Germany-based Enscape this month has touted its new Enscape 3.5 features, delivering adjustable assets, multibounce global illumination (GI), and over 40 digital humans to anyone working in Archicad, SketchUp, Revit, Rhino, or Vectorworks.
Architects have even more ways to immerse their clients in real-time compelling visualizations. “When you’re presenting, the last thing you want is something that draws you out of a visual,” said Petr Mitev, VP Solutions for Designers at Chaos. “That’s why Enscape 3.5 comes with a number of visual quality improvements that architects don’t even need to think about. They’ll just notice that everything looks better, and that’s before they start digging into the customization and entourage updates. It’s a day-one improvement.”
Enscape 3.5
Adjustable Assets
One of Enscape’s biggest user requests is now available in 3.5. With adjustable assets, designers can start customizing materials, colors and more for an initial batch of entourage, making it easier to dial in the right feeling for their 3D scenes. These adjustments cover:
- Materials — Users can adjust the materials and colors of 100 furniture items and accessories, as well as one article of clothing for 40 human assets.
- Vehicle Colors — 91 vehicles can be customized using a color palette or via a HEX code.
- Asset Variants — Some assets include alternate options/variants, including 105 autumnal trees, 120 unpotted plants, 55 sports props, 25 street props, and more.
- Multi-Asset Editing — Adjustments also come in the form of multi-selections. This is especially useful when a user wants to delete multiple scene assets at one time.
Non-adjustable assets have been added, as well, including five dogs, nine trees, 22 interior assets, and 93 unscanned people.
Scanned People
Starting in January, Enscape’s internal scanner has been creating exclusive digital humans to help architects easily add realistic people to 3D environments.
The hero image for Enscape 3.5.
With Enscape 3.5, the total has grown to 93 exclusive assets, 40 of which allow for clothing customization. This library will continue to get more diverse over time. Plans are also in place to start scanning more animals and helpful objects using the same technology.
More Realistic Indirect Lighting
Enscape 3.5 marks the debut of the new global illumination algorithm, which provides improved lighting, reflections, and rendering quality to users with GPUs built for ray tracing.
Architects will especially notice these improvements in enclosed or sun-shadowed scenes, mirrors, and semi-transparent materials like frosted/tinted glass. It’s also easier to make infinity mirror effects for any visualization in need of a beloved optical illusion.
Asset variation shown here in this autonomal tree.
Additional Features and Improvements Include:
- Semi-Transparent Material Exports — To help artists prep window and glass materials for post-processing, Enscape 3.5 now includes a semi-transparent material capability in the Alpha Channel Export feature.
- Orthographic Views Update for Revit — Any orthographic view created or modified in Enscape will now display the same view in Revit for added consistency as architects move back and forth between the programs.
- Better Layer Assignments in Rhino — When placing assets in Rhino or Enscape, they will be added to a selected layer, making for easier organization. Their visibility can also be filtered for faster decision-making.
- New User Area in Toolbar — Users can now access their account from the Enscape toolbar, giving them quick access to license information, an upload manager, and their panorama galleries.
- Certified SpaceMouse Support — The popular 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse is not only supported in Enscape 3.5, but can be customized through shortcut buttons on the mouse.
- Revit 2024 Support — Enscape 3.5 is fully integrated with Revit 2024, helping designers easily incorporate all the latest features.
Readers can see these features in action. Join Chaos for a live stream on May 31 at 10 a.m. PT to learn about the latest features. Connect with other Enscape professionals and enthusiasts, and get the chance to ask our experts questions in real time. Tune in here for the live stream and join the discussion.
To learn more about Enscape 3.5 go here or here for free trial software.
Architosh Analysis and Commentary
We have been hoping that Enscape would be able to deliver parity with Enscape for the Mac and Enscape for Windows, but the present situation doesn’t seem to be delivering evidence of that. That may change in the near future. We reviewed Enscape for the Mac not long ago and were impressed with the software. *see: Architosh, “Product Review: Enscape for Mac SketchUp,” 30 Nov 22) Enscape for the Mac in our review was just available for SketchUp. In addition to SketchUp, Archicad, Rhino, and Vectorworks all have substantial user bases on the Mac and run native software that is M-chip compatible. So we are not sure about where progress lies on the company’s Mac efforts. Their addressable market could grow substantially with Mac versions for Archicad, Vectorworks, and even Rhino, particularly the first two mentioned BIM solutions which have roughly 50 percent of their users on the Mac platform.
As for the new features, the improvement with humans is a vital area of ongoing improvement for rendering tools of this nature. That’s partly because some AEC visualization injects humans and entourage in general through a post-production process using Adobe Photoshop using photographic assets that have a much higher level of realization because they are photos of real people. But that only is applicable to still images. Interactive real-time renderers like Enscape provide so many more benefits to users than still image rendering options. The new GI feature improvements will also be a boost to overall visual quality.