This page discusses the render settings in V-Ray for Houdini.
Section Contents
Page Contents
Overview
The V-Ray Renderer (vray) node contains a multitude of options for both V-Ray and V-Ray RT. These settings include rendering speed and quality, global overrides, indirect illumination, caustics, and distributed rendering.
Additional rendering settings related to environment overrides can be accessed from the V-Ray Environment (env) node.
UI Paths:
||out Network|| > V-Ray > V-Ray Renderer
||out Network|| > V-Ray > V-Ray Environment
||shop Network|| > V-Ray Material node > Settings > Environment
Parameters
Render to Disk – Starts a V-Ray render.
Controls... – Launches the Houdini Render Control window.
Valid Frame Range – Specifies the frame(s) to render.
Render Current Frame – Renders the current frame.
Render Frame Range – Renders frames from the specified range set below as well as other frames if they are referenced by in-range frames.
Render Frame Range Only (Strict) – Only renders the frames in the specified range set below.
Start/End/Inc – Specifies the range of frames to render (start frame, end frame, and increment).
Render With Take – Renders using the settings from a specified take.
Camera – Specifies the camera to render from. The camera specified by this path must be a valid camera object in the scene, otherwise nothing will be rendered and an error will be logged in the console.
Override Camera Resolution – When enabled, the camera's resolution will be overridden, and the resolution specified from the V-Ray Renderer will be used instead.
Settings Tabs
When V-Ray is set as the renderer, V-Ray parameters are organized under several tabs in the renderer parameters. Additionally, some tabs have sub-tabs to help keep the settings organized.
- Globals – Common parameters for the V-Ray renderer, such as the production and RT renderer
- Objects – Provides options identical to the Mantra renderer Objects tab.
- Camera – Settings relating to the render camera
- GI – Selection and settings for primary and secondary GI engines, GI caustics
- Sampler – Determines how the scene is rendered. Includes options for the Image Sampler and DMC Sampler.
- Options – Options for globally controlling geometry, lighting, materials, and textures.
- Output – Settings for the rendered output including image resolution and frame stamp options
- Color Mapping – Controls color transformations that are applied to the final image colors
- Raycaster – Settings for the raycasting process.
- Regions – Adjusts rendering regions (buckets) when using a non-progressive image sampler.
- RT – Settings for the V-Ray RT renderer.
- Caustics – Settings for rendering caustic effects.
- Displacement – Controls subdivision and displacement quality for all objects in the scene.
- DR – Options for Distributed Rendering.
Note: In V-Ray, the two tools that most greatly impact the balance of render quality vs. speed are the Image Sampler | Anti-Aliasing (under the Sampler tab) and GI engine(s) (under the GI tab). Learning the basics of how these two features work will greatly enhance your ability to adjust settings in V-Ray and maximize image quality while keeping render times to a minimum. See the linked pages for explanations on how these features work.
Environment Settings
The Environment render settings are accessed by creating a V-Ray Environment node. See the V-Ray Environment page for additional information.