VRED 2026.1 What's New

Video captions: Welcome to VRED 2026 Update 1! This release introduces many powerful features and improvements designed to enhance your design and visualization workflows, boost your productivity, and deliver stunning visual results. Let’s dive right into it and see what’s new!

The Constraint Editor is a major addition in this update. It allows you to control the behavior and relationships between multiple objects within a scene, facilitating complex and dynamic animations without the need for scripting skills. This editor empowers users to create intricate object interactions easily, saving time and reducing the complexity involved in rigging scenes and recreating mechanical functionality of digital prototypes.

Located in the main menu, the Constraint Editor lets you create Position, Orientation, Aim, and Parent Constraints using intuitive drag and drop functionalities. This capability ensures precise manipulation, enabling the creation of highly realistic and responsive animations and movements. You can create Position, Orientation, Aim, or Parent Constraints using the plus icon, the Create menu, or the right-click context menu.

Constraints are made up of Target Nodes and a Constrained Node, and you can easily assign them by dragging objects from the Scenegraph or other modules.

For Aim Constraints, there’s also an Up Vector Node, just like in the Camera Editor.

In fact, any Cameras with Aim or Aim-and-Up created in the Camera Editor now show up as Aim Constraints — making them easy to adjust directly within the Constraint Editor.

Let’s take a closer look at the available constraint types.

The Position Constraint ensures that your object follows the position of one or more target objects — ideal for objects that need to move together or track each other dynamically.

The Orientation Constraint locks the rotation of an object so that it aligns with the orientation of its target. This is especially useful when syncing rotations between parts in a gear mechanism.

With the Aim Constraint, you can make an object continuously point towards a target — perfect for things like cameras, headlights, or tracking systems. You can also define an Up Vector to stabilize the object’s orientation and avoid unwanted flips.

The Parent Constraint allows an object to inherit translation, rotation, and scale from another — creating a parent-child relationship without altering the Scenegraph hierarchy. This gives you hierarchical behavior with full flexibility.

Constraints can use multiple target nodes, and each target can be weighted. This lets you control the influence each target has over the constrained object — useful for blending motions or creating weighted averages.

You can also assign multiple constrained nodes to a single target, allowing one object to drive the behavior of many others.

The editor lets you choose to maintain an offset, so constrained objects retain their relative position to the target — or you can disable it for direct inheritance.

And with scaling factors, you can even invert or multiply transformations — ideal for synchronized but mirrored motion, such as a gear rotation system.

Additionally, you can set object limits using the Transform Editor. This feature allows for quick and efficient limits in translation, rotation, or scaling along the X, Y, Z axes, enhancing control and accuracy, making complex setups more manageable.

The Vulkan Renderer has been significantly enhanced, now supporting shadow materials with raytraced glossy reflections. And in addition, volumes are now reflected in raytraced reflections as well. Both settings can be turned on or off depending if you are aiming for performance or visual fidelity in your scene.

The Vulkan Display Cluster now also supports advanced visual effects like glow and glare, chromatic aberration, camera grain, vignetting, and camera blends, providing richer, more lifelike rendering capabilities.

Our new Film Grain effect adds cinematic quality to your projects, mimicking the appearance of processed photographic film and adding realism to high-detail scenarios. This effect is especially beneficial in 3D applications, as it enhances the visual depth and authenticity of scenes, making animations and renders appear more lifelike.

For extracting information from detailed lighting simulations, the Luminance / Illuminance Value Indicator displays brightness values in candela per m ² and lumen per m² around your cursor. This precision is invaluable for measuring and adjusting brightness accurately, providing optimal visual outcomes in lighting setups.

Navigating scenes with varying brightness levels is now simpler with our Automatic Camera Exposure option. Just turn on the checkbox in the tone mapping tab of the camera editor. This feature automatically adjusts exposure based on average image brightness, ensuring seamless and consistent visual quality between differently lit environments.

The Adjust 18% Gray Level ensures consistent brightness across different view transforms, maintaining color fidelity and uniform visual output. This streamlines your workflow when switching between ACES 1.0, ACES 2.0, and PBR Neutral settings.

VRED `s Render Guide Module now supports custom presets and integrates the Film Grain effect. Offering greater personalization and flexibility, this enhancement allows users to tailor their rendering processes to their needs and semi-automate important steps to achieve high-quality visual results efficiently.

The Anchor to Node feature ensures annotations retain their relative position to associated nodes, adapting to node transformations for accurate documentation and presentations. This enhances clarity in collaborative settings, minimizing errors and improving communication.

We are happy to announce a collaboration with Covestro. We are introducing the Covestro Web Shop, providing direct access to measured opaque and translucent polycarbonate materials in AxF format. The Imagio Color Finder from Covestro accessible inside VRED lets users download and apply accurate materials directly within the VRED Material Editor, streamlining the material application process and enhancing realism in designs.

The VRED Library also includes measured AxF materials from Covestro, commonly used in automotive and product design, ensuring high-quality, industry-standard results for your projects.

Improvements in material handling, memory consumption, and Python scripting support further optimize your workflow.

OpenXR now supports Flashlight and Measurement tools, virtual button events, and improved hand-tracking precision, enhancing the functionality and precision of your interactions.

VRED Professional 2026 Update 1 delivers features designed to boost productivity and creativity. From advanced constraints and rendering enhancements to improved user experience and material integration, this update significantly enhances the realism, efficiency, and collaborative capabilities of your 3D visualization workflow.

Thank you for watching! Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements. Don't forget to leave your feedback and subscribe for the latest tips and tutorials. Transform your workflow with VRED Professional 2026 Update 1, and visualize your designs like never before.

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