⚡ Chaos V-Ray at a Glance
| Current Version | V-Ray 7 (7.4 builds during 2026); V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max was released on 31 October 2024. There is no V-Ray 8.[1][2] |
|---|---|
| Developer | Chaos (founded as Chaos Group in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1997)[1][2] |
| Pricing | Solo €474/yr; Premium €706.80/yr; Collection €1,138.80/yr (billed annually); V-Ray for Blender is also sold on its own[1][2] |
| License | Commercial subscription[1][2] |
| Platforms | Plug-ins for 3ds Max, SketchUp, Revit, Rhino, Cinema 4D, Blender, Maya and Houdini[1][2] |
| File Formats | .vrscene, USD, OBJ, FBX, Alembic, VDB, EXR[1][2] |
| Typical Use | Production-quality offline rendering for architectural visualization, film VFX, product visualization and animation.[1][2] |
| Technical Detail | Interactive path-traced rendering in the viewport on CPU, GPU or both; the V-Ray Frame Buffer supports interactive relighting and compositing, and V-Ray Proxies handle very heavy geometry. In 2026 AMD GPU support returned via HIP and a free V-Ray for Blender Community Edition was released.[1][2] |
History and Background
Chaos Group was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1997 by Peter Mitev and Vladimir Koylazov, and V-Ray became its flagship renderer; V-Ray has never been owned by Autodesk. Koylazov received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for V-Ray, and the company won an Engineering Emmy in 2021. Chaos bought Prague-based Render Legion, maker of the Corona renderer, in 2017, shortened its name to Chaos in 2021 and merged with Enscape in 2022.
Sources for this section: en.wikipedia.org, chaos.com (checked 5 November 2026).
Strengths
- Fully real-time ray tracing in the viewport, with no rasterization approximation.
- CPU, GPU and hybrid computing scale to the hardware you own.
- The V-Ray Frame Buffer allows interactive relighting and compositing.
- V-Ray Proxies carry very large geometry efficiently.
What You Should Know
- Annual subscription; even Solo costs EUR 474 per year.
- Render time climbs quickly in heavy scenes and the hardware cost follows.
- Chaos no longer sells per-host licenses: one Solo or Premium subscription runs V-Ray in every supported host, but Solo is a named license for one user on one machine at a time.
Who Is It For?
Architectural visualization, film VFX, product visualization and animation studios.
References
The independent sources below were used to verify the version, pricing, license and technical details in this review.
This review belongs to our Popular 3D Modeling Software comparison.
