Following M&A, Company Announces Leadership Hires, Innovation Lab, and First Steps Toward a Unified Visualization Workflow
Karlsruhe, Germany - November 2, 2022 - Chaos announces impressive momentum toward creating a comprehensive visualization ecosystem. Within the past year, in response to growing demand for more easily accessible 3D, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) technology, the company merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and virtual reality technology. It also acquired Cylindo, a leading 3D furniture product visualization platform for commerce, and CGarchitect, an open online community for architectural visualization. The newly combined company now serves as global leader in visualization, providing technology, tools, and community for participants across the entire design spectrum, from architects and designers to 3D artists and manufacturers.
Chaos also announces new leadership hires to support its growth. Michael Tritschler, formerly at Siemens Digital Industries Software, has been appointed Chief Financial Officer of Chaos. Tobias Espig, formerly at Google, has recently joined the company 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 Integration Enhances Design Workflows and Removes Barriers
To remove a challenging bottleneck in architectural design visualization and enable stronger collaboration through a unified visualization workflow, the company created the first stages of product integration with the launch of V-Ray 6 for SketchUp and V-Ray 6 for Rhino. With V-Ray now compatible with Enscape, architects and designers can deliver complete design intent that 3D artists can immediately build on to take visualizations to the next level.
The company is working to bring this compatibility to other modeling software, with V-Ray for Revit coming soon. It will continue to enhance design workflows for stakeholders, empowering designers and artists to readily leverage the Cloud and freely exchange data across tools, such as from V-Ray back to Enscape. Improved collaboration will provide numerous benefits, including enabling artists to assist designers with materials and custom modeling and providing designers access to an extensive library of commercial and brand content.
"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."
In addition to the V-Ray and Enscape integration, the company expanded its existing product portfolio, including today’s 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 efficiently generate 3D images at scale. Other product launches and updates include Enscape for Mac, Enscape 3.3 and Enscape 3.4 for Windows, V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, V-Ray 6 for Maya, V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D, Corona 8 and Corona 9 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, and updates to the Cylindo platform.
Launch of Chaos Innovation Lab Contributes to Long-Term Vision of Democratization
Within the past year, Chaos also launched an Innovation Lab, a dedicated initiative to encourage Chaos employees around the world to share ideas and research in rendering and related technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks, that can aid in technology advancement.
Led by Chaos co-founder Vladimir Koylazov and a team of mentors, the Innovation Lab will partner with academic institutions and other research and development hubs in graphic technologies to test new concepts and contribute to the long-term vision of Chaos’ products and the future of the industry.
The company also holds an annual hackathon that brings together software developers to discover and test new ideas for rendering technologies. This year’s Chaos Rendathon event was held in Prague with the participation of employees from various global offices.
"Our products and solutions have been successful because they have consistently offered innovative and efficient ways for our users to design and visualize," said Koylazov. "Technology is developing very quickly and our goal is to continue providing the right tools, technologies, and expertise so that architects, designers, and artists can be more effective and creative."
About Chaos
Chaos develops 3D visualization technology for architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, and media and entertainment, creating intuitive and powerful workflows for participants across the entire design spectrum.
In 2022 Chaos merged with Enscape and acquired Cylindo. The company’s product portfolio includes V-Ray, a physically based renderer honored with an Academy Award and an Engineering Emmy; Enscape, a high-quality real-time rendering and virtual reality plugin; Corona, a high-performance photorealistic rendering engine; and Cylindo, a 3D furniture product visualization platform for commerce.
Chaos is now the largest global 3D visualization team with more than 700 employees and offices in Karlsruhe, Germany; New York, Los Angeles, Boston, USA; Sofia, Bulgaria; Copenhagen, Denmark; Bitola, Skopje, North Macedonia. For more information, visit chaos.com, enscape3d.com and cylindo.com.
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Media Contact:
Darlene Batista Alvar
d.alvar@enscape3d.com
New Easy to Use, Powerful Rendering Software for Architecture and Product Design; Now VR-Ready
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – April 5, 2017 – Today, Chaos Group released V-Ray 3 for Rhino, a powerful, professional rendering plugin that connects seamlessly with McNeel’s versatile 3D modeling application. Designed for architects and product designers, V-Ray 3 for Rhino is fast, interactive and highly optimized to run on CPU or GPU hardware. Highlights of the new version include a material library of over 500 drag-and-drop materials and an intuitive interface that has been streamlined to speed up any design workflow.
“Designers want to work as fluidly as possible, without any roadblocks. They want to test ideas, swap materials and render concepts without getting hung up on the technical details,” said Corey Rubadue, VP of AEC and Design at Chaos Group. “Not only did we make V-Ray 3 for Rhino as fast as possible, we streamlined the entire user experience to let designers focus on what matters most to them – design.”
With V-Ray 3 for Rhino, users now have a complete range of photorealistic rendering tools in their design arsenal. This includes hundreds of ready-made, physical materials, a variety of realistic light types and photographic camera controls. The new VR camera is capable of rendering high-quality images that can be readily viewed on popular virtual reality headsets such as Google Cardboard, Gear VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
The new and easy-to-use V-Ray Swarm distributed rendering system has also been added to dramatically speed up rendering of high-resolution images by using the power of multiple computers. V-Ray 3 for Rhino offers designers the creative freedom and versatility they need to render anything they can imagine.
“The new V-Ray for Rhino takes me beyond the limits of my CAD platform and enables new levels of productivity and design possibilities,” said Dustin Brown, Senior Industrial Design Lead at Microsoft and owner of speckofdustin.com. “Studying materials with V-Ray is a joy. The addition of fur and the new material editor opens up even more possibilities.”
New tools and feature highlights include:
Virtual Reality – Render virtual reality content for the most popular VR headsets (Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift).
V-Ray Swarm – Introducing a powerful, scalable distributed rendering system that's simple and fast.
Section cuts – Easily create quick cutaways and cross sections with the V-Ray Clipper.
Aerial perspective – Quickly add realistic atmospheric depth and haze.
Denoiser – Automatically remove noise and cut render times by up to 50%.
Grass & fur – Create realistic grass, fabrics and carpet with V-Ray Fur.
Proxy objects – Add highly detailed and complex objects like grass, trees, and cars with memory-efficient proxy models.
Render elements – Render as separate layers for more artistic control in your image-editing software.
Frame buffer – Track your render history and fine-tune colors, exposure, and more directly in the V-Ray Frame Buffer.
V-Ray Scene export – Share complete, ready-to-render V-Ray 3 for Rhino files with any V-Ray 3.4 or higher application.
HDR Light Studio support – Set up great-looking studio lighting quickly. V-Ray 3 for Rhino seamlessly supports HDR Light Studio — Lightmap’s dedicated lighting application.
Grasshopper support – Render generative design models with the new V-Ray to Grasshopper add-in.
Learn more at the V-Ray 3 for Rhino product page.
Pricing/Availability
V-Ray 3 for Rhino is available now for Windows. Workstation licenses are $695 and are fully compatible with Rhino 5. Upgrades are also available; please contact your local reseller for more information.
About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photoreal imagery and animation for design, television and feature films. Chaos Group specializes in physically-based rendering and simulation software used daily by top design studios, architectural firms, advertising agencies and visual effects companies around the globe. Today, the company's research and development in cloud rendering, material scanning and virtual reality is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Seoul and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.
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Press Contacts:
Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
Liaison Inc.
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
