2008, April 19th, Sofia - Chaos Software announced today the immediate availability of the next version of V-Ray - 1.50.SP2 (1.50 service pack 2)

The V-Ray 1.5 Service Pack 2 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max 2009® and Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009
The update also includes several new features, for example 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, UVW channel passes etc.
There are many modifications and improvements of existing features. The complete list with all details can be found in the changelog file, part of the installation and customers can be also referred to the information provided in the V-Ray help index.

The V-Ray 1.5 Service Pack 2 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max 2009® and Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009®.

The update also includes several new features, for example 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, UVW channel passes etc. There are many modifications and improvements of existing features. The complete list with all details can be found in the changelog file, part of the installation and customers can be also referred to the information provided in the V-Ray help index.

Build 1.50.SP2 (11 April 2008)
(cumulative changelog since build 1.50.SP1)
===================

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 hilights 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;