V-Ray for Grasshopper — included in V-Ray for Rhino since version 3.6 — helps users to render generative geometry directly within Grasshopper without ever having to bake it. This workflow allows for uninterrupted design through the instant visualization of every change that you apply to your project. Designs are altered, compared and evaluated on the fly — and the impact is instantaneous.
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There are four Node groups as an addition to the Grasshopper menu: Geometry, Lighting, Materials, Render and Render Elements. The rendering is triggered by activating the V-Ray Render node and the V-Ray Frame Buffer is displayed on the screen, providing real-time progressive feedback of the Rhino screen cutout.
With V-Ray for Grasshopper in Rhino, you will see the result of your design work as it progresses. There’s no need to export to Rhino to get your Grasshopper script transformed into geometry and rendered; rather than interrupting your process the visualization is now part of the workflow. Used in real-time mode, V-Ray for Grasshopper visualizes the impact of every parameter change on the overall design.
Your designs will be rendered with a preset basic V-Ray material, which you can customize from the node. What’s more, you can choose materials from your files or projects, or assign a material directly in Grasshopper. For more advanced material customization you can, of course, use the Asset Editor.
V-Ray for Grasshopper ships with several preset light rigs, which you can customize just like the materials. You can also easily add single or multiple light sources to perfect your scene.
In V-Ray Next for Rhino you can create and render Grasshopper definition animations. Object movement, topology changes, lighting and materials can be updated interactively or rendered as animated sequences. Sun and Camera movements can be sent back to Rhino as pre-recorded animations.
You can leverage Grasshopper for scattering and utilize randomization parameters to populate your Rhino project with rich entourage that is only there when rendered with V-Ray.
With V-Ray Next for Rhino a new Lighting Analysis component is added to accurately visualize the light distribution in you parametric design projects and display data as a render element. You can also take advantage of the new physical exposure parameters of the Camera component to realistically expose the rendered image.