Year: 2021. The world had shifted. Chaos Group had long moved on to V-Ray 5, then V-Ray 5.2. SketchUp 2021 was the new standard with its shiny tag groups and live components. But in the dark corners of archviz forums—Sketchucation, CGArchitect, Reddit’s r/SketchUp—a quiet legend persisted.
The legend of V-Ray 3.6 for SketchUp 2018.
Why 2021, yet hunting for software from 2018? Because 3.6 was the last great stable hybrid renderer. Before the UI got bloated with Asset Editor tabs. Before Chaos required a constant internet connection for licensing. Back when the Hybrid Rendering (CPU+GPU together) actually worked without crashing on a scene with 12 million polygons and 2K textures. vray 36 for sketchup 2018 google drive 2021
But by 2021, Chaos had delisted 3.6 from their official site. SketchUp 2018 was considered “end of life.” New plugins no longer supported it. Yet, entire firms had pipelines built around this combination. They had legacy projects—hotels, villas, airport terminals—that would break if opened in newer versions. Materials would turn pink. Lights would reset.
So the hunt began.
By 2021, Chaos Group had fully migrated to a subscription-only model (VRay 5+). This meant that perpetual licenses for VRay 3.6 were no longer sold. Consequently, users who had lost their original installers or hard drives flocked to Google Drive archives to find their legacy software.
No. The risks far outweigh the benefits. Even if the Google Drive link is from a trusted community member (e.g., SketchUp Forum or Reddit r/SketchUp), you have no guarantee the file wasn’t compromised after upload. Many 2021 links are now dead or replaced with malware. Using V-Ray 3
If you have secured the installer from a 2021 Google Drive archive, follow these steps to ensure compatibility:
Yes, officially. V-Ray 3.6 was designed to support: Year: 2021
However, note that Chaos no longer supports V-Ray 3.6. The last official update for this version was around 2019. By 2021, when many users were searching for Google Drive copies, it was already considered legacy software.