Get started with V-Ray

V-Ray for Blender is interesting to me because it is a production-tested, primarily biased renderer. While it is capable of creating realistic images on par with its unbiased competitors, there is always the option of trading physical accuracy in the lighting and materials for much faster render times.

It is worth noting that working with V-Ray is a little different to working with Cycles. In Cycles, the various shader components, such as diffuse, reflection and refraction, are contained in separate BSDFs that have to be mixed together using nodes to create the desired materials. V-Ray uses nodes, but instead of having multiple BSDFs that are mixed together, the nodes are used to texture the attributes of a single BSDF. While layering BSDFs is still possible, it is usually reserved for more complex material effects. 

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Julian Santiago is a freelance 3D artist. He has worked on TV commercials, visual effects, and visuals for special events.
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