AI Denoiser

The AI Denoiser uses GPU accelerated artificial intelligence to dramatically reduce the time to render a high fidelity image that is visually noiseless. This provides ultra-fast interactive feedback to artists, allowing you to iterate your creative decisions more quickly and achieve your final product much faster.

Caustics

Caustics can be seen in everyday life, from the light distortions at the bottom of a swimming pool to the light patterns being refracted from a transparent object, like a glass. It's best described as the patterns of lights and color that occur when light rays are reflected from a surface or refracted through a solid volume. Caustics are a form of indirect illumination that are generally tricky for a path-tracing renderer to capture, but Iray's custom caustic sampler captures them quickly and efficiently.

Depth of Field

Iray+ cameras mimic many of the characteristics of real world cameras. Depth of field is an effect that can be used to change how objects appear in any given scene; by setting appropriate aperture values and focus distances, you can achieve natural looking depth of field effects. Large aperture values can be used artistically to create more appealing renders that focus the viewers' attention on where you want it to be, while making the rest of the scene out of focus to create realistic depths.

Instancing

Instancing is a very efficient method of rendering a large number of replicated objects with only a minimal impact on memory and render resources. Groups of replicated geometry meshes can be easily constructed programmatically with a relatively small number of API calls. This technique is primarily used for objects such as trees, grass, buildings, furniture etc. Iray also allows you to vary materials across instances geometry to minimize the appearance of repetition.

Light Path Expressions (LPE)

Light Path Expressions (LPE's) can be used to capture specific lighting interactions, such as capturing only rays that have bounced off of a specific object, or which originate from a particular light source. These can be composited together in post-processing, allowing the creative control to quickly and easily recolour lights or objects, alter the relative brightness of lights, or even switch them off entirely. Multiple LPE canvases can be rendered in parallel, alongside a full standard render, with negligible overhead.

Light Updates for Cross Section Planes

Section planes 'slice' a scene to show hidden details, allowing to remove the walls or roof of a building to show the interior space. The cut geometry can be removed entirely, or merely hidden, while being left in place for lighting calculations. The latter approach allows you to show the inside of a building while maintaining the correct lighting conditions. Section planes can also add virtual capping geometry when slicing through objects to prevent them from appearing hollow.

Motion Blur

Motion blur allows you to capture realistic movement of objects in your images, replicating the effect of using a camera with a slow shutter speed. This can be used to convey a sense of movement and energy when rendering dynamic scenes. Relatively static scenes can also benefit from a subtle use of the effect as this can enhance the realism of your rendered images.

Physically Based Lighting

Iray is a high-performance, photorealistc rendering technology that generates imagery by replicating the physical interactions between light rays and materials. Iray+ allows the user to customise a vast range of lighting and material options to achieve the result you require. Images are progressively refined and the path tracing calculations result in realistic lighting, including caustics effects, which can also be trusted for accurate sun and lighting studies.

Physically Based Materials

Iray+ provides a wide catalogue of physically-based materials for use in a range of real-world situations. Physically-based lights and materials combine to deliver results that mimic the real world.

Iray's MDL (Material Definition Language) defines the material properties and parameters for all components - surface color, reflections and refractions, light emissions, volumetric scatter, displacements and bump maps - all of which are easily interchangeable.

Subsurface Scattering

Subsurface scattering (or SSS) is a material property that simulates the effect of light penetrating an object or surface that is not 100% opaque. Instead of being entirely reflected, as with metallic or diffuse surfaces, a proportion of the light is absorbed by the material, and scattered internally, before exiting the material in a variety of directions. Many materials in real world situations exhibit subsurface scattering, such as skin or wax.

Volumetrics

Iray+ can simulate the behavior of light within transparent and translucent materials of varying types, from thin mists and haze to murky ocean waters. Absorption and scattering can be controlled independently of each other and can also affect the color of light passing through. These volumetric materials can be used to create effects like colored smoke, beams of sunlight through fog or water, or even-semi opaque plastics.