reduction in memory usage. In some situations, VRayBitmaps cannot be compressed, such as when a bitmap is used both as a normal/bump map and a color map; when a bitmap is used as a displacement map; when a bitmap is used for lens effects. This option is not supported on macOS.

GPU Texture Size – When GPU Resize Textures is enabled, this value specifies the resolution to which the textures are resized.

GPU Texture Format – The amount of bits per channel used to store the material texture information into memory. You can choose between 8 bit, 16 bit, and 32 bit. This does not affect textures used for lights and displacement.

Use System Memory for Textures – Lowers GPU memory usage significantly by offloading textures to system memory with little impact on performance. This option speeds up GI build-up and eliminates the risk of errors caused by memory insufficiency. Not compatible with On-demand, Compressed, and Resized textures.