VRED 2026.1

Learn about new features and improvements in this release of VRED. For technical details and bug fixes, see the 2026.1 release notes and recommended system requirements to ensure Autodesk VRED products are running to their potential.

Important:

If the What's New for the latest release doesn't appear in the help, here are two suggestions for accessing it:

Ensure the current version of the software appears in the URL. For example, for version 2026 help, the URL would be: https://help.autodesk.com/view/VREDPRODUCTS/2026/ENU/.
For dot releases (2025.1, 2025.2, etc.), if they aren't listed in the What's New, try a different browser, as this is a caching issue.

What's New in 2026.1

Click the cards below for further information on new features and improvements found in 2026.1.

Important Updates

There is a change to the Data Translator Toolkit, so please review this. Find information on this and the latest required Windows and Linux drivers, minimum requirements for VR/XR runtimes, and other changes in this article.

Constraints Editor

Control the behavior and relationships between multiple objects in a scene with the new Constraint Editor. Design intricate and dynamic animations and interactions without the need for programming expertise. Create a position, orientation, aim, or parent constraint, then drag and drop nodes you want constrained from the Scenegraph or their corresponding modules into the Constraint Editor.

Rendering Improvements

Find tonemapping improvements like the addition of Automatic Camera Exposure to automatically adjust camera exposure, Exposure Compensation to adjust the brightness, Adjust 18% Gray Level, and the Luminance and Illuminance tonemapper cursor overlay. There are also updates to Chromatic Aberration and the addition of the Film Grain optical effect that mimics the appearance of processed photographic film.

Render Guide Improvements

We added film grain camera effects to the Effects category and introduced a new Volume Fog category, for quickly adding fog to your scene. Choose from background, ground, and scene fog presets. Volume Fog works a bit differently from the other categories, as a volume scatter node needs to be created or selected before a preset is assigned. If the default settings need some tweaking, use the properties to customize the effect further, then save the changes.

Vulkan Improvements

Find further enhancements to our new Vulkan renderer. We've added support for shadow materials, OCS materials, raytraced volume reflections, and further display cluster support. We've improved Use Baked Shadows, raytraced reflections on MaterialX materials, and renderer load times.

General Improvements

Find GPU raytracing, scripting, OpenXR, annotation, and material improvements, such as the new Ignore Inactive Properties option, support for different brushed metal mapping types, and new glass projections. Plus, we added 14 translucent and opaque AxF materials from Covestro to the VRED Library and Covestro Web Shop.