11/8/26

V-Ray for SketchUp gains AMD rendering and AI agent access to assets

Soft V-Ray

Chaos has released V-Ray 7 for SketchUp 7.50.00, with an official release date of November 5, 2026. For architectural visualizers it brings two major changes. V-Ray GPU in SketchUp now renders on AMD graphics cards. On top of that, part of the scene work can be handed over to AI: there is now a built-in assistant and an MCP server through which external agents, for example Claude Desktop and Claude Code, browse and edit assets in the Asset Editor.

A version with the same number has also shipped for Rhino, as the V-Ray for Rhino 7.50.00 release notes show. On the Chaos blog the release is described as V-Ray 7 Update 5. According to the company, the AI assistant is available in V-Ray for SketchUp, Rhino and 3ds Max.

V-Ray for SketchUp gains AMD rendering and AI agent access to assets

Rendering on Radeon

In the release notes, AMD support in V-Ray GPU is listed as a new feature of this version for SketchUp. V-Ray GPU now runs on compatible AMD graphics cards via the HIP platform.

Chaos disclosed the details earlier in an April post about AMD support. It was published on April 22, 2026, and the tests in it were run on a build of V-Ray 7 Update 3:

the RDNA2, RDNA3, RDNA 3.5 and RDNA4 generations are officially supported;
as an example of an affordable card the company names the Radeon RX 9070 XT with 16 GB of video memory and a recommended price of $599;
according to Chaos tests, in certain scenes with heavy textures, where textures are moved out to system memory and rendering runs in out-of-core mode, AMD cards beat the competition by more than 2.4 times.

These are the vendor's own measurements in specific scenarios, and they should not be generalized to every project. But for a studio assembling a workstation for interiors with large numbers of textures, the choice of graphics card has widened.

At the same time Chaos removed the deprecated Resize textures mode and the related texture size and bit depth settings from V-Ray GPU. If old scenes saved video memory this way, they are worth rechecking after the update.

An assistant inside and agents outside

The AI Assistant opens from the menu and from the V-Ray toolbar. Chaos names three of its skills. Sky Match matches the lighting and mood of the scene to a reference image; in Light Gen this feature used to be called Mood Match. The second skill recommends assets from the Chaos Cosmos library. The third is scattering.

The MCP server is aimed at those who already work with AI agents. An external agent gets access to the Asset Editor, to parameter hints and to Cosmos assets. In practice this will probably make it possible to describe repetitive edits to an agent in words, for example reconfiguring a group of materials, instead of going through each one by hand. This is how Chaos describes the MCP server in the release notes:

"MCP server allowing external AI agents such as Claude Desktop and Claude Code to browse and edit assets in the Asset Editor"

For studios with a strict AI policy it matters that the MCP server is disabled together with generative AI. Another novelty is the import of 3D models generated by AI in Chaos Cosmos. A failure that occurred during such an import has been fixed in this same version.

In billing, Chaos has a single currency for AI and cloud features — Chaos Credits. The Solo, Premium and Collection subscriptions include an allowance of credits that is renewed at the start of each billing period and does not roll over. The company explicitly names image generation, image-to-video, AI Upscaler, AI Enhancer and cloud rendering among the operations that consume credits. Whether the assistant or 3D asset generation draws down credits is not stated separately on the credits page.

Anima people in the scene

V-Ray for SketchUp has received a basic Chaos Anima integration for adding animated people to a scene. Previously, at least in combination with Vantage, this task had to be solved by a workaround: in 2023 a user on the Chaos forum who asked about V-Ray for SketchUp, Vantage and Anima 4D people was told that it could not be done directly and that 3ds Max was needed to export a scene with Anima models to the .vrscene format. How far the "basic" integration goes is not disclosed in the release notes.

The pairing with Vantage has also become more flexible. Viewport Render now works with a Custom Live Link running on a remote machine, including on macOS. Apparently this makes it possible to drive the model on a Mac and hand the real-time preview to another computer on the network.

Light, scatter and materials

Cylindrical Light — a source that emits from the surface of a cylinder of a given length and radius. Useful for glowing tubes, linear fixtures and neon elements.
Decay areas define where light builds up at the source and where it fades out with distance. This makes it easier to confine the pool of light.
Barn Doors on the Spot Light — flaps that crop the light cone from four sides, all the way to a rectangular beam. A tool familiar from film fixtures, for accent lighting of paintings and shop windows.
Scatter Groups let you put several scatter layers on a single object through one modifier, for example grass, stones and fallen leaves on the same lawn. Decals can now be scattered as well.
Interactive rendering takes the PBR properties of SketchUp materials into account. A HEX field has appeared in the palette for setting colors by hexadecimal codes, for example from a brand book.
Bitmap Texture supports .ifl files, and the Sequence section has been reworked. The 0–100 limit on the number in Material ID has been lifted, so there will be enough IDs for masks in the post-production of large scenes.
Outlines contours can be placed inside the silhouette, outside it or on both sides.

Spanish interface and fixes for Mac

A Spanish localization has appeared. It turns itself on if a Spanish SketchUp is installed. For SketchUp 2027, V-Ray windows are merged with the SketchUp icon on the Windows taskbar. The plugin now reports new versions only through the Chaos notification center; the automatic check option has been removed from the settings.

Among the fixes there are some noticeable in daily work. On Macs with M3 under macOS Tahoe, GPU interactive rendering was extremely slow. On Macs with Intel, SketchUp froze when the notification center was opened. With cloud licensing, import via File > Import VRscene did not work. All three bugs have been eliminated.

Who benefits and where the pitfalls are

The biggest winners are probably SketchUp visualizers with Radeon cards: V-Ray GPU rendering has become available to them without changing graphics card. The second group is small practices already experimenting with agents. Via MCP, routine reconfiguration of assets can be automated without programming plugins.

The limitations are visible too. The MCP server is disabled together with generative AI, so in organizations where the latter is banned by security policy this capability will not be there. It is unclear how much AI operations will cost in credits. The speed on AMD is confirmed by the vendor only through its own tests in certain scenes. Anima is so far declared as a basic integration, so complex crowd scenarios will probably still require separate Anima software.

Which V-Ray 7 for SketchUp novelty will you try first?