The other day I was working on a project where I needed to add some camera distortion. I wasn’t having much luck with my usual method of lens distortions. I was getting close, but my client wasn’t feeling it 100%. I knew that the VRay physical camera had some built-in distortion options, but I was using iray. Figured I’d throw caution to the wind and try the VRay camera with iray. It worked! 
Now, not all the features of the VRay physical camera work with iray, for example things like DOF/motion blur settings since those have specific controls in iray. However many of the other Vray camera options do.
That led me to wonder about other features. So this morning I tried using the VRay Lens Effects with iray since iray doesn’t provide any built-in lens glow/glare features. Blammo, it worked too.
I used overly intense effects to help illustrate the result. These are renders straight from 3dsmax using iray and the VRay Lens Effects.
NOTE: Keep in mind the VRay Lens Effect is a post render effect so you won’t see it until the render is complete.
Bottom line: If you use iray (or possibly other render engines) and also have VRay you can now have some built-in glare/glow effects. Unfortunately it’s a one sided relationship since iray doesn’t offer any special features for Vray. 
Oh well, thanks good guy vray!
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Hi Jeff !
I’ve tested Vray bloom and glare effects with standard camera, and it worked, so, you can have DOF effect.
Ooops, I didn’t mean to imply that folks had to use the vray physical camera in order for the VRay lens effect to work. I was just saying that I’ve used both the Vray Physical Camara and VRay Lens Effect (independently) with some degree of success in iray.
To be clear: I did the same thing, on a previous project I used the Vray physical camera without the VRay Lens Effect. Then this morning as a test I used the VRay lens effect on a completely different scene (the leaves scene) with a standard camera, hence the iray DOF + glare/bloom in that render.
Jeff, you’re a pioneer! I’ve never even thought of trying to mix engine-specific objects. Thanks!
I´have to try that right now! (*makes test scene*)
doesn’t work for me. when max trying to apply vray lens effects it crashes
Don’t know what to say, works great here. Maybe you’re using a different version of 3dsmax and/or VRay? I’m running 3dsmax 2013/iray with VRay v.2.30.01 (all 64bit)
“Figured I’d throw caution to the wind and try the VRay camera with iray. It worked!”
I think VRay camera have some “mental ray compliant” options to avoid users to change cameras if they need to use mental ray so generate some specific passes (volumetric for a time), that’s maybe why it work with iray too.
wow!. i admire the creative fluke jeff. lol but i guess amongst all the discovery, im more amazed with your material for the leaves scene. is there any tutorial on perfect leaf material with mental ray that u can point me to?….. oh, sorry, im yet to catch up on iray. thanks
How do you get those beautiful glows in your images, is that done in post?
thanks
VRay lens effects.
Great tip!
It also goes without saying that in any meme Mental Ray would be wearing the scumbag hat
“Mental Ray would be wearing the scumbag hat
” – LOL!
Jeff, unfortunately – Vray camera distortion do only perspective distortion, not specific like “fish eye”
Also quicksilver and mental ray do it. And lens effects for me only postprocess, and it do 3ds max, not vray exclusive. I have it with scanline, quicksilver, mental ray etc. 
It is [s]Sparta[/s] Max 
)
Great tip!
Thanks,
The result look very natural.
Btw. FinalRender Glare also works with MR.
Mixing renderer features is fun
Sweet stuff Jeff! I’m curious on how you made that foliage, it looks very convincing! The shader is pretty much spot on and how did you achieve that level of detail to the leafs, normal map?