This week, Chaos announced Enscape 4.0, which will align its real-time functionality across operating systems for the first time. The big news is not just the amazing new features in Enscape 4.0 but also that Chaos is now developing simultaneously for Mac and Windows. Mac users will surely rejoice!
Before diving into version 4 features, it’s important to note this new cross-platform development model.
95 Percent Parity
Now, in Enscape 4, architects and designers can work across their favorite tools and their preferred OS environment (be that Mac or Windows) and produce stunning visuals to aid their creative process, tapping the new features like a refined user interface with new tool buttons, new assets for their 3D scenes, and a powerful denoiser to improve images and accelerate workflows.
The hero image for the new Enscape 4.0 release showcases all the new benefits of this version.(click on image for a larger view)
“With our new unified codebase, we are thrilled to deliver simultaneous feature releases for both Mac and Windows users, ensuring a consistent and optimized experience across all platforms, whenever possible,” said Petr Mitev, VP Product, Solutions for Designers at Chaos. “This strategic investment not only enhances the current user experience but also lays a foundation for future stability and performance improvements, addressing valuable feedback from our community.”
While 100 percent feature parity with Windows isn’t quite there, the new features for the Mac are extensive and include:
- Adjustable Assets — Over 1,700 adjustable assets covering furniture, clothes, vehicles, and plants are available for easy customization, making it easier to dial in the right feeling for a 3D scene.
- Dynamic Asset Placement — Users can easily pick, place, and edit assets using the Enscape rendering window. Any changes will be reflected live and can be quickly applied to multiple assets at a time.
- Custom Asset Library — Teams can now bring bespoke assets into Enscape for more personalized libraries.
- Custom Asset Editor — Custom assets can be assigned colors, materials, and other key attributes to help tailor them to different projects.
- Site Context — Architects can now see what their building will look like onsite without topographic modeling.
- BIM Mode — Users can now find all single or grouped elements in a scene with a click, making it easy to perform visual searches using the available BIM data attached to the scene.
- Collaborative Annotations — Change requests, material suggestions, and problems can now easily be resolved with live annotations, bringing more order and immediacy to global teams.
Enscape 4.0 for the Mac integrates with the top-leading 3D and BIM software used in design and architecture. It supports the Nemetschek Group BIM leaders Archicad and Vectorworks, McNeel’s popular 3D modeler Rhino, and the ubiquitous SketchUp by Trimble. These are the most dominant and popular design tools used by architects on the Mac platform, and Enscape delivers 100 percent integration, real-time workflows, and a diverse 3D asset collection to deploy in visualizations.
More People and Vegetation
There are now 32 unique people assets in Enscape 4.0’s Asset Library. This diversity helps architects add realistic contexts to their projects. Users can select from a variety of different poses, outfits, and accessories, enabling design teams to highlight various functions and emotions to convey to their clients through the visualizations of their projects.
And by popular request, there are now many more vegetation assets that stem from desert regions and places like Mexico. Version 4 adds 178 new variations of vegetation, including trees, bushes and flowers.
Enhanced NVIDIA Denoiser
The NVIDIA Denoiser has been further enhanced in this release. Designed to take out pixel noise in finished render frames, whether in still or animation or VR captures, the latest NVIDIA ReLax Denoiser delivers improvements for images.
The denoiser improvements are especially visible in enclosed interior spaces with minimal direct light and on glossy surfaces.
Added features include (several just for the Windows version):
- Ray-Traced Artificial Lights (Windows) — A more realistic lighting experience is available as an experimental feature. The Enscape renderer can now consider the size of the light source when calculating shadows, resulting in more realistic sharpness variations. This will also yield softer shadows in scenes illuminated by large sources, providing more physically accurate lighting behaviors.
- Improved Reflections and Global Illumination (Windows) — Render quality and accuracy upgrades for exports will help users ray trace more complex projects using their GPU’s full memory.
- New VR Headset Support (Windows) — Enscape now includes official support for Meta Quest 3 and HTC Vive Pro 2, ensuring fast loading speeds and crisp details in Windows VR applications.
- Rhino 8.3 Support — A direct path from Rhino 8.3 to Enscape is now open, making real-time visualization even more accessible to users of this popular design tool.
- Sleeker UI — Enscape 4.0 features a refined UI that improves usability via curated shades of blue that make information easier to spot. More engaging iconography has been added, as well.
- Revit Worksharing Optimization — Modifying views, visual setting presets and site context elements is now much more consistent when working with Revit collaboration tools.
- Enhanced Integration with Chaos Ecosystem — A new V-Ray Scene Exporter is available, which will help users transfer key data from Enscape to V-Ray and other visualization applications, including 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.
To try Enscape 4.0, sign up for a free trial today.
Pricing and Availability
Enscape 4.0 for Windows and Mac is available now for Revit, SketchUp, Archicad, Rhino, and Vectorworks. Subscription plans can be found on the Enscape pricing page.
Architosh Analysis and Commentary
The news of integrated cross-platform development is a strong sign of how well-positioned Chaos is for future computer industry trends. Software firms that have extensive experience developing cross-platform solutions across Mac and Windows can leverage that experience when they absorb new acquisitions and take advantage of new technologies. It goes beyond just experience with the leading developer tools on a particular platform and the many nuances of a particular operating system; it speaks to acquiring expertise with the utilization of specific technologies designed to target multiple operating systems with the same code base and leveraging cross-platform toolkits and APIs.
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Chaos has multiple leading tools developed by its more than 800 employees worldwide, including its popular V-Ray, a physically based renderer that has won an Academy Award and an Engineering Emmy. It also has Corona, another high-performance photorealistic rendering engine, Cylindo, a 3D furniture product visualization platform for e-commerce, and Anima, a 3D/4D animation software to add realistic people and crowds to visualizations. What has been learned and will continue to accrue from the near 100 complete platform parity with Enscape will surely have an impact on other tools at Chaos in the future.