V-Ray 1.50.SP2 Now Available!

V-Ray 1.5 Service Pack 2 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max 2009® and Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009.Now includes several new features such as VRayIES photometric light, VRaySimbiontMtl material for direct rendering of DarkTree materials, VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard light for reduction of flickering of VRayFur, the VRay_ExtraTex render element for generating ambient occlusion passes and UVW channel passes.

New features:
Compatibility with 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009
Support for animated deforming meshes to .vrmesh files and the VRayProxy object
Support for Lighting Analysis Overlay render effect in 3ds Max 2009
VRayIES light
VRaySimbiontMtl material (allows rendering of DarkTree materials directly by V-Ray)
Rectangle VRayLights can be mapped with a texture map, similar to dome lights
VRayShadowMap shadow generator for standard lights (useful for reducing flickering of VRayFur in animations; works with all V-Ray geometry objects like proxies, fur etc.)
VRay_Illuminance render element
VRay_SelfIlluminationMap texture baking element
VRay_BumpNormals render element and VRayBumpNormalsMap bake render element to extract bump-mapped normals
VRay_ExtraTex render element to store the result from the calculation of any extra texture map on shaded surfaces without the need to actually apply the map in their materials (can be used with VRayDirt for AO pass, or with Vertex Color map for UVW channels pass, or with Falloff map for custom z-depth pass or top/bottom etc)
VRay_SampleRate render element to show the image sampling rate into a separate element
The installation includes MAX.vray Defaults profile for 3ds Max

Modified features:
Added "Preserve tweaks on load" option for VRaySimbiontMtl
DTE components now included with the installation
Support for "Show map in viewports" of VRayMtl can be disabled by setting the environment variable VRAY_SHOW_MTL_MAPS to 0
Added hidden parameter "option_clampTextures" to VRayMtl, which is true by default for newly created materials (old scenes render as before)
Faster and multithreaded preparation of texture-mapped VRayLights
Improved sampling of texture-mapped VRayLights
Added more white balance presets to the VRayPhyscal camera (D50, D55, D65 and D75 corresponding to the CIE standard illuminants)
The default white balance preset for the VRayPhsycal camera is now the D65 illuminant
More reliable memory handling for the V-Ray VFB for large images
Mapped rectangle lights now use the alpha of the texture map for transparency
The information in .vrmesh files is now compressed by default (makes newly created proxies incompatible with older versions)
Reduced memory requirements in certain situations
In RTT (render to texture) mode, V-Ray now always creates floating-point frame buffers for the bake elements
vrimg2exr tool flushes the standard output more regularly
Added "Soften" parameter to the BRDF parameters of VRayMtl
vrimg2exr tool has an option for gamma correction
vrimg2exr tool can convert non-RGB channels (velocity, zdepth etc) when used with the '-channel' option
Added a hidden parameter lightcache_minPathsPerSample to control usage of light cache samples during the light cache calculation phase (reduces bias in the light cache when a small number of subdivs are used)
VRaySun target line is now dimmed in the viewports when the sun light is off
VRayProxy objects have a new "point" display mode

Bug fixes:
Fixed crash when loading scene in 3ds Max 2009
VRayFur did not generate velocity channel information
Fixed misaligned buckets on render slaves with DR
DR with "Don't render final image" caused render slaves to drop after the first frame
VRaySun did not display correctly with viewport shading model set to "Best"
Fixed crash when cancelling a DR rendering before the actual render has started
The Tweaks rollout of VRaySimbiontMtl turned blank if other rollouts were opened/closed
Material editor now updates faster if no license is found
All parameters of VRayHDRI appeared named as "Spin" in TrackView
The multipliers of VRayHDRI were not animatable
Fixed memory leak in the V-Ray license server when the status of the server is requested.
Fixed memory leak in the new sampler for texture-mapped VRayLight's
Browsing for a non-animated irradiance map ending with a number caused that number to be truncated
Problem with VRayIES light with soft shadows in the lighting render elements
Fixed wrong bounding box of VRayProxy objects
Issues with SpeedTree texture filtering
Fixed bright spots on matte objects with irradiance map with low settings
Fixed problems in VRayMtl with Falloff map and bump map at grazing angles
Crash when exporting more than 100 objects to one .vrmesh file
VRayShadowMap did not consider light exclude lists and object "Cast shadows" properties
Fixed artifacts when rendering dynamic geometry with motion blur
Different rendering results between Intel/AMD machines with 64-bit V-Ray
Groups within groups did not work with the V-Ray Override mtl exclusion list, as well as with light exclusion lists
Exclusion lists for V-Ray lights not imported properly when merging the lights from another file
Fixed wrong velocity channel for proxies with Scale parameter different than 1.0
ply2vrmesh failed for .ply files with error "wrong format"
Fixed problem with transparent VRayLightMtl materials and GI
Fixed problems in alpha channel when mixing V-Ray and standard 3ds Max materials (e.g. VRayMtl inside a 3ds Max Blend material etc)
Fixed problems with filtering of some procedural textures (e.g. Gradient Ramp)
Fixed problems with Falloff map at grazing angles
Fixed potential divide-by-zero problems with glossy highlights because of the "Soften" BRDF parameter
Fixed precision loss when using the V-Ray VFB render region override options
Fixed problem with Particle Flow freezing in certain cases on object preparation during rendering
The y-coordinate (green component) of VRayVelocity render element was flipped compared to the 3ds Max one
The result from the adaptive DMC image sampler could be different with the "Don't affect colors" option on
The vrayspawner.exe application will automatically look for a 3dsviz.exe file, if no 3dsmax.exe can be found
The internal V-Ray replacement material for the 3ds Max multi/subobject material now matches the 3ds Max one when an ID is greater than specified in the material
MaxScript error using the V-Ray scene converter in 3ds Max 2008
Fixed crashes with VRayMtl and DirectX with the "Show map in viewport" option on
Objects with visibility<1.0 rendered brighter with GI than they should be
Bug with dome lights (from build 1.50.14 only)
Background seen through matte objects not sampled properly for AA (from 1.50.SP1 only)
No reflections on VRayMtl if Fresnel reflections are enabled, the Fresnel IOR is locked to the refractive one, and the material has opacity map
Dynamic raycaster limit did not work properly for values above 4095
Issues with VRayDirt when baking very dense meshes
Incorrect rendering progress bar display in DR mode
The mesh export to .vrscene file ignored mesh normals


V-Ray Compatibility Chart
3ds Max 2009 & 3ds Max Design 2009 = Use V-Ray 1.5 SP2 (3ds Max 2009) installer
3ds Max 2008 = Use V-Ray 1.5 SP2 (3ds Max 2008) installer
3ds Max 9 or VIZ 2008 = Use V-Ray 1.5 SP2 (3ds Max 9) installer
3ds Max 8/7/6 (or)VIZ 2007, VIZ 2006, VIZ 2005 = Use V-Ray 1.5 SP2 (3ds Max 8) installer
Older versions = No support