At Autodesk University, award-winning software maker Chaos will offer the first look at its latest products: Chaos Envision, a new assembly, animation and presentation solution for visualization specialists and designers, and V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max, the latest version of its industry-leading photorealistic renderer. Show attendees will have the opportunity to view the products in action and see how they expand the Chaos ecosystem to meet the needs of artists, architects and designers.
"As the Chaos ecosystem continues to grow, we are delivering exciting new capabilities and solutions that empower users and give them better ways to connect and simplify their workflows,” said Stephan Sieber, Chaos CEO. “By focusing on customer-centric innovations that address real-world challenges, we continue to transform our customers’ day-to-day work and the designs they deliver.”
Chaos Envision enables archviz specialists to quickly assemble rich scenes with new levels of realism and motion that would be impossible to construct in traditional CAD tools. With unparalleled scale comes more freedom to explore and present a design’s true possibilities. Each design will benefit from the accuracy of full, real-time ray tracing and can easily be populated with custom crowds of realistic humans from Envision’s extensive library. This flexible and intuitive animation system also makes it easy to craft and publish videos that put architectural storytelling at the forefront.
Chaos will also offer the first look at V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max, offering a host of new capabilities headlined by Gaussian Splat rendering, giving artists the ability to incorporate real-world sites or objects they generated from photos or video. The new version of the popular renderer also includes new options for lighting, scattering, removing fireflies, vignetting, caustics, automatic virtual tours, production profiling and much more. More details on V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max and Chaos Envision will be announced in the coming weeks.
Expanding the Chaos Ecosystem
The introduction of Chaos Envision and V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max are the latest in a series of major product introductions and new versions from Chaos in 2024, capping off one of the biggest years in the company’s 25+ year history. In the last year, Chaos has released several new products and updates aimed at expanding its unified ecosystem.
Some of the latest releases from Chaos include:
- Project Arena — An all-new virtual production toolset, designed to offer studios a faster, simpler alternative to game engines. With Project Arena, artists can move V-Ray assets and select animations to LED walls in a few minutes, accessing real-time ray tracing with pipelines they know and trust. Commercial availability is expected early next year.
- Enscape 4.1 — Features real-time artistic visual modes to help designers focus on the most relevant design decisions at the right times. A new version of Enscape will soon be available.
- Enscape Impact — A new building performance add-on lets designers analyze a project’s energy efficiency and visualize the results in real-time directly in the Enscape interface.
- Corona 12 — The latest version of Corona brings the power of real-time GPU rendering through an integration with Chaos Vantage. Designers can explore, render and animate scenes in real-time, opening up a much faster workflow.
Free trials are available for Chaos software and educational pricing is available. Additional product announcements are planned for the remainder of 2024, with more scheduled in 2025. Details and pricing on all current Chaos products can be found here.
Commitment to Sustainability and Building Performance
As part of its ongoing mission to increase awareness around how technology can fuel sustainability and combat climate change in construction, Chaos recently announced a new partnership with IES, a leading global innovator of sustainable analysis technology.
“Sustainability is no longer a choice, but instead a necessity for the future of architecture and design,” said Roderick Bates, Head of Corporate Development at Chaos. “Our partnership with IES collapses design and environmental analysis into a single workflow, supporting the integration of energy performance into the earliest stages of the creative process.”
By leveraging the analytic tools of IES, Enscape users can now access the new Enscape Impact add-on that allows them to quickly view the energy performance of their building designs — including energy usage today and thermal comfort and daylight in future releases— to optimize it within their usual visualization workflow.
Earlier this year, Chaos also released its Architects of Change report, a newly commissioned study that asked thousands of urban residents across the globe to identify their major concerns about living in cities and what they wanted from future developments. The data offers architects, designers and city planners a roadmap to design cities of the future, while helping to combat climate change and encourage sustainability.
Empowering Artists, Designers and Architects with AI
Along with several product debuts, new features and new studies aimed at better understanding the needs of users, Chaos also saw its Chaos Innovation Lab unveil several new AI-powered tools, designed to help improve workflows, efficiency and visualization quality.
"Chaos believes AI should not be used to replace creativity, but to enhance it,” said Vladimir ‘Vlado’ Koylazov, Chaos Co-founder and Head of Innovation. “We integrate AI into our tools in ways that allow designers to focus on their vision while letting the technology streamline repetitive tasks and enhance the photorealism of the results."
In addition to the launch of AI Enhancer, Chaos Innovation Lab has several AI features in development, including PBR Material Generation & Enhancement, Automatic Asset Placement, a Cylindo Lifestyle image generator for e-commerce and more features for enhancing rendered images.
Autodesk University 2024 Demos and First Looks
Along with exclusive first looks at Chaos Envision and V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max, Autodesk University attendees can also stop by Chaos booth #654 and see live demos of Enscape Impact and Chaos Cloud. Private demos are available for press upon request.
