Chaos Arena now supports USD, MaterialX, and Gaussian Splats rendering. Want to see it in action?

Chaos Arena

Bring reality to the virtual - right on set.

Bring reality to the virtual - right on set.

Chaos Arena is a cutting-edge real-time ray-tracing solution for in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) on virtual production stages. As a cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to the traditional game engine workflow, Arena opens the door to virtual production for projects of all sizes—whether for small setups or large-scale productions.

It’s the fastest, easiest way to move 3D content from trusted pipelines to LED walls without preprocessing, carrying the same assets from pre-production to post. With Arena, filmmakers and content creators can make creative changes instantly on set, avoiding costly re-baking and reducing reliance on post-production fixes. It delivers fully ray traced quality renders in real-time, accurately capturing lighting and seamlessly blending virtual environments with physical sets. Designed to handle complex scenes with ease, Arena frees creatives from technical concerns, letting them focus fully on storytelling.

Why is Chaos Arena a game-changer?

From pipeline to wall in minutes

Chaos Arena is the quickest way to bring 3D content to LED stages, taking assets and animations directly from V-Ray pipelines to screen in as little as 10 minutes, depending on the scene. It puts the artist’s work directly on the wall, eliminating the need for preprocessing. Runs smoothly on contemporary hardware already installed at most LED stages.

On-set real-time changes

Make creative decisions on the fly with real-time virtual set changes. Instantly move and adjust lights, change exposure, or reposition assets without having to wait, thanks to the full ray-traced quality delivered in real-time with global illumination. No need to bake your lighting, or use view-dependent light caching. Artists can work directly on set, making updates in the DCC to accommodate changes as a natural part of the creative process -quickly and without costly delays.

Less reliance on fixing it in post

Chaos Arena reduces the need for green or blue screens and minimizes reliance on post-production fixes by capturing final-quality in-camera. By ensuring accurate lighting, exposure, and seamless CGI backdrop integration, it allows creatives to operate fully in the moment and make final-quality adjustments on the spot and see results instantly.

Full ray-traced quality in real-time

Arena’s real-time ray tracing brings cinema-quality visuals to virtual production, seamlessly blending CGI with physical sets and live action. Mimicking natural light interactions—capturing reflections, refractions, and shadows with precision—Arena delivers fully ray traced quality renders right on set, providing the perfect context for artists, directors, and the entire production team to make creative decisions with confidence. With single-pass rendering, you get the perfect resolution across every part of the scene, even in the most demanding setups.

Same assets from pre- to post

Arena streamlines the production process by allowing assets created in traditional DCC tools like Maya, Houdini, 3ds Max, and Blender to be used directly in virtual production—and later on for post-production. No time-consuming do-overs, ensuring work continuity and consistent, high-quality results from start to finish.

Effortlessly handles complex scenes

Powered by real-time path-tracing technology, Chaos Arena is designed to handle vast geometric complexity and scale to meet the demands of any project. With stability at its core, Arena easily manages intricate scenes and dynamic lighting, minimizing technical hiccups for a smooth, consistent workflow. It can render scenes with a quarter of a trillion polygons at 60fps on a single GPU.

Democratizing virtual production

Chaos Arena breaks down barriers, making high-quality virtual production accessible to studios and filmmakers of all sizes. For both large-budget productions and independent projects, Arena removes the need for extensive 3D asset preparation by specialized real-time artists, reducing the learning curve and cutting costs. It enables efficient, cost-effective virtual production, bringing cinematic quality within reach for all —without the burden of complex workflows and resource demands.

Creativity unchained from tech limits

Arena empowers filmmakers to make real-time decisions with confidence in the final outcome, free from the usual on-set technical distractions.

Is Chaos Arena the right fit for your setup?

Here’s what you need to know before you can determine if Arena will work with your virtual stage setup:
Camera tracking systems

Chaos Arena supports a wide range of industry-standard camera tracking protocols, including FreeD (i.e. Mo-Sys, Vive Mars, etc), Vicon, stYpe, OptiTrack, and EZtrack. Tracking data can also be saved in an Alembic file for flexible scene adjustments and post-production.

Setup and performance

Chaos Arena is highly flexible, easily integrates with LED volume setups of any size, and offers seamless distributed rendering, including Genlock support via NVIDIA Quadro Sync. Dual GPU rendering is also supported for enhanced performance.

Industry standards

Chaos Arena supports widely adopted color management standards, such as ACEScg rendering color space, HDR output, and OpenColorIO, ensuring consistency throughout the entire pipeline. It also supports USD and MaterialX open standards for data interchange.

Arena is also adaptable for bespoke and less common camera tracking protocols.

Our team is available to discuss your specific setup, explore how Arena can be tailored for it, and answer any questions you might have.


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What’s new

 

High-quality virtual production is now open to all.

 More accessible than ever, Chaos Arena now integrates with any pipeline and toolset, going beyond just the Chaos ecosystem. Creating virtual production–ready content has never been easier thanks to: 

USD support

Arena can now also be used by non-V-Ray users thanks to new USD support, making it possible to bring USD scenes from any tool directly to LED walls.

MaterialX support

Building on its support for open standards for data interchange, Arena also lets virtual production teams load MaterialX-based scenes from any tool.

Gaussian Splats rendering

Bring real-world locations to virtual stages with ray-traced Gaussian Splats, instantly delivering photorealistic environments on set without heavy modeling.
Want to see it in action?

Want to see it in action?


Get in touch
images

System requirements

Discover the recommended hardware and software needed to unlock the full potential of Chaos Arena.

Game engines helped kickstart a revolution, but many in the VFX industry still can't access it. Chaos Arena takes an essential part of the VFX toolkit, ray tracing, and makes it available in a virtual production volume, straight from Maya, Houdini, or 3ds Max. No faking, no baking — just something that puts an artist's work directly on the wall.

James Blevins

Chaos Arena represents a huge step forward for cinematographers by allowing us to do our jobs more creatively, quickly, and efficiently. It delivers a much more precise method of accomplishing what up to now, has been a generally cumbersome task. My eyes are always the final judge of what I'm doing, and my experience with it thus far has been thoroughly convincing. It's destined to become the standard for all volume and LED wall work.

Richard Crudo

Arena in the spotlight.

Discover exclusive media and podcast features exploring Arena’s potential to transform virtual production.
Variety

In this exclusive feature, Variety explores Arena's potential to make virtual production more efficient, affordable, and high-quality with real-time ray tracing and seamless workflow integration.

Listen now >

Befores & afters podcast

In this befores & afters podcast, Chris Nichols and Ian Failes explore Arena’s groundbreaking real-time ray tracing, seamless V-Ray asset integration for LED walls, and its impact on modern filmmaking.

Listen now >

fxpodcast

In this fxguide podcast, Mike Seymour and the team behind Ray Tracing FTW explore Arena’s impact on virtual production and the future of storytelling, how it enabled 30 setups in a standard 10-hour shoot day, and stunning in-camera ray-traced shots.

Listen now >

CG Pro podcast

In this CG Pro Podcast episode, Christopher Nichols, Daniel Thron, and Erick Schiele discuss Arena’s real-time ray tracing capabilities, its seamless integration with industry-standard tools, and their experience creating Ray Tracing FTW.

Listen now >

Lights, camera, Arena.


Chaos Arena in action: Production-proven by industry veterans behind Justified, Avengers: Infinity War, and Dune: Part Two in the short film Ray Tracing FTW


Ray Tracing FTW

Ray Tracing FTW is a short film designed as the first major stress test for Chaos Arena.

The team used only 3 days of shooting on the LED stage and managed up to 30 setups in a standard 10-hour shoot day —a testament to Arena’s stability, efficiency, and ease of use. Arena performed flawlessly, bringing over 2 trillion polygons to the screen for three consecutive days without any costly crashes often associated with traditional virtual production workflows. 

Learn more

Get in touch.

Contact us to learn more about Chaos Arena, request a quote, or schedule a demo with our team.

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