V-Ray Tip: V-Ray Incremental Versioning Best Practices

Quick tip: save incremental versions frequently to protect your V-Ray work, maintain reproducibility, and accelerate collaboration. If you ever need licenses, upgrades, or guidance, check out NOVEDGE.

• Adopt a clear naming convention. Use human- and machine-friendly names that sort properly:
  Example: Project_Shot_Task_v003_2025-12-24_User.renderer.vrayBuild.ext
  Key fields to include:
  • Project/shot/asset name
  • Task (lookdev, lighting, render, comp)
  • Zero-padded version (v001, v002…)
  • Date stamp and user/artist initials
  • Renderer context (CPU/GPU, XPU if applicable) and V-Ray build
• Keep paths relative. Centralize textures, caches, proxies, and LUTs inside the project. Relative paths make your increments portable to render farms, DR/Swarm, and teammates. Asset portability reduces “missing maps” surprises. For hardware, licensing, and software bundles, visit NOVEDGE.
• Version your render settings.
  • Export .vrscene snapshots for milestones; they are excellent for farm consistency and audits.
  • When reusing GI caches, save and label them per version (e.g., LC/IM caches tied to v###) to avoid loading stale data.
  • Save render presets for “lookdev,” “preview,” and “final.” Keep a preset per major version.
• Use VFB History as your visual diary.
  • Point the VFB History folder to your project and keep it under source control or regular backup.
  • Annotate entries with notes (changes, noise threshold, LightMix state) and compare A/B to justify approvals.
  • Save color corrections, LightMix states, and post effects as presets alongside the scene version.
• Document color and linear workflow per version.
  • Record color space (e.g., ACEScg or linear sRGB), view transform, LUTs, and display intent.
  • Maintain a readme/version.md or changelog.txt in the project root.
• Automate the increments.
  • Use pre-save scripts (MaxScript, Python, MEL, etc.) to auto-increment filenames, embed metadata (V-Ray build, device, OS), and validate paths.
  • Hook into render submission to block unversioned files and enforce presets.
• Set practical retention and backups.
  • Keep compact intervals (e.g., last 10–20 increments locally), archive weekly milestones to cold storage.
  • Mirror crucial versions offsite/cloud. A 3–2–1 strategy saves productions; NOVEDGE can help you size storage solutions.
• Farm and team readiness.
  • Record plug-in dependencies and exact V-Ray version in each milestone. Mismatches cost time.
  • Bundle proxies and UDIMs; validate with a dry-run on a worker node before a full render.
• When to increment. Before and after major changes: shader networks, lighting rebalances, GI strategy, denoiser switch, resolution changes, camera updates, or farm handoff.

Small, frequent increments turn troubleshooting into a quick diff, make approvals objective, and prevent catastrophic rollbacks. For V-Ray licenses, upgrades, and expert advice, start with NOVEDGE.

You can find all the V-Ray products on the NOVEDGE web site at this page.