Chaos Brings Gaussian Splat Relighting to Houdini in V-Ray 7, Update 4

Chaos has released V-Ray 7, update 4 for Houdini, which adds relighting for imported 3D Gaussian splats.

V-Ray for Houdini has rendered gaussian splats since Chaos committed to the format in V-Ray 7, and the Houdini edition already carried splat clipping, whose mask distance control is among the bugs fixed in this build. Illumination was the part that stayed fixed. A splat carries the light of its capture inside its own appearance data, so a scan made under flat ambient conditions reads as flat ambient in every shot it appears in.

Relighting lets V-Ray's own lights act on the splat, and Chaos describes the result as the ability to freely adjust scene lights at any time without working around baked lighting.

Splat relighting reached the 3ds Max, SketchUp and Rhino editions in V-Ray 7, update 3, and the Maya edition in 7.4. Houdini is the host it lands in now.

The Houdini build is 7.40.30, released July 1, 2026, and update 4 makes Houdini 21 support official while adding initial support for Houdini 22. Houdini 22 shipped its own native Gaussian splat pipeline two weeks later. V-Ray for Houdini also gains official Hydra 2 support for scene processing in Solaris, and Chaos lists real time Vantage viewport rendering as available in the Maya, Houdini and 3ds Max editions.

The Gaussian Splats section of the 7.40.30 release notes carries a single entry, adding support for relighting Gaussian Splats. What Chaos does not name in those notes is the parameter or the node the relighting control sits on, and the release carries no render time figures for it. The same notes list fixes for splat relighting failing to update in IPR and for a regression affecting Gaussian splats on matte surfaces.

A Houdini artist compositing a location scan behind a CG set can now drive both from one light rig and change it after the scan is in place. It is available now.