Chaos Leads Global 3D Visualization—Focused on Unifying Visualization Workflows

Chaos is now the largest 3D visualization technology company in the world, with over 700 employees and multiple global offices and development centers. The company recently merged with Germany’s Enscape, and those two companies’ flagship products are seeing early signs of integration.

Acquisitions and Growth

In addition to Enscape, Chaos also acquired Cylindo, a leading 3D furniture product visualization platform for commerce, and GCarchitect, an open online community for architectural visualization, providing technology, tools, and community for participants across the entire design spectrum.

New Key Hires

Chaos is also announcing new leadership hires to support its growth. Michael Tritschler, formerly at Siemens Digital Industries Software, has been newly appointed Chief Financial Officer at Chaos.

Tobias Espig, formerly at Google, has newly been hired as Chief Marketing Officer.

“We are committed to making visualization software and workflows accessible to everyone involved in the design process and we are proud of our momentum,” said Christian Lang, CEO of Chaos. “By merging complementary technologies and expertise, we are able to unite stakeholders in the design process, remove barriers, and provide the tools needed to quickly, easily, and collaboratively bring ideas to life. Doing so, we are creating the world’s largest 3D visualization company and helping to define the future of our industry.”

Early Product Integrations

Chaos is driven to remove typical and challenging bottlenecks in architectural design visualization and foster more collaborative workflows that streamline project deliverables. This streamlining began early stages with the launch of V-Ray 6 for SketchUp and V-Ray 6 for Rhino.

Chaos’ expansion this year has included more than acquisitions and mergers. The company is bringing Enscape to the Mac across a range of tools, recently releasing Enscape for Mac for SketchUp (shown here).

And with V-Ray now compatible with Enscape, architects and designers can execute design intent imagery that accurately represents their design goals while sending it to 3D artists to build upon to take visualization to the next level. Chaos is also working to bring V-Ray 6 for Revit coming soon. That solution will empower users to leverage the Cloud to streamline workflows and exchange data across tools, such as from V-Ray back to Enscape.

Connecting Artists with Architects

The goal is to enable architects and artists to work more freely with each other by empowering artists to assist designers and architects with materials and custom modeling.

“For years, design and visualization have worked in a vacuum. Designers would work in Enscape, technical artists would work in V-Ray, and it was painfully difficult to transition from one to the other,” said Ted Vitale, Owner and Creative Director at Voxl.Vision. “Connecting Enscape and V-Ray means we finally have a full visual pipeline where it is easy to transition from the iterative design process to a fully editable marketing visualization without losing valuable design information. This is one of the most exciting developments to have happened since I started in architectural visualization almost a decade ago.”

Further expansions with Chaos include the recent launch of Cylindo Studio, a self-service product visualization tool allowing users to create 4K quality lifestyle imagery in a virtual photo studio. Cylindo Studio is easy to use and requires no prior 3D knowledge allowing creative teams to generate 3D images at scale efficiently.

And Enscape for Mac was recently launched, which this publication is currently reviewing. Look for that product review later this month.

To learn more visit: https://www.chaos.com/

Architosh Analysis and Commentary

Chaos is doing something that nobody else in the industry is really attempting to do—democratizing a level of visualization that ten years ago would have been impossibly difficult for the average architect to generate while simultaneously creating a two-stage visualization workflow where dedicated 3D artists can propel that visualization to the next level. That could mean sophisticated animations with titles, transitions, and music to simply more stunning image visuals with complex and polished Photoshop post-render effects. Or it can mean taking visualization to virtual and augmented reality or to other types of visualization services. 

Whether architects and designers take advantage of this two-stage level of visualization with Chaos’ tools is up to them, and it will not happen in every instance. However, the option to do so is built-into Chaos’s overall capabilities and integration plans. With future GPU/CPU and software advances, cinematic-level visualization (the kind you may associate with Lord of the Rings films) is not far from being democratized for all types of architecture and design firms when they pair accessible but powerful tools like Enscape with tools like V-Ray in the hands of accomplished specialists firms. 

In terms of competitive advantages against tools like Twinmotion and Unreal, Chaos has interesting advantages both at the tool level and at the network effects level. Look for more on this analysis in our upcoming INSIDER Xpresso newsletter.