February NVIDIA Studio Driver Brings Enhanced Support For Blender, V-Ray, Redshift And Autodesk Arnold

The February Studio driver packs a punch with support for enhancements in four top renderers--Blender, V-Ray, Redshift, and Autodesk Arnold. NVIDIA DLSS arrives in more creative apps. Plus, new GeForce RTX 30 Series Studio laptops and the new creator-ready GeForce RTX 3060 desktop GPUs hit the market.

Let’s get after it.

Users of Blender, the leading open source 3D creation application, will enjoy richer interactivity of rendering volumes such as smoke, fire, clouds and dust, thanks to newly added support for GPU-accelerated NanoVBD in Blender Cycles 2.92.

NVIDIA OptiX is now supported with hybrid rendering, so all GPUs and CPUs available in a system can be used, ensuring maximum system resource utilisation. Baking is also now available when OptiX is active, enabling artists to continue using the fastest rendering software.

Finally, NVIDIA GPUs can automatically contribute to help render sections of models being rendered by the CPU once the GPU has completed its tasks, a process called tile stealing, which further improves hybrid rendering performance.

In short, rendering with Blender, no matter the task, just got better.

V-Ray 3D rendering software is built for artists and designers to create photoreal imagery with world-class rendering features.

Light cache, which greatly improves rendering efficiency, is now GPU accelerated, speeding up how quickly pixels start to render.

Out-of-core rendering uses system memory when GPU memory is exceeded for geometry, enabling artists to work in much larger scenes. This vital capability now supports all V-Ray GPU features allowing it to be used with any scene.

Image courtesy of Chaos Group. tyFlow simulations rendered in V-Ray GPU © BBB3Viz

In addition, artists can now render with tyFlow, the popular 3ds Max plugin for particle simulations, with the added speed of V-Ray GPU.

Redshift, a powerful GPU-accelerated renderer, built to meet the specific demands of contemporary high-end production rendering, has several exciting updates.

NVIDIA RTX ray tracing in Redshift is now fully supported with OptiX 7.2, providing further performance boosts.

Rendered in Redshift with OptiX. Credit: Syed Jafri.

OSL shader support enables Redshift users to write their own shaders or utilise OSL shaders in the rendering community, even for a different renderer, adding a ton of new shading possibilities.

An upgraded hair shader produces much more realistic lighting while offering artist-friendly controls and cool built-in variation features that add to the realism.

Redshift is also getting NVLINK support. Projects with exceptionally large models can share the VRAM of multiple GPUs to render massive scenes.

Redshift v3.0.38 is available for purchase here.

Autodesk Arnold is the power user’s 3D rendering application, providing production-ready tools to reliably manage complex characters, scenery and advanced lighting challenges.

Arnold GPU now loads only the required texture tiles, giving creators with limited GPU memory the ability to run more texture-heavy scenes.

Gamers are familiar with the enhanced visual fidelity NVIDIA RTX GPUs provide thanks to NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 (Deep Learning Super Sampling). DLSS uses AI to turn images rendered at low resolution into higher resolution. And it runs in real time on RTX GPUs, using dedicated AI processors called Tensor Cores.

This powerful tool is also an ally for content creators, especially in computationally complex tasks like virtual production and architectural visualisation.

Yuase Digital Art Studio. Courtesy of D5 Render

DLSS has now been integrated in over a dozen creative applications, from architecture to product design to virtual production. Read our latest DLSS blog to see how our partners are utilising DLSS to deliver up to 2x speedups in rendering, without sacrificing quality.

The latest NVIDIA Studio laptops and desktops are available now. They feature advanced GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, blazing-fast memory and storage, vivid colour displays and precision engineering.

Our refreshed Studio lineup of fully-capable laptops and ultra-powerful desktop PCs are available from hardware partners you know and trust:

• Gigabyte Aero 15 & OLED
• Gigabyte Aero 17 & HDR
• Razer Blade 15 Base & Advanced
• Razer Blade Pro 17

The new Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition  powered by NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070. Full HD 360Hz, 100% sRGB, 4.9mm bezel, factory calibrated

The new Studio Driver also supports GeForce RTX 3060 desktop GPUs, released today. GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs deliver accelerated ray tracing, AI, and high-res video processing along with a 12GB frame buffer.

Visit the NVIDIA Studio Shop to browse all Studio products.

NVIDIA GTC is an all-digital event bringing together brilliant, creative minds looking to ignite ideas, build new skills, and forge new connections.

The online action runs from April 12-16, 2021, kicking off with NVIDIA CEO and Founder Jensen Huang’s keynote.

Registration is free and gives you access to all the live sessions, interactive panels, demos, research posters, and more. Don’t miss out on this amazing, international event. Learn more at www.nvidia.com/gtc.

Download the February Studio Driver (release 461.72) today through GeForce Experience or from the driver download page. Studio Drivers are built specifically for creators and tested extensively against top creative apps and workflows.

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You can also stay up to date on the latest apps through NVIDIA’s Studio YouTube channel, featuring tutorials and tips & tricks by industry-leading artists.