Brandy Ryan
The VRED 2026 release continues to refine the value of real-time rendering, interoperability, and collaboration. Packed with groundbreaking new features like the Vulkan render engine and Live Referencing between Alias and VRED, this release is designed to make your design and visualization pipeline more efficient, more collaborative, and more powerful than ever before.
Vulkan: A next-gen rendering engine
One of the biggest highlights of VRED 2026 is the introduction of the Vulkan graphics API, a next-gen real-time rendering solution optimized for performance and scalability.
- Hybrid Rendering Power: Vulkan combines rasterization and ray tracing, handling large and complex scenes with ease.
- Unlimited Lighting: Unlike OpenGL, Vulkan removes previous light limitations—every light in your scene now influences both geometry and volumes.
- Occlusion Culling: Skip rendering hidden objects for significant performance gains in dense models.
- Visual Enhancements: Hybrid ray-traced reflections, ray-traced ambient occlusion, environment shadows, screen-space refractions, and GPU tessellation for displacement mapping all elevate realism to a new standard.
With Vulkan, designers gain faster workflows, higher-quality results, and smoother handling of complex automotive and industrial datasets.
Live Referencing: Alias + VRED, seamlessly connected
For the first time, VRED 2026 introduces Live Referencing between Alias and VRED. This new workflow is a game-changer for real-time collaboration:
- Real-Time Updates: Surface changes in Alias appear instantly in VRED—no more time-consuming imports.
- Shared Materials & Rendering: Work with consistency across design and visualization, reducing rework.
- Collaboration at Scale: Whether you’re a single designer refining themes or a large team preparing a review, Live Referencing keeps everyone aligned with the latest data.
- Robust Overrides: VRED maintains material assignments, transformations, and scene structure—even as Alias data evolves.
From XR sessions to render clusters on power walls, Live Referencing unlocks entirely new ways to collaborate, iterate, and make better informed design decisions in real-time.
Enhanced rendering & visual quality
Beyond Vulkan and Live Referencing, VRED 2026 is full of improvements to help you create stunning visuals:
- Custom Cryptomatte Passes: More granular control in post-production with multilayered EXR outputs.
- Chromatic Aberration: Subtle lens distortions add cinematic realism.
- Advanced Color Grading: Global Weight controls for easier, more nuanced tone mapping.
- Composition Guides: Rule of thirds, golden ratio, and more — directly in the Render Settings.
- Python API V2 Access: Most Render Settings are now scriptable for automation and custom workflows.
- Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS): Quickly enable and adjust quality levels directly from the main toolbar.
- Render Guide Module: A guided wizard for achieving cinematic looks quickly — perfect for newcomers or Alias users stepping into visualization.
XR, streaming, & workflow improvements
- Streaming App Enhancements: Keyboard shortcuts, Vulkan rendering support, and UI customization.
- XR Support: Passthrough support for Meta Quest 3 (beta) via OpenXR.
- World-Space Texture Transforms: More consistent material scaling between Alias and VRED.
- Expanded CAD Support: Import 3D XML / Catia V6, along with improved translators for Catia and NX.
Upgrade to VRED 2026
This release is about more than new features—it’s about empowering designers, engineers, and visualization experts to work smarter, faster, and more collaboratively.
- Unparalleled realism in real time with Vulkan.
- Faster design iteration and collaboration with Live Referencing.
- Streamlined workflows and automation with new rendering and scripting capabilities.
Autodesk VRED 2026 is designed to save time, reduce rework, and help teams bring ideas to life faster—from early concept design through to immersive XR experiences and executive reviews.
Download & install the latest VRED release today.
Check out our Autodesk Automotive on LinkedIn and visit the Design Studio YouTube channel for more product updates.
Sharpen Your Skills
Alias and VRED Learning Editions are free for non-commercial use. Learn more and start your journey today.