Chaos at Autodesk University (happening this week in San Diego, California) is offering a first look at two new products, one of which is aimed at the AEC market. This product is called Chaos Envision, and the second product is V-Ray 7 for Autodesk 3ds Max.
So let’s take a look at what Chaos Envision is aiming to be first, and then we’ll delve into the V-Ray update.
Chaos Envision
Envision is part of a growing Chaos ecosystem, especially an array of products for the AEC industry. At AU 2024 in San Diego, the Chaos booth is showing a first look at both new products and what Chaos Envision is a new assembly animation and presentation solution aimed primarily at archviz specialists, whether they be working in visualization studios or in visualization departments in large architecture firms.
Chaos V-Ray 7 technology at play in film and TV production.
“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.”
Envision will help archviz professionals assemble sophisticated scenes with new levels of realism and motion, which are not possible to do with conventional CAD and BIM tools. Envision will provide real-time ray tracing and can be populated with custom crowds of realistic humans all in motion. The final aim is to create compelling storytelling animations for architectural projects.
Expanding the Chaos Ecosystem
Heading into one of the final months of 2024, Chaos Envision and V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max cap off a big year for the world’s leading visualization software company, celebrating its 25th anniversary. The new V-Ray 7 for Max offers compelling new features such as Gaussian Splat rendering, which gives artists the ability to incorporate real-world sites and objects generated from photos or video. There is also new lighting, scattering, removing fireflies, vignetting, caustics, and other new capabilities in V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max. More details on V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max and the new Chaos Envision will be released in the coming weeks.
Roderick Bates, Head of Corporate Development at Chaos, was a principal at famed architecture firm KieranTimberlake, where he led the research group. Here, he is showing attendees the latest Chaos Envision software.
Some of the latest updates for Chaos also 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.
Additional product announcements are planned for later in 2024. Readers can learn more about Chaos’ Enscsape Impact in our latest feature story here and in an earlier report here.
Chaos Commitment to Sustainability
As a software company in the AEC industry, Chaos is deeply committed to climate science and sustainability for the building industry. The new partnership with IES, a globally leading innovator of sustainable analysis technology, is visible in the new Enscape Impact solution.
Energy analysis and visualization inside Enscape Impact.
The onboard energy analysis tools powered by technology from IES give Enscape Impact both production-ready visualization features coupled with energy analysis visualization and numeric data from which architects and designers can inform themselves about the energy side of architecture.
“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.”
Giving Architects and Artists AI Tools
Chaos Innovation Lab has also unveiled new AI-powered tools created to help improve workflows and improve efficiency and visualization quality. AI Enhancer technology is inside Enscape 4.1 and helps improve the realism of humans and vegetation in Enscape renders. The AI engine works on improving pixels by identifying the correct pixel selection and does this by comparing it to other AI-generated images. The results are impressive.
“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.”
Vladimir Koylazov is Head of Innovation at Chaos and leads the Choas Innovation Lab and oversees Chaos’ research, development, and experiments with the latest digital technologies. Koylazov co-founded Chaos in 1997 and developed the acclaimed rendering software V-Ray. Vlado is a graduate of Sofia University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics.
Beyond AI Enhancer, Chaos Innovation Lab has several other AI research initiatives and AI solutions under development. These will address things like automatic asset placement, PRB material generation and enhancement, and Cylindo Lifestyle image generator for e-commerce.
At Autodesk University, visitors to Chaos’ booth got a chance to learn about most of these new software programs and leading-edge software technologies.
Architosh will publish more in upcoming AU reports. To learn more about Chaos go here,
