© Square Enix © Goodbye Kansas


Official Release

Date - May 13, 2020

Download - Build 4.30.03

 

 

 

NEW FEATURES

V-Ray

  • Added a V-Ray for Houdini installer – a custom JSON file is placed in $HFS/packages with the environment variables required by Houdini to find and load V-Ray
  •  Significantly optimized rendering startup speed and VRScene size by implementing a smart export algorithm which ignores geometry attributes not utilized during rendering
  •  Added support for the VOP Debug flag - it works similar as an isolate select for the flagged node
  •  Added support for custom V-Ray plugins
  •  Added support for Python Post-Translate scripts on the V-Ray Renderer ROP
  • Added support for V-Ray Object Properties on custom HDAs
  • Integrated the OCIO texture in the Image File VOP
  •  Added Renderer selection menus to the V-Ray Shelf's "Render", "ROP Parm", "IPR(VFB)" and "IPR ROP Parm" invoked by Shift+LMB clicking the icon.
  •  Added support for environment variables in the Renderer's Image and VRScene output file paths
  • Added "Forced Attributes" list to the V-Ray Renderer's Objects tab and the V-Ray Object Properties

Chaos Cloud

  • Added a Chaos Cloud ROP used for submitting jobs to the Chaos Cloud

Rrendering

  • Added the option to change the rendering color space to "ACEScg" from the Color Mapping tab of the Renderer ROP
  • Added support for resumable rendering
  • Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP's Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the "v" velocity attribute instead of transformations or deformations
  •  Skip ray-geometry intersections for hair if "Primary Visibility" is disabled under the Object Properties or Render Stats material to speed up rendering

GPU

  • Added CUDA support for custom attributes when shading particles

IPR

  • Modifying Motion Blur parameters on the V-Ray Renderer ROP or the Physical Camera parameters will now update IPR
  • Modifying the lists under the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Objects tab will now update IPR
  • Custom AOVs created by the Material Output VOP are now updated in IPR
  • Added a "Start IPR" button to the V-Ray Shelf

Texture Baking

  • Added a "V-Ray Baker Tool" SOP node with support for common texture baking workflows

AOVs

  • Added support for custom AOVs created from the Material Output VOP
  • Added support for forcing the "Extra Texture" Render Element output to 32-bit when rendering 16-bit Multi-Channel EXRs
  • Added the "Indirect", "Indirect Diffuse" and "Indirect Specular" modes to the Light Select element
  • Added the "Object Select" render element which allows isolating specific objects in a separate render channel
  • V-Ray Light material with "Direct Illumination" enabled can now be specified under the Light Select render element's "Lights" list
  • Restored the "Zero Infinity Depth" toggle to force a black background color for the Z-Depth element

Instancing

  • Added support for '@instance' point attribute which functions the same as the '@instancepath' attribute
  • Added support for V-Ray Renderer ROP's Motion Blur settings when generating blur effect based on the "v" velocity attribute of points when instancing packed geometry

V-Ray Scene

  • Added support for unpacking the VRScene into live polygon geometry under the "Import" tab of the VRScene SOP
  • Enabled VRScene export from Houdini Indie
  • Added initial support for importing VRScene geometry as regular polygons in the Houdini scene through the "Expand Primitives" -> "Allow Unpacking to Polygons (WIP)" toggle
  • Added support for importing VRScene materials through Python under the _vfh_ipr module using vrsceneGetMaterials() and vrsceneImportMaterial()
  • Registered additional MODO-specific V-Ray nodes for VRScene Material Import compatibility

Export

  • Added support for the Display toggle under the Render tab of the Geometry node

Deadline

  • Added a custom V-Ray Deadline ROP for Standalone job submission
  • Added support for partitioning the submission into frame chunks for the Houdini VRScene export job
  • Added support for partitioning the submission into individual tasks for the V-Ray Standalone job

Alembics

  • Added support for Delayed Load Alembic material assignments through the "@shop_materialpath" attribute baked into the Alembic file
  • Added support for hair material assignment when using "@shop_materialpath" with Delayed Load Alembics

Volumes

  • Added support for the 'unexpandedfilename' intrinsic primitive attribute for VDBs loaded as Packed Disk Primitives for volume instancing
  • Added support for packed volume instancing

Displacement

  • Added support for the "@creaseweight" vertex attribute when rendering with Displacement Subdivision or Open Subdiv
  • Added support for render-time baking of subdivision and displacement into a *.vrmesh file from the V-Ray Object Properties "Bake Geometry" tab

Hair

  • Added "ACEScg" color space support for the Hair material

V-Ray Proxy

  • Added support for unpacking the *.vrmesh geometry into live Houdini geometry

Textures

  • Added support for user attributes in the Image File VOP's File Path to support per primitive texture overrides

Lights

  • Added new light instance toggle on the Object Properties to significantly reduce export time and VRScene size when working with a large number of instanced lights
  • Added support for non-uniform U/V Size values for Rectangle Light when in Disk mode
  •  Added "Direct Illumination" option on the Light material which generates a V-Ray Mesh Light and added support for Alembic files and custom attributes for the V-Ray Mesh Light
  • Added the "Light Reflection Mask" and "Light Refraction Mask" parameters under the V-Ray Object Properties which now work separately from the option on the Render -> Shading tab of the Geometry node

V-Ray Fur

  • Added support for unpacking fur into polygon geometry

VFB 

  • Added a Right-Click menu to the Frame Buffer's Teapot icons allowing Render Camera selection
  • Added support for sharing the Frame Buffer History settings between different Renderer nodes using the V-Ray Menu's Global Settings.
  • Added "Use VFB Background Image" parameter under the Renderer ROP's Images tab that overrides the Frame Buffer background image and supports image sequences using $F notation
  • Added an option to ignore V-Ray Frame Buffer settings when rendering a hip file in batch

UI

  • Added the "Sharp Mip-Map" option on the Image File VOP
  • Updated all V-Ray for Houdini node icons
  • Added a V-Ray menu in the main toolbar
  • Added V-Ray in the list of registered rendering engines for the Edit - Preferences - Rendering dialog
  • Added OpenGL properties to the V-Ray Material Output VOP
  • Added a "Reset VFB Position" button under the Images tab of the Renderer ROP
  • Added the "Max. MipMap Resolution" parameter under the Options -> Textures tab of the Renderer ROP
  • VOP node parameters are now disabled when an input connection is present
  • Added a Default Color option to the Image File VOP
  • Added support for storing the "VFH_BUILD" and "VFH_VRAY" variables in the *.hip file
  • Added a Color parameter to the OCIO Texture

 

IMPROVED FEATURES

 

V-Ray

  • Changed "uvwgen" type to int to allow promotion as input parameter on Sub-network VOPs and HDAs
  • Added the "SSS ID" option to the V-Ray Object Properties
  • Added Volume input slot to Material Output VOP to allow support for Environment Fog as a material
  • Use a V-Ray Light Material instead of a diffuse V-Ray Standard Material for debug shading

VRScans

  • Removed the "Color Space" parameter from the VRScans material - this is automatically handled by the Color Space parameter on the Renderer ROP

GPU

  • Exported Bucket Sampler settings for CUDA and RTX are now completely identical to the values set in the UI
  • Updated default mapping for textures with no uvwgen input

IPR

  • Added IPR support for the Physical Camera and Renderer ROP motion blur settings when rendering geometry instanced on points with the "@v" present and Velocity Blur enabled
  • Added separate Bundle Size and Samples Per Pixel options for Production and IPR rendering

Texture Baking

  • Added the option to explicitly specify the UDIMs to bake in the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP
  • Disabled the export of splines and particles when baking textures with the V-Ray Baker Tool SOP

AOVs

  • Added support for specifying a list of Render Elements ROPs instead of a single node
  • Added an Exclude list option to the V-Ray Extra Texture Render Element
  • Added the "Force Lossless Compression" toggle on the Material Output VOP
  • Added "Invert Depth" toggle to the Z-Depth render element
  • Added "Deep Output" toggle to the Z-Depth render element
  • Added support for the Volume Grid shader

Instancing

  • Sped up Rayserver Instancer when rendering single-level hierarchies of instances

V-Ray Scene

  • Sped up the preview when loading VRScenes containing V-Ray Proxies
  • Sped up loading of VRScenes containing thousands of individual objects
  • Sped up preview of VRScenes containing large numbers of V-Ray Proxies
  • Sped preview for meshes with a large numbers of faces

Export

  • All scene nodes are cooked when IPR or Production rendering is started, regardless of their render visibility
  • CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18 was not supported
  • Added the "Strip Paths" VRScene export option

Deadline

  • Export a single Houdini job with sub-tasks when the Mode is set to "Render Job"

Alembics

  • Added support for reading float and integer attributes at render time

Volumes

  • Removed the "*.vdb" file extension filter from the Volume Grid Cache SOP's File Browser dialog
  • Removed the GI Bounces parameter from the Volume Grid Shader because it has not been supported for a long time
  • Added support for channel remapping of Phoenix FD Aur cache files using the string parameters under the Fields tab of the Volume Grid shader
  • Volumes are no longer baked when a Volume Visualization SOP is present in the node graph after a File SOP
  • Added a "Use Opacity Ramp" toggle that allows switching between Simple Smoke Opacity and the Opacity Ramp
  • Skip baking of volumes to VRScene when using File Cache, Null, Transform or Switch SOP
  • Exposed the "Backward Trace" motion blur method on the Volume Grid shader
  • Exposed the Volumetric Render Elements options on the Volume Grid shader
  • Exposed additional Fire Opacity modulation options when the Volume Grid shader's Opacity Mode is set to "Use Own Opacity"

Displacement

  • Added the option to disable Displacement but keep Subdivision enabled

Hair

  • Added "Displacement", "Subdivision", "Hair", "Proxy", "Particles" toggles in the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Options tab

Textures

  • Added "Horizontal Rotation" and "Vertical Rotation" options to the UV Environment VOP
  • The color of input texture to the Dirt Texture's Radius parameter is now multiplied by the parameter's numerical value
  • Exposed the Tri-Planar texture Size parameter as an input socket of the VOP node
  • Exposed the "Default Color" option for Image File VOP - used when no UVs are present or a UDIM tile texture is missing
  • Distance Texture's Objects are now always exported, regardless of their visibility
  • Added dynamic IN/OUT menus for the OCIO Texture
  • Reduced the TriPlanar Texture's default Blend amount to 0.1 from 1.0
  • Added a "UV Bercon" mapping VOP used when driving the parameters of a "Bercon Noise" VOP with the output of another "Bercon Noise"

Lights

  • Enabled export of "Double-Sided" for Mesh Lights generated by the Light material when in "Direct Illumination" mode
  • Added support for exporting textures connected to the BRDF Light's color input when "Direct Illumination" is enabled

V-Ray Clipper

  • Added support for capping-off the clipped mesh with a render-time generated surface

UI

  • Updated the default Alpha Contribution parameter range to (-1, 1) for the Wrapper Material and Matte Object Properties
  • Removed the Proxy Export and Proxy Import shelf buttons
  • Renamed "Import Aura cache" shelf button to "Import AUR Cache"
  • Lowered the default Shadow Bias to 0.0002 from 0.002 for all V-Ray Lights
  • Updated the parameter names of the SSS2 Complex material to be consistent with the naming convention used in V-Ray for Maya
  • Hid the "Channel Data Ranges" parameter on the Volume Grid Shader and added a callback script to find the dependent node instead
  • Updated the default parameter values of the ColorCorrection VOP
  • Set the default Maximum Render Time for the Progressive Sampler to 0 instead of 1 for both CPU and GPU rendering
  • Unregistered the V-Ray Sphere Fade VOP so it is not present in the /mat network
  • Changed the default Opacity Mode of the V-Ray Material to "Stochastic"
  • Added the *.tx and *.tex extension to the list of displayed formats in the V-Ray Image File VOP's File Browser dialog
  • Updated the Material Output VOP's OpenGL parameters
  • Added Phoenix FD Fire/Smoke render presets to the Volume Grid shader
  • Moved the Volume Grid debug messages to log level "Debug" - those will only show when the hidden Renderer ROP parameter "exporter_log_level" is set to "Debug"
  • Updated the Render Elements template generation script
  • Changed the Multi-Matte Render Element "Affect Matte Objects" parameter name to "Include Matte Objects"
  • Updated the Color Correct (Max) texture's default values
  • Updated the default values for all UV Mapping VOPs
  • Show the "Digital Assets" tab for the Tab menu when inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP
  • Added viewport preview for the "Directional" parameter of the V-Ray Rect Light
  • Renamed Scatter Radius to Scatter Color for the SSS Material

 

FIXED BUGS

 

V-Ray

  • AlSurface material's SSS is ignored when the SSS object is placed behind a refractive V-Ray Material with Refraction Depth higher than 1
  • Fixed an error thrown by Houdini when attempting to create an HDA within a V-Ray Material Builder VOP
  • Removing the OSL code from the OSL Texture or OSL Material would not remove the spare parameters

Chaos Cloud

  • VRScene exported for Chaos Cloud contains more data than required

VRScans

  • Updated the VRScans VOP UI

Rendering

  • The V-Ray Sun was missing from the V-Ray Aerial Perspective
  • Crash on render end when rendering with HBatch or Hython
  • Fixed a crash when using per-primitive string attributes in the Image File VOP's File path
  • Fixed a crash with Single VOP
  • Screen Window X/Y options are ignored if "V-Ray Physical Camera" properties are not present on the camera
  • Fixed a crash when using Distributed Rendering to render scene consisting of a single spline only
  • Fixed a render-time crash in specific cases when the Log Window option on the V-Ray Renderer ROP is enabled
  • Fixed a bug causing the Light Cache calculation to get stuck when rendering with Displacement and a Color to Float texture
  • V-Ray Material's Refraction IOR used to affect Reflections even when "Lock Fresnel IOR to Refraction IOR" is disabled
  • Wrong normals for manually transformed Agent primitives at the SOP level
  • Fixed a crash when rendering a degenerate 2-vertex primitive
  • No image output when rendering a scene which is not saved to disk and uses ${HIP} in the output path
  • If Distributed Rendering's "Use Local Machine" option is disabled, rendering locally does not work even when DR is disabled
  • Crash with OSL Material when GGX Roughness is higher than 0.0
  • Crash to desktop if the render camera position is changed during rendering an Agent Crowd Source SOP with Motion Blur enabled

GPU

  • Hang after rendering a volumetric on the GPU and trying to close Houdini or open new file
  • Crash when opening a new scene after rendering with CUDA or RTX
  • Fixed a render-time crash when switching between CUDA and RTX
  • The unsupported Volume Grid Shader Emission "Enabled" toggle is now correctly ignored when rendering with CUDA or RTX
  • Empty Production render when Motion Blur is enabled on the V-Ray Physical Camera
  • Materials part of a "Multi ID Material" are swapped when rendering with CUDA or RTX
  • Noise COP in Sparse convolution mode, plugged in a V-Ray Image File VOP with op:/path causes a crash when rendering with CUDA or RTX
  • Normal maps are not rendered with V-Ray GPU
  • Tiled EXRs are not rendered with V-Ray GPU
  • Crash when starting a Bucket Sampler Production render of a scene containing a volume primitive, stopping the render and starting IPR
  • Hair is ignored by all scene lights if a Rectangle, Sphere, Spot or Mesh light is present in the scene

IPR

  • IPR is not updated for volumes when the Renderer's Sampler type is set to "Bucket"
  • Hooking/unhooking nodes under a File SOP used for loading VDBs (e.g. Transform SOP) did not update IPR
  • Changing the visibility flag on a piece of geometry would occasionally cause the entire geometry to disappear
  • Creating a node inside a V-Ray Material Builder VOP used to restart the IPR even if that node is not a part of the shading network attached to the rendered geometry
  • Adding or removing an input connection to a VOP node would occasionally fail to update IPR
  • Pressing the "X" button on the VFB to close the window would not stop the IPR
  • When Motion Blur is enabled, objects with velocity blur used to have wrong motion blur after changing the Timeline frame
  • Reducing the number of instanced volumes will now update IPR
  • Wrong motion blur for objects instanced over points with velocity "v" attribute when changing the timeline frame
  • Fixed a bug causing the Houdini UI to become sluggish once the IPR Noise Threshold value is reached
  • Fixed a crash when changing attribute values during an IPR session with Motion Blur enabled
  • Fixed a bug causing the render region in the VFB to be ignored during IPR under specific circumstances
  • Fixed a bug causing IPR to update unnecessarily when changing the name of a material
  • Camera selection is ignored, Renderer ROP's camera is used instead in the Render View window
  • Fixed a bug causing IPR to occasionally stop updating when changing the topology or the timeline frame with heavy geometry
  • Fixed a Viewport IPR render region issue causing the rendered region to be offset if the camera is selected in the Network View after IPR was started
  • Fixed a Viewport IPR render region bug causing the image to be rendered with incorrect focal length
  • Nodes disconnected from the shading tree no longer will update IPR on parameter changes
  • Shift+LMB clicking on the shelf's IPR icon does not bring up a menu
  • The Volume Grid Shader's "Use Opacity Ramp" parameter does not update in IPR
  • The visibility of the source object for instancing is modified when changing the timeline frame
  • The IPR randomly does not update when the point count of the rendered geometry changes in large increments
  • Per-primitives displacement affects different primitives for each IPR refresh, if V-Ray Displacement properties are not applied to the Geometry node
  • Can not start IPR if a Render View panel is not present in the Houdini UI
  • Disabling the visibility of Geometry node holding a VRScene SOP while IPR is running causes a crash if there is a material override assigned to it
  • Objects imported into a sub-network disappear when changing settings on their assigned materials
  • Changing the visibility of a Geometry node during an IPR session has no effect
  • IPR used to discard a light if the Intensity parameter is animated and it reaches zero during the animation
  • Changing Volume Grid Shader parameters during IPR would occasionally cause incorrect scaling of the volume
  • Removing the file path from a Light's Emission Color or Shadow Color texture parameter does not update IPR
  • Crash when starting a VFB IPR session with a V-Ray Renderer ROP inside an HDA
  • The Ignore flag of VOP nodes does not update IPR when a material is assigned through a Material Output VOP
  • Empty Render View IPR and Viewport IPR when both "Use Denoiser" and "Use Render Elements" (with a RE:Denoiser) is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP
  • Crash with CUDA CPU IPR and BRDF Stochastic Flakes because object level scale is ignored by the BRDF
  • CUDA IPR errors and crash when changing Volume Grid shader options while IPR is running
  • Start Offset option of the V-Ray Proxy is not updated in IPR
  • Connecting a Displacement VOP to a Material Output VOP assigned through a Stylesheet while IPR is running causes a crash
  • Repeatedly starting and stopping the IPR fills up RAM and does not release it

Texture Baking

  • Automatically recalculate invalid normals on Mesh export to resolve empty AOV output for geometry with (0, 0, 0) normals
  • Fixed a bug causing baked geometry to export as invisible
  • Adding an object to the Target Objects list caused it to become un-renderable in regular Production rendering

AOVs

  • BRDFs hooked up to a Blend material had wrong output for the Material Select element
  • NaN pixel values for Normals element when "Filtering" and Motion Blur with Shutter Efficiency of 0.5 are enabled
  • Wrong export for frame samples when Velocity element is present produces wrong output for static frames
  • Incorrect Cryptomatte render element for volumes in Volumetric Geometry mode
  • Wrong Light Select output when rendering volumes with Light Cache enabled
  • Added a missing parameter export causing wrong Light Select output when rendering in Volumetric Mode
  • Added missing "Color Mapping", "Consider for AA" and "Denoise" options to the Light Select render element
  • The "Denoise" option on Color Channel render elements had no effect
  • No Anti-Aliasing for Cryptomatte element in Material mode because of missing face_mtlIDs parameter on GeomStaticMesh
  • Presence of "Reflection Alpha" element causes wrong Reflection output
  • Light Select output for volumetric effects was wrong due to a missing parameter output

Instancing

  • Material assignments are lost for instances using @instance or @instancepath when Rayserver Instancer is enabled
  • Fixed a difference in Motion Blur when using the "v" attribute if Rayserver Instancer is enabled
  • Wrong fields loaded for rendering of fire and smoke in specific cases with volume instancing
  • Iterating over a large number of instances with a Post-Translate script causes a crash
  • Fixed wrong export for instanced volumes when using 'unexpandedfilename' intrinsic attribute
  • Mesh Material assignments to a V-Ray Proxy are not preserved when using the Rayserver Instancer

V-Ray Scene

  • Fixed a bug causing materials imported from a 3ds Max generated VRScene to lack bump mapping
  • Flip Axis toggle produces normals with flipped Y/Z components for geometry imported from 3ds Max
  • Viewport preview is missing objects when "Expand Primitives" is toggled between "on" and "off"
  • Crash when changing the Viewport Preview mode of the VRScene Import SOP
  • Materials imported from the VRScene have invalid name if the VRScene is exported from a DCC application that uses '#' signs as part of the naming convention
  • Preview of geometry stored in the VRScene file does not work

Export

  • Geometry with no animation keyframes disappears when using Rayserver Instancer with Motion Blur enabled
  • V-Ray Frame Buffer settings are not exported when generating per-frame VRScenes
  • Point velocity attribute "v" is not exported for packed fragments for rendering with Velocity Blur
  • VRScene export for cameras when rendering a frame sequence was missing a parameter which produced a wrong message for the currently rendered frame's number
  • Per-frame Camera transforms are not exported when "Use Camera Path" for Light Cache is enabled
  • Overscan is ignored when rendering through batch with "Ignore VFB Settings" enabled
  • The "creaseweight" attribute is not exported when using V-Ray Subdivision
  • Transform SOP over packed unconnected points has no effect
  • Lights in sub-networks are exported and rendered when the V-Ray Renderer ROP's Candidate Lights list is empty
  • Wrong export for custom attributes on Packed Fragment primitives
  • Wrong "Cd" attribute export for instanced lights
  • Missing V-Ray Frame Buffer parameters when rendering in batch
  • Wrong parsing of system environment variables specified in the Image Output Path of a Renderer ROP when the variable starts with "F", e.g. "${FNAME}"
  • Specifying an object which is a child of a sub-network in the Renderer's Force Objects list forces the entire parent sub-network
  • An object which is a child of a sub-network specified in the Renderer's Exclude Objects list is still rendered
  • A Candidate Object is rendered even when the node Display flag is disabled if the Display parameter on the node is enabled and set to 1
  • Objects in multiple sub-network levels are not rendered
  • Material Builder VOP assigned to a Mesh material is not exported
  • Objects specified for instancing using the "@instancepath" attribute are not exported if their name is "inst2"
  • Remap textures's "value" output used to output type color instead of type float
  • Added support for instancing Mesh Lights inside sub-networks when the entire parent sub-network is specified for instancing
  • Renderer ROP outputs all render elements from all Render Elements ROPs in the scene when Forced Materials is set to wildcard
  • Empty hair animation export after the first animation frame when exporting to a single *.vrscene file
  • No hair UVs when rendering with CUDA and using UV Channel Name VOP
  • Missing padding when evaluating "$F*" variable in the image Output Path of the Renderer
  • Wrong transformations of Packed Fragments when the "Rayserver Instancer" option in the V-Ray Object Properties is enabled
  • String attributes on Packed objects are not exported
  • Wrong parsing of string parameters which reference nodes inside HDAs
  • Crash when instancing objects from a SOP-level Sub-network whose Display and Render flags are mis-matched
  • The "Visible Children" parameter on Sub-network acts as a "Force Objects" list instead of a "Candidate Objects" list
  • Material SOP overrides are not handled
  • Per-frame transformation of geometry are not exported causing incorrect motion blur
  • Geometry nodes with disabled display flag are not rendered when specified in the "Force Objects" list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP

Deadline

  • Job is set to Deadline for rendering even if a camera is missing
  • Selecting slaves for the Machine List adds a "Qt: Untested Windows version 10.0 detected!" message to the list

Alembics

  • Empty render when the Geometry node holding the Alembic file is inside a Forced Matte Subnet node
  • Exporting float attributes added to packed alembic primitives caused unexpected behavior with the Triplanar texture
  • Forced material assignments from an Alembic baked shop_materialpath would not be registered for Cryptomatte in "Material Name" mode
  • Fixed a bug causing double export for Alembic primitives when the Alembic SOP "Create Primitives For" is set to "Shape and Transform Nodes"
  • Fixed a bug causing incorrect frame pattern export for per-frame Alembic files
  • No UVs are loaded for alembics with changing topology and "abcframe" offset
  • Rendering per-frame alembic files with multiple frames and velocity blur disabled used to cause stretching at first and final frame of animation
  • Invalid motion blur bounding box used to cause clipping in specific setup
  • Crash when rendering an *.abc file with baked "@shop_materialpath" if the materials are assigned to individual faces
  • Material Builder VOP and Material Output VOP assignments to Delayed Load Alembics with baked shop_materialpath attribute are ignored
  • Fixed a crash with Alembic files and invalid hair data
  • Fixed a crash with Delayed Load Alembic primitives and Motion Blur enabled with specific scene

Volumes

  • Phoenix FD ".aur" cache files produced wrong emission results
  • Preserve environment variables functionality on the ROP was working incorrectly for volumes
  • VDBs loaded as Packed Disk primitives are baked into the VRScene when copied using the CopyToPoints2.0 SOP introduced with Houdini 18
  • VDBs in a sub-network specified under the "Forced Objects" list on the Renderer ROP are not exported
  • Fixed a bug causing ch() and chs() expressions to be evaluated incorrectly on the File SOP's File parameter when exporting VDBs
  • Fixed incorrect cache path export when Motion Blur is enabled
  • Material ID option has no effect
  • Wrong transform export for VDBs imported with File SOP
  • Geometry nodes with disabled visibility which contain a volume are not rendered when specified in the "Force Objects" list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP
  • Crash when rendering live volumes
  • Providing the same name for Fire Volume and Smoke Volume on the Volume Grid shader breaks the data ranges of the Fire Luminance, Smoke Color and Smoke Opacity ramps

Displacement

  • File sequence textures with an e.g. <frame4> token in the file path would not be loaded when specified directly under the Displacement VOP's Texture parameter
  • The "Render as Subdivision" toggle on the V-Ray Object Properties used to also enable Displacement
  • Texture is not exported when provided directly inside the Displacement Properties or the Texture parameter of the Displacement VOP
  • Preserve Map Borders option does not work when "Render As Subdivision" is enabled

Hair

  • Wrong velocity interpolation for deforming splines
  • Fixed a crash with packed hair geometry
  • UV attribute is ignored when Hair Properties are missing from the rendered splines
  • Crash when using the 'distance_along_strand_normalized' output of the Hair Sampler as the Diffuse color of a V-Ray Material
  • Wrong attribute export for hair when a mismatch between the number of points and number of vertices is present
  • Only vector attributes are exported

V-Ray Proxy

  • Proxy created from Packed Geometry has wrong Viewport preview when imported back into the scene
  • Changing the "Preview Type" parameter causes a crash when loading hair
  • The ply2vrmesh tool produced wrong preview for a large number of hair strands
  • The geometry preview of a V-Ray Proxy is forced to a bounding box when the *.vrmesh has more faces than the specified number in the "Max Preview Faces" parameter
  • Frame tag $F is not parsed correctly for both preview and render
  • The V-Ray Proxy ROP exports empty *.vrmesh files when placed inside a sub-network

Textures

  • Object level transformations were not considered by the V-Ray Distance Texture for geometry in the "Objects" list
  • Fixed a bug preventing the re-loading of an OSL file in the OSL texture
  • Added some missing UV Bercon parameters
  • Updated OCIO texture dynamic menus so that reverting the drop-down to its default will correctly export the first menu entry instead of an empty string
  • Particles specified under the Distance texture's Objects list are ignored at render-time
  • First animation frame only is exported for objects with disabled visibility flag specified under the Distance texture's Objects lists
  • Remap Texture outputs black color when in RGB or HSV modes
  • V-Ray Distance Texture ignores the world-space transformation of the specified objects
  • Bezier Curve texture present in the shading network causes a crash
  • Animated default color values are not updated when rendering an animation
  • Layered Texture does not work with input COP images
  • Layered Texture input textures are exported in reversed order
  • Crash when "Cache Bitmaps Between Renders" is enabled on the V-Ray Renderer ROP and a tiled EXR texture is used for rendering
  • Export pixels data for all rendered frames if the COP network node is Time Dependent to support animated COP textures such as the Ocean Evaluate SOP's output
  • COP image assigned as a Dome Light texture uses Spherical Environment mapping
  • COP image is now updated in IPR
  • Export "A" image plane when referencing a COP image to support Ocean Evaluate SOP Cusp values
  • Shape COP referenced as texture produces wrong results
  • COP image used as a texture for the Physical Camera's Bitmap Aperture produces wrong results
  • Fixed wrong gamma export for COPs images

Lights

  • All lights are exported regardless for the Geometry node's Render -> Shading -> Reflection/Refraction Mask parameters making disabling reflections or refractions of specific lights for the given object impossible
  • Light linking for V-Ray Environment fog is not working
  • Light links are not updated when reopening a *.hip file which is not handled correctly by V-Ray
  • Animated Mesh Light geometry is not updated when rendering an animation
  • Crash when rendering Mesh Lights
  • Image File VOP assigned as Dome Light texture is not updated in IPR

V-Ray Fur

  • Fur attributes are not exported unless specified in the Force Attributes list of the V-Ray Renderer ROP
  • Wrong Fur preview when the input geometry is scaled from the Transform tab of the parent Geometry node

V-Ray Clipper

  • Default clipper would not fill holes of the clipped geometry
  • Clip mesh is visible in the final render

Installer

  • Updated the json environment setup due to a QT libraries conflict causing the Houdini Help Browser to stop working
  • V-Ray for Houdini builds are now always installed in the default HFS path for the selected V-Ray version
  • License server settings from previous installations were not automatically filled for new installations
  • Fixed an issue causing corrupt builds for OSX
  • Canceling installation on OSX does not stop Chaos Cloud Client installation
  • Chaos Cloud Client installation fails on OSX

VFB

  • The "Render Last" camera is now reset when starting a Production render from the Renderer ROP's "Render to Disk" button
  • V-Ray Frame Buffer "Stop" button does not interrupt network location requests for files
  • Fixed an occasional bucket draw issue when the VFB is not the focused window starting with Houdini 18.0.391
  • Render region toggle is stuck and can not be disabled
  • Fixed a bug causing wrong Frame Buffer region settings on scene file reopen
  • Render region is ignored
  • Frame Buffer size is reduced every time it is reopened

UI

  • Added an output socket to the Color Correct (Maya) VOP
  • Fixed "Parameter stepped on" errors caused by duplicate parameter imports
  • Disabled the visibility of the Bump Delta Scale option when the Render engine is set to CUDA
  • Printing of Console messages is not filtered
  • Physical Camera's F-Stop, ISO and Shutter Speed should not be disabled when Exposure is disabled
  • Override material had wrong disable condition for the "Environment" parameter
  • Added missing Stereoscopic camera "Output Layout" parameter
  • The Physical Camera "Rolling Shutter" parameter had an unreasonable default value
  • The V-Ray Bump material is present twice in the VOP menu with the copy causing a UI error
  • 2D displacement settings stay hidden when displacement type is set to 2D


 

REMOVED FEATURES

 

UI

  • Removed the "Reflection Alpha" option from the Color Channel (RE) node
  • Removed default "/obj/cam1" string from the UV Projection VOP's Projection Camera parameter because it was causing errors when creating HDAs
  • Disabled the visibility of the UV Channel Name VOP's Channel Index parameter
  • Removed the "Probabilistic Rendering" option from the Volume Grid shader
  • Removed the "Reflection Alpha" element from the Render Elements "Generate" button on the Renderer ROP
  • Removed the "Visible in GI" toggle from the Render Stats material
  • Removed the "Use Particle Color" parameter on BSDF Point Particle material because it's redundant with the User Color VOP available