Rhino has been a popular modeling tool for designers and architects since its first release in 1998 by Seattle-based company McNeel & Associates , and it has been growing ever since. Rhino can model your design accurately, create documentation, and prepare the model for rendering, animating, drafting, engineering, analysis, manufacturing, or construction.
NURBS
Rhino specializes in creating and modifying NURBS curves, surfaces, and solids with no limits on complexity, degree, or size. But what are NURBS? Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, (NURBS), are mathematical representations of 3D geometry used to describe a shape, all the way from a 2D line or curve, to a complex 3D solid or polysurface. One advantage of using NURBS is that they are not an approximation; due to being defined by complex mathematical formulas, they are extremely precise.
Flexibility
Rhino owes a lot of its’ continued expansion to its’ flexibility as a CAD platform. Out of the box, Rhino supports importing and exporting over 30 different CAD file formats, including industry standards such as .STL, .OBJ, STEP, DWG/DXF, and more. This makes Rhino a very useful multi-disciplinary tool, often acting as an intermediary between other CAD programs and a 3D printer for example. This capability can be expanded further by using powerful third-party plug-ins such as V-Ray by Chaos Group for photo-realistic renderings, VisualARQ by Asuni CAD for connecting to BIM platforms, and many more.
Generative Design/Scripting
With the release of Rhino 6, McNeel has added direct integration with Grasshopper scripting. Grasshopper is an essential tool for designers, particularly architects, to explore new shapes using generative design algorithms. It provides an intuitive graphical interface and editor so that anyone can jump right in and start designing, no programming or scripting experience required.
Thank you for reading part 1 of our Introduction to Rhino series and stay tuned as we dive deeper into how Rhino is used across the architecture, engineering, and construction industries.
For pricing information or any questions about Rhino, you can find out here. For additional info or questions, feel free to reach out to rhino@microsolresources.com.
V-Ray Next for Rhino is a highly accurate renderer for McNeel Rhinoceros, enabling designers to predict and present their designs with the highest level of realism and reduce the need for physical prototypes. V-Ray greatly increases Rhino’s ability to handle large scenes and can be used directly with Grasshopper.
Chaos Group just updated V-Ray Next for Rhino with a number of bug fixes and enhanced features to improve the rendering experience, including:
Workflow Improvements
The quality slider presets are updated. The quality of the rendered image is now consistent between all the engines (CPU, CUDA and RTX) and sampler types (Progressive and Bucket).
The quality slider presets count is increased to six. The new preset labels are ‘Low’, ‘Low+’, ‘Medium’, ‘Medium+’, ‘High’ and ‘High+’. All provide better quality than their older counterparts.
The Maximum Subdivisions Image Sampler parameter is now visible at all times (for GPU and also in progressive rendering mode). The value used for GPU rendering is always double the CPU one to ensure consistent quality.
The Embree related optimization parameters are automatically hidden when the GPU engine is selected. They have no effect in this case.
The Aperture (F-Number) slider limit is removed. Values from 56 up to 985 will result in Defocus slider values between 0.1 and 0.001 to be displayed.
Introduced a confirmation window when deleting or purging assets from the Asset Editor. Using the Shift + Delete keyboard keys removes selected assets without confirmation.
Added full support for the _RenderBlowup, _RenderWindow, _RenderInWindow and _RenderPeviewInWindow Rhino commands.
A new vrayRenderWindow command is implemented. It exposes three modes – Region, Cropped and Cropped Blowup. The vrayRenderBlowup command is removed – use vrayRenderWindow instead.
A Python script wrap module is implemented.
Grasshopper
The quality slider presets of the V-Ray Renderer component are updated. The quality of the rendered image is now consistent between all the engines (CPU, CUDA, and RTX) and sampler types (Progressive and Bucket).
A new ‘Render Animation in Rhino’ function is added to the Render in Project component. It renders each Grasshopper animation frame state together with the Rhino scene. Object animations are fully supported.
The Material Preset component’s Color parameter can now be textured with a V-Ray Bitmap.
An issue causing specific Grasshopper animations frame ranges to be sent incorrectly to the Rhino project is resolved.
Polysurface objects referenced in Grasshopper and rendered via the V-Ray Geometry component no longer have faulty UV texture coordinates.
A number of issues related to displacement rendering in Grasshopper are resolved.
Animation rendering, exporting animated proxies or scenes is now possible with a C# / Python script component.
Other changes and bug fixes
Randomize Material ID Colors now works as expected.
The Multimatte Materials render element now works as expected.
Render regions can now be specified prior to any rendering.
A number of tooltips, as well as some Grasshopper component descriptions, are updated.
Decreasing the V-Ray interactive viewport (VPR) size with the vrayVPRSettings command no longer causes issues.
An issue with the appearance of Rhino materials rendered in V-Ray is resolved.
An issue caused by proxy mesh manipulations while the vrmesh file is on a network drive is resolved.
The precision and default range of the Camera / Effects / Vertical Lens Tilt slider are updated.
The default range of the Camera / Effects / Vignetting slider is decreased.
Installation & Licensing
The Chaos Group License Server is updated to version 5.4.0
If you would like to upgrade your V-Ray 3.0 for Rhino licenses to V-Ray NEXT for Rhino, please contact us at vray@microsolresources.com.
If you are not sure about upgrading your licenses, you can request afree 30-day trial, to get an overview of its new features and functionality. You can test it out with your team and find out how this new version will improve your workflow.
V-Ray for Rhino is a highly accurate renderer for McNeel Rhinoceros, enabling designers to predict and present their design with the highest level of realism and reduce the need of physical prototypes. V-Ray greatly increases Rhino’s ability to handle large scenes and can be used directly within Grasshopper.
V-Ray Next for Rhino is much more than a do-it-all renderer that creates gorgeous images of your designs. It’s also a full suite
of tools to help you accomplish more in Rhino than ever before. V-Ray Next makes it easier to manage everything in your
scene — even the crazy complex ones.
V-Ray Next for Rhino is compatible with Rhino 5 and Rhino 6. V-Ray for Rhino is supported on Windows only.
What’s new?
V-Ray Next for Rhino, update 2 includes support for NVIDIA RTX cards, easier proxy asset and material management, Rhino decals, Grasshopper optimizations and many more new and improved features to help you create great renders.
Supercharge Rhino
Do more in Rhino than ever before
Power up with scripts. Use Rhino’s Script and Python to program V-Ray Next to do even more for you, like automating scene management or accessing parameters not showing in the UI.
Color picker temperature. The V-Ray color picker introduces a Kelvin temperature slider, which automatically provides a corresponding RGB color.
Cryptomatte element. The Cryptomatte render element automatically generates and stores object or material-based masks which can be exported in a multichannel OpenEXR file.
Depth of field focus animations. You could now render camera focus distance changes in animation.
Automating snapshots & batch renders. Now V-Ray Batch lets you schedule and render jobs to V-Ray Swarm or Chaos
Cloud, making it easy to render snapshots from the same project or views from multiple Rhino files all at once.
Superior Grasshopper Support
Powerful capabilities that maximize value
Proxy Mesh export from Grasshopper. The new V-Ray Exporter component allows you to export animations from Grasshopper.
Animated sun and cameras in Grasshopper. Now in Grasshopper, you can animate sunlight and cameras using the V-Ray timeline.
Measuring illumination in Grasshopper. The new lighting analysis render element makes it easy to visualize and evaluate the real-world illumination levels of your Grasshopper scene.
V-Ray Graph component. This is an advanced value remapping utility component that exposes a bezier curve editor.
Familiar Grasshopper workflow. Working with V-Ray Next in Grasshopper is simple. You hook up V-Ray components exactly the same as Grasshopper’s native ones.
Powerful Asset Management
Keep track of everything all in one place
Universal asset preview. Preview your materials, lights, textures and render elements in a single viewer.
Drag and drop material assignment. Easily apply materials with a simple drag and drop from the Asset Editor directly onto scene objects or layers.
UI display levels. Use either the Basic set of asset parameters or activate the Advanced mode to list all options.
Multi-selection. Select multiple scene or library assets as well as multiple toolbar filters to speed up your workflow.
Asset outliner. Manage all of your assets including lights, materials, textures, geometry and render elements all in
one place.
Simplified Render Controls
Click less, render more with new and improved UI controls
Simplified render settings. A refined and updated UI makes render setup easier than ever.
Refined camera controls. A new intuitive layout for the camera controls lets you manipulate the quick and advanced parameters at the same time.
Custom output resolution. Specify custom pixel resolutions without bothering with the aspect ratio.
Enhanced Lighting Workflows
Get the perfectly exposed image with automatic analysis of your scene
Automatic exposure & white balance. Capture the perfect exposure every time. The new Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance camera controls make rendering as simple as point and shoot.
Lighting analysis tool. The new Lighting Analysis render element makes it easy to visualize the real-world illumination (Lux) values of any scene.
Adaptive Dome Light. Render faster, cleaner and more accurate image-based lighting that’s up to 7x faster.
Next Level Performance
Faster renders across the board
V-Ray GPU boost. V-Ray for Rhino now supports NVIDIA RTX cards, tapping into the extra ray-tracing hardware acceleration that comes with RTX class GPUs.
Scene intelligence. Automatically analyzes your scene to optimize rendering so you get the best quality in less time.
New Light Cache algorithm. The new default hash map Light Cache calculation mode resolves most common artifacts and is optimized and more stable when used in animations.
Optimized interactive rendering on the CPU. More responsive CPU interactive rendering when editing scene camera, lighting and materials. The Preview Swatch scenes are also modified to resolve more quickly and use fewer CPU resources.
2x faster GPU. Cuts rendering time in half again when using GPUs (as compared to V-Ray for Rhino 3.6).
New Denoiser
Get cleaner renders in an instant
Viewport rendering and denoising. Look at the denoised image while rendering in the Rhino viewport.
Quick denoiser engine switch. Switch from V-Ray to NVIDIA AI denoising using a toddle in the Renderer rollout. The Update Effects slider is also located in the Renderer rollout for easy access.
Denoised render elements. Denoise individual render elements for added control in compositing.
AI denoiser. With the new NVIDIA AI Denoiser, V-Ray delivers instant feedback with less noise. So you get cleaner images while you design.
If you would like to upgrade your V-Ray 3.0 for Rhino licenses to V-Ray NEXT for Rhino, please contact us at vray@microsolresources.com.
If you are not sure about upgrading your licenses, you can request afree 30-day trial, to get an overview of its new features and functionality. You can test it out with your team and find out how this new version will improve your workflow.
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