Chaos Group is a leading provider of innovative rendering solutions for the media, entertainment, and design industries. With the announcement of V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp open beta, users now have the biggest expansion to SketchUp’s rendering capabilities. This massive upgrade brings 16 new features to V-Ray for SketchUp that enhance visualization workflow and render quality. With these new features V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp has become the most robust, and artist-friendly render application SketchUp users have ever seen. Between the new features implemented into the new version belong V-Ray RT®, V-Ray Dome Light and V-Ray Proxy. V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp will offer architects and designers access to proven V-Ray technologies that accelerate the creative process. For example, using V-Ray Proxies users can render huge amounts of geometry in the blink of an eye.

cebas Visual Technology Inc. continues its plugins upgrades and announces the release of service pack 13 and 3ds Max 2014 compatibility for finalRender 3.5 as well as for the integrated and standalone finalToon 3.5.

This Service Pack provides fixes minor issues found in finalToon and finalRender that have to do with materials, IES lighting and Camera support.

Users will find the Service Pack automatically in their cebas Product Manager tool.

Motiva has released a commercial beta of Thea for 3ds Max. The new plugin integrates Thea Render, Solid Iris Technologies’ hybrid unbiased/biased renderer, inside Max. The two developers had previously worked together to integrate Colimo, Motiva’s innovative software for adjusting pre-rendered images in real time, with Thea Render.

According to Motiva, Thea for 3ds Max supports “all kinds of geometry”, including deformable meshes, renderable splines and compound objects. The plugin can render any native modifier that can be converted to an Editably Poly, including Hair & Fur.

Krakatoa is Thinkbox Software’s production-proven volumetric particle renderer previously available for the Autodesk 3ds Max 3D software. Krakatoa is CPU-based, highly optimized, heavily multi-threaded, and can be used successfully on most hardware running Windows or Linux operating systems including laptops and render nodes without dedicated high-end graphics accelerators.