If you just received V-Ray or are new to max, remember you need to set V-Ray as the current renderer before you can access its settings.

1. Open the render scene dialog box.
2. Expand the Assign Renderer rollout.
3. Click the box for the Production render shown in red.
4. Select V-Ray from the list.

V-Ray Authorization

V-Ray 1.5
The best there is.

V-Ray Frame Buffer

The V-Ray frame buffer is a cool feature of V-Ray. Basically it allows you to render your images in a different window other than the default rendered frame window of 3DS MAX. Also it has some features that the rendered frame window does not.

V-Ray Global Switches

Lots of important things here. By checking or un-checking the boxes you can easily enable or disable many of V-Ray's key features.

Note: I often use this section to globally control displacement, lighting and the override material.

To assign an override material simply drag a V-Ray material into the box that says "None."

V-Ray Image Sampler

Here you can choose the type of Image Sampler as well as the type of anti-aliasing filter.

Note: For the most part I use the default settings here (Adaptive Subdivision with area filter)

V-Ray Adaptive Subdivision Image Sampler

V-Ray Indirect Illumination (GI)

This is where all the magic happens. I typically will use the default Irriadiance Map (IR Map) for primary bounces and Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) for secornard bounces.

Notice you also have some options for post processing and GI caustics.

V-Ray Irradiance Map (IR MAP)

The IR map is one of the methods V-Ray uses to calculate global illumination. You can pick from any of the pre-defined presets or manually enter settings for a custon IR map.

Suggested IR map settings...

Test Renders:
Min Rate: -5
Max Rate: -3
HSph subdivs: 30
Interp samples: 25

Production Renders:
High preset is usually good enough for me...usually.

Mode: For stills, single frame is fine but for animations, Add to current map or Incremental add to current map works well and speeds up the IR map calculation.

Under options I like to have "show calc phase checked" just so I can visually see the IR map calculation.

Note: If you plan to not use an IR map in your GI calculation, these settings wil not be available. For example if you have QMC for primary and Light cache for secondary, this rollout will be replace with a QMC settings rollout followed by a LC settings rollout.

V-Ray Quasi-Monte Carlo GI

V-Ray Caustics

Use this area to control the V-Ray caustics in your scene.

Caustics - In optics, a caustic is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface.

V-Ray Environment

This is definately an important rollout. It your environment is to high it can cause your scene to look washed out. Too low can cuase it to look dull. I find that .3 works well in most cases of course that all depends on your scene.

Note: Environment light does not pass though geometry unless the geometry is transparent.

If you want to use HDRI lighting simply drag the V-Ray HDRI from the material editor into the open slots ("none buttons")

V-Ray rQMC Sampler

I don't think I've ever used this feature so I have no meaningful insight on it at this time. Click the link on the left for a detailed explanation.

V-Ray Camera

Here you have global control over all the V-Ray settings.

V-Ray Default Displacement

Here you have global control over all the displacement settings.

V-Ray System

There are lots of useful options in this rollout. For the most part I stick with the default settings.

Notable Settings:

Render region division: changes the bucket size. (the box that draws the pixels at render time)

Region sequence: The path the buckets take when rendering the image. I prefer top to bottom but there are many options.

Frame Stamp: enabling this automatically embeds useful information at the bottom of your image such as V-Ray version, filename, frame #, rendertime...etc.

Object Settings: use this to enable or disable V-Ray features for specific pieces of geometry.

Note: this can also be accessed by selecting geometry, right clicking in the viewport and choosing V-Ray properties.