What's New in VRED 2022

Learn about new features in this release of VRED. For technical details and bug fixes, see the 2022 release notes and recommended system requirements to ensure Autodesk VRED products are running to their potential.

Important:

For Windows users, 2022.3 requires an NVIDIA RTX driver v.471.11 or later, but a 471.68 or later is recommended for GPU raytracing.

For Linux users, 2022.3 requires 470.94 or above for GPU raytracing.

2022.3 Highlights

Video captions: In VRED 2022.3, we have added several improvements for data handling, rendering, and streaming workflows.

For data preparation, we improved the Decore functionality, so you are able to create B-sides within the tool. You can select between two different decore modes and decide how to deal with transparent objects. Like here, where I am setting the wall thickness and the inner rips and additional objects as B sides, as these components are not visible. So, you can make the non-visible parts invisible without losing them already.

Under Show B Sides, you can make them visible, delete them completely, or set them back to A side again. These additional functions give you more flexibility in the visualization and data preparation process.

For VR users, we improved the touch behavior of the VR hands. Now it’s much easier to trigger touch sensors or the VR menu with your VR hands, which makes the VR experience more fluent and natural.

When being in a Collaboration, we added a Pause button to the Collaboration Window. This gives you the option within a Collaboration with VR users attending as well, to render out a Raytraced Antialiased image in Desktop mode.

Now you can also go into a view of a VR user, the so-called spectator view. Pause the collaboration and render out a raytraced antialiased image from out of this view. Pressing the Pause button again, will switch you back to the collaboration session, instantly.

For raytracing, we improved the performance when being in Isolation mode. Now you have a much better framerate in Isolation mode!

We also improved the Stream App. Now you can show only selected Viewpoints and Variant Sets to the Stream App UI. Therefore, we added the “Show in VR Menu and Streaming App UI” option within the Variant Set Editor and within the Camera Editor. So, you are able, for example, to show only a simplified and basic set of functionalities to your stream. Thanks for watching the video!

Click on the cards below for further information.

Decore Improvements

We've improved decoring in VRED to work with VRED Professional and VRED Core. Now, you can use the Decore API (vrDecoreService, vrdDecoreSettings, and vrGeometryTypes) with VRED Core, set objects to B-side instead of deleting them, and determine how elements behind transparent materials are treated.

Distribute Preferences

We've added an environment variable ), VRED_PREFERENCES_OVERRIDE, and command line parameter, -preferencesOverride, for including a config file containing a subset of preferences to overwrite the local preferences for the session upon startup.

Color Management Options in VRED Design

Color management options, such as Simple Gamma, were added to VRED Design. Now, for example, a .vbp file saved in VRED Professional with a custom gamma can be loaded into VRED Design with the gamma value preserved. Find the color management options in the Render Settings > Display Output > Color section.

2022.3 General Improvements

These are some of the improvements found in 2022.3.

Collaboration

Video captions: For data preparation, we improved the Decore functionality, so you are able to create B-sides within the tool. You can select between two different decore modes and decide how to deal with transparent objects. Like here, where I am setting the wall thickness and the inner rips and additional objects as B sides, as these components are not visible. So, you can make the non-visible parts invisible without losing them already. Under Show B Sides, you can make them visible, delete them completely, or set them back to A side again. These additional functions give you more flexibility in the visualization and data preparation process.

Tap the new Pause button to pause synchronization with the collaboration server and allow for an antialiased snapshot to be taken. Audio is not paused. Once restarted, all changes occurring during the pause are applied. If a session is not paused, the movement of any VR participant will interrupt antialiasing, restarting the process again.

Pause feature in the Collaboration module

Documentation

Materials

Raytracing

Video captions: For raytracing, we improved the performance when being in Isolation mode. Now you have a much better framerate in Isolation mode!

Previous issues with the scene being hidden/shown which caused the scene to be rebuilt every frame were resolved.

Rendering

Stream App

Video captions: We also improved the Stream app. Now you can show only selected Viewpoints and Variant Sets to the Stream App UI. Therefore, we added the “Show in VR Menu and Streaming App UI” option within the Variant Set Editor and within the Camera Editor. So, you are able, for example, to show only a simplified and basic set of functionalities to your stream.

When enabled, variants and viewpoints are listed in the VR Menu and Streaming App UI. Disable this option hides them in the UI and make it easier for users to switch between relevant variants and viewpoints.

In the Camera Editor, Show in VR Menu and Streaming App UI was removed from the VR section of the Advanced tab to the General section of the Camera Settings tab.

Camera Editor and Variant Sets displaying the Show in VR Menu and Streaming App UI option

Substance

VR

Video captions: For VR users, we improved the touch behavior of the VR hands. Now it’s much easier to trigger touch sensors or the VR menu with your VR hands, which makes the VR experience more fluent and natural.

Web Interface

2022.2 Highlights

Video captions: In VRED 2022.2, we added several new features which help you in your visualization process to get more efficient. We improved our streaming app and added a scrollbar to the UI. This indicates off screen options and helps to get a better orientation. Additionally, you can now join or create a collaboration session. So, you can use your mobile device, for example, and join a session from there. You will see all avatars of your team within the scene now, and they can see you, as well.

I also can now switch to other participants views. These additions give you so much more freedom in taking part on collaborations.

For a better performance monitoring, you can now enable a counter for the frames per second.

For VR, we added a new camera option which lets you use the camera height as the VR Ground Plane. With this option, you can mimic different persona heights. Just create a viewpoint with the desired height and enable the option here. Just enable the option in the Camera Editor, set your desired height, and create a viewpoint. Now you can access this viewpoint in VR, which brings you instantly into another persona's height, and you can explore the scene from there. For example, when setting the camera height to -200, I will be 200mm shorter in VR then.

The Asset installer brings multiple new great asset materials, such as asphalt, clay, used plastic or concrete, and a ton more. You can access them by downloading and installing the separate VRED Asset installer. Now, you can access them from the Asset Manger and drag them into the scene. See a complete list of the new materials on the documentation.

When creating your own material assets, we have added an option within the preferences, which lets you write textures of the material as an external separate file, instead of inlining them within the OSB file of the material asset. This saves disk space massively, as the inlined textures in the OSB file would normally be stored uncompressed, compared to the external one.

When talking about textures, we also added a new option in the normal map area. You can now flip the normal's texture in U and V direction, separately. Now, you don’t need to go back to an image editing software in order to fix wrong normal textures. Also, for textures and for saving the video cards memory, you can now enable OpenGl texture compression and clear GPU memory. This will be very helpful for users who don’t have much video memory.

Last but not least, we added the new AI driven supersampling (DLSS) from NVIDIA. This method uses an AI-based render technology which improves the graphic performance. It uses the AI to increase frame rates or image quality. Please visit NVIDIA's website for more information. In VRED, simply go to Realtime Antialiasing > Deep Learning Supersampling. Here you can set 5 different presets in order to optimize the scene to your needs. As you see here, I am reaching a much higher frame rate now when enabling the DLSS in the Raytracing mode. And this works perfectly in OpenGL, as well. This speeds up my visualization workflow massively and gives me more creative freedom. Thanks for watching the video!

Click on the cards below for further information.

New Material Assets

In 2022.2, we added the following material assets to the folder listed. See Where To Find Assets for how to add these material assets to the Asset Manager.

Inline and Non-Inline Textures

In 2022.2, we added inline and non-inline saving preference for material assets, and changed the visual warning for missing non-inline textures.

Using Camera Height as the VR Ground Plane

In 2022.2, we added two ways to set the camera height as the VR ground plane. Use Use Camera Height as VR Ground Plane in the Camera Editor or adjustHeight to configure a relative viewpoint when in VR mode. Both add the camera Z translation value to the HMD height, to make the camera height the new VR ground plane.

Normal Maps

In 2022.2, we added Flip U and Flip V to switch the orientation of what is stored in the normal map on the axis, ensuring the bump map is uniform with the normals displayed along the U and Y axes. Find them in the Material Editor's Bump Texture section.

Stream App and Web Interface Improvements

In 2022.2, we have added a scrollbar, loading animation, joining and creating secure sessions options, as well as an option displaying the number of connected stream users. We made changes to some of the menus and added auto coloring of session users.

Sharing Help Articles

In 2022.2, we added a Share option to the top right of all in-product help articles. Find an article you want to share? Click Share, then select the method for sharing. Choose from Email, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Optimize for Many Light Sources

In 2022.2, we added support for the Optimize for Many Light Sources option when GPU raytracing. It allows the renderer to optimize the light calculation by slightly reducing the quality, which significantly increases the rendering performance.

Use OpenGL Texture Compression

In 2022.2, we added Use OpenGL Texture Compression to the Render Options > Visualization Advanced > Advanced Rendering preferences to compress textures in OpenGL to save VRAM and possibly improve performance due to lower bandwidth requirements.

DLSS 2.2 (Deep Learning Supersampling)

In 2022.2, we added support for DLSS 2.2 and a Deep Learning Supersampling menu to Visualization > Realtime Antialiasing. Select from these options: Off - Turns DLSS off and image detail is not altered. Ultra-Performance - Renders the scene at 1/3 the original resolution and is intended for 8K displays. Performance - Renders the scene at 50% of the original resolution. Balanced - Renders the scene at 58% of the original resolution. Quality - Renders the scene at 66.6% of the original resolution.

2022.2 General Improvements

These are some of the improvements found in 2022.2.

Clusters

Documentation

General

GPU Raytracing

MR and VR

Raytracing and Rendering

Scripting

2022.1 Highlights

Video captions: With the new VRED 2022.1 version, we added several new features and enhancements. Here they are:

Thanks for watching the video!

Click on the cards below for further information.

Virtual Reality: HP Reverb G2 and VIVE Pro 2

VRED now supports the use of the HP Revert G2 HMD and VIVE Pro 2.

Triplanar Projection Improvement

In 2022.1, Triplanar projection no longer create tiny UV islands for highly curved objects.

Lightmap Innovations

In 2022.1, we added separate baking of light sources, a bake render option debug mode, and options for showing baked light on Shadow materials, loading base and separate textures, and previewing base and separate illumination lightmaps. We also added the new BakePresets file that stores vertex and texture bake shadows.

X-Rite Measured Fields

In 2022.1, materials contained in an X-Rite Measured material are now displayed in the Node Editor. The material field of X-Rite AxF materials are accessible in the editor; therefore, they are also accessible via Python. An example script can be found in examples/snippets/accessXRiteMaterial.py.

Cryptomatte Support in GPU Raytracing

In 2022.1, we have added Cryptomatte renderpasses support in GPU raytracing to improve and speed up image creation and compositing workflows. We also fixed Cryptomatte support for CPU cluster renders of large images.

Documentation Improvements

Breadcrumb were added to the In-Product Help at the top of each page to help with navigation through the help. We also removed a level to the table of contents to make it faster and easier locate the content you're searching for. All tutorials, including the new Python and VRED Core tutorials, are now grouped together.

VRED Core for VR on Windows

VRED Core can now be used for VR on Windows, using CloudXR. VRED Core uses the VR render mode with OpenVR, and CloudXR provides a special implementation of an HMD that supports streaming. VRED sees this as an HMD so that VRED Core can be used for interactive VR rendering.

Multi-GPU Support for Denoising with Optix 7.2

In version 2022.1, we now support the use of multiple GPUs for denoising with Optix 7.2 and CUDA 11. This is because in a GPU cluster, often the single GPU denoiser is the performance limiting factor.

vrdNode Child List Interface for vrdObject Lists

In VRED 2022.1, we have provided a consistent container interface for vrdObject lists. This enables children of nodes to be accessed with node.children. The returned collection can be used to add, remove, or search for child nodes.

2022.1 General Improvements

These are some of the improvements found in 2022.1.

MR

Preferences

Rendering

Scripting

2022 Highlights

Click on the cards below for further information.

GGX BRDF Shader Model

VRED now uses a GGX BRDF model for all materials. This is THE standard for many render engines, as it improves light reflections for rough surfaces, making them look more realistic, by using GGX as this new default BRDF behavior. It allows high fidelity simulation of material reflection at both peek and shallow viewing angles, resulting in a subtle softer highlight that falls off gradually. This option has improved importance sampling and is better at energy preservation.

Stream App Improvements

The Stream App improvements you'll find in 2022 are the addition of annotations, interactive HTML annotations, a displayed frame counter, and a way to set custom quality and resolution in the URL.

XR Enhancements and Improvements

VRED 2022 added Varjo MR marker placement and preferences, hand gestures, a hand depth estimation, along with out-of-the-box object placement in MR and VR via the xR Home Menu. We also added functions for a Python interface for implementing a custom version of marker tracking. They can be found in the vrImmersiveInteractionService documentation.

Frosted Glass

This feature improves the look of frosted glass for BxDF models by using GGX.

Texture-based Lightmaps

VRED 2022 introduced texture-based lightmaps for ambient occlusion, shadows, and light & shadows, including direct and indirect light, as well as IES and ray light profiles. Improvements to the Bake Light and Shadows module include CPU and GPU raytracing support, cluster support, the possibility to bake Ray files and caustics, uniform and cosine weighting for ambient occlusion, and new presets. We added photon tracing for computing lighting effects for lightmaps to Render Settings.

BRDF Environment Sampling

To better match the OpenGL/Precomputed and Full Global Illumination results, we introduced a new prefiltering method. Instead of using spherical harmonics for the prefiltering, we now sample the environment HDR against the new BRDF model.

GPU Raytracing Improvements

The GPU raytracing improvements found in 2022 are photon mapping and Ray file support. The GPU raytracer now supports photon mapping with real-time feedback for caustics and indirect lighting. In addition, it is now possible to use ray lights GPU raytracing.

Ray File Improvements

Added an option for reducing noise by controlling the size of an emitter cone used to vary the direction of emitted photons from ray lights. This increases the number of photons that can be generated during tracing. You get smoother images, while only sacrificing a bit of accuracy.

Alias Reference Assembly Support

We added the importing of native CAD file assembled in the Alias Reference Manager into VRED 2022. A new Reference Manager group will be created in the Scene Graph to mimic the Alias Reference Manager and layers.

Shotgun Review with VRED

Review content from any Shotgun Version, using VRED Presenter. Review multiple designs at a time with Shotgun's playlists with VRED Presenter. This enables you to keep track of all review notes and decisions automatically within Shotgun.

UV Editor Improvements

The UV Editor improvements you'll find are Automatic Seam Selection, Material and Lightmap UV Sets, import and export for a second UV channel via FBX, File > Reset Settings in Preferences, and a visibility toggle for UV island wireframes.

Light Spectrum Improvements

Improved clamping for light color spectra outside the color gamut, when rendering in RGB, since converting a spectrum to VREDs RGB-based colorspace can result in creating negative values. Now, RGB and spectral rendering results are much closer.

VRED Core Improvements

The VRED Core improvements you'll find in 2022 are ATF and FBX support on Linux, as well as Substance Engine 8 on Linux.

SSE4.2 Update

VRED now uses SSE4.2, which makes some calculations a bit faster. This is the VRED minimum requirement. Raytracer variants for SSE2 have been removed.

2022 General Improvements