Install Vray

[Kusi Bertoldo]

TheAdvanced Installation button takes you to the Additional Components screen. Here, you can choose whether to install the License Server or V-Ray Swarm and specify the License server machine.

The V-Ray Standalone version included in the 3ds Max installer is intended for DR use when V-Ray GPU is set. It is not a replacement for the 3ds Max render server, which is intended for use with the V-Ray renderer.

Here you can specify the installation paths. Please check if the default folders are correct. If you are installing V-Ray for 3ds Max 2022 or later, you can also choose between installation for all users or current user only. For more information, see the V-Ray for 3ds Max Autodesk application package page.

both worked fine, about 2 weeks ago i opened max 2017 and it loaded up, the UI loaded up and everything, then it froze if i click anywhere on the UI, it tells me (not responding) and tells to close the application. after some tests of opening and closing max i figured out it's not just a mere isolated issue,

i then installed max 2016 and installed vray 3.3 on it, and i reinstalled max 2017 with vray 3.4 again and they both worked fine for about 2 weeks, yesterday the problem happened again, now all of them do the same thing, max 2017 and 2016 and 2015. each with a different version of vray

If Max is working well until you install Vray, you should probably direct this question to the good folks at Chaosgroup. Vlado and his team are very communicative and it may be something small that is causing this issue for you. I am not in a good position to do support on Vray so my best suggestion here is to head to the Vray forums. You have to email them to get access to the forums and send some information about your license. Please try that, and thank you for doing so!

Best Regards,

Quick question to see if anyone has run into this. I finally got my VRay dongle and plugged it into my server and wanted to uninstall and install Vray for dongle lisencing. Unfortunately a dialogue box comes up saying that 3dmax is running (have it installed for the renderfarm), which there is a max process always running and even if though through the task manager I stop the process, it just starts up immediately so I can't uninstall or install vray. Anyone run tion this problem and if so do you have a solution?

Just trying to set up everything for distributed rendering, usually something like conflicts in IP's or similar would cause problems for me, this time I can't even re-install the software! LOL It has been one of those months

Still not able to do it. I have deleted all the vray files manually but still have some when i go into panel control remove/add programs and when i click remove i get a window saying that 3ds max is running....

today i bought a license and all seems to work well. where can we get a complete documentation? my main workstation is a mac pro but i have a pc in my network with 5 nvidia 980ti GPU's which i would like to use as GPU render slaves. how do i setup this configuration?

do i need to instal the license server on the vray server pc as well? it's not totally clear how i do setup the license there. or is it just a firewall issue maybe? EDIT: i have set my FW settings to system standard (recommended). sorry, i'm not too expert with windows, in any case it's windows 7 pro on that machine.

Yes you need to install the V-Ray license server and log into your Chaos Group account. This allows the machine to access your V-Ray license pool. Each machine that is rendering needs a render node license available to it (one per rendering process, not per CPU or GPU). This does mean that for DR to work from a client machine you will need a minimum of two Render nodes (sorry this is just how V-Ray licensing works).

does it mean that the FZ plugin will either render on the workstation or on the render server pc? this would be a bit disappointing, as usually, render software is delivered with at least one *additional* render node which can be used together with the main workstation.

That's a bummer on the node licensing. Basically it means we can't use the DR feature at all unless we buy additional licenses. I would expect to be able to render on at least 1 extra node with the base license. That's how most other rendering engines I've seen work.

I realize it's Chaos who controls this, but perhaps they can offer a discounted package with 2 render nodes for users who know they will need just 1 more? Otherwise, the price for a single extra node is nearly 50% of the whole VRay for FormZ base license. That's quite steep for a node license for a small studio. If that's the way it's going to stay, I can definitely see more users building much more powerful single workstations instead of multiple render nodes, just to avoid the licensing fees. You can build an 8 GPU workstation now, and only need 1 license, which would be more economical than licensing multiple nodes. Of course this means you'd have to use the VRAY GPU engine exclusively, which isn't as full featured nor as stable as the CPU engine is currently.

same thoughts as justin, here... i was somehow convinced we are getting one extra render node, as usually a render plugin does locally render on a workstation. in this case it's a bit tricky to find out in the fine print that this is just a "UI license", never seen that before (at least not with octane, maxwell, and vray for c4d)...

For what its worth I am finding that rendering on just one machine is fast enough that I don't need the network render. If I was doing animation then that would be a different story. One of my typical heavy models that would take overnight to render in Maxwell or Renderzone is now rendering in 15 to 20 minutes. I am also looking forward to not ever using a render farm again. I hate to think of all the money I spent there.

I wish it was at least like FormZ license where we can install V-Ray on two computers, but only render on one at a time. That way I can offload the render to another machine while I keep modeling (or work in other programs) without all my cpu cores firing on V-Ray.

I just had a thought. What about using VRay in the FormZ Imager app? Is that going to require an additional license as well if it is running on the same computer? It can be great help to run the Imager app for rendering while finishing other modeling, views, lighting, etc.

V-Ray and Maxwell Render, unlike RenderZone ( unlimited render nodes ) are licensed to render only on the licensed host computer ( that has your formZ )- RenderZone, V-Ray and Maxwell Render when rendering an image take up so much of your design computer resources that any other 'tasks' you may try will not be a pleasant experience - both suck up most of the CPU and memory and leave nothing much left.

That is why extra DR render nodes are offered at an additional cost - DR rendering is really worthwhile but you need other workstations and V-Ray has it's own distributed render manager like Maxwell Render, so you don't overload your design computer. I guess that's why most of us render overnight with limited resources. You can also add a high end nVidia GPU card like a GTX 1080TI ( your choice ) internally or in a external cage.

I respectfully disagree. I have used Imager many times for batch rendering while continuing to use the computer for other things. Setting the priority to low or reducing the number of threads used, can help keep the computer responsive and usable for other tasks. You really only need 1-2 threads for other basic tasks like laying out the presentation in InDesign for example. System memory is never an issue with any workstation I've had in the last 10 years. Memory is cheap, max it out if you can or 32GB is a good start for todays workstations.

With VRAY and Imager, it should be even better, as I could in theory, assign the Imager to only use 2 GPUs (I have 3) + 50% of the CPU, and batch render images, while continuing to work on other things. I am completely aware that these will not render as fast as if I had given them all of the computer resources, but often times, multitasking to complete multiple project revisions in one afternoon is much more important than full speed rendering.

The two machines you can put FZ on should to be allowed to be set up in way that you can continue work on machine one, including setting up your vray materials etc, and (i.e. while) rendering on machine two.

I'm happy to be dis'd when it results in positive feedback like yours... I always have promoted the idea of using 'Imager' for many of the reasons you explain. My point was that V-Ray has it's own batch rendering tools for if you have bought the extra DR nodes and I respectfully believe that formZ is better off now spending their 'limited' resources now on improving formZ the modeller; and resurrecting formZ v9 development. It's time for a newer, better formZ.

By the way now that we have great rendering capabilities I am amazed that we do have some users with some very fast computers that are rendering 10 - 15 x faster than my little workstation. Have you checked the V-Ray benchmark -vray-benchmark-for-winosx-by-chaosgroup/

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