Photorealistic Ray Tracer Adds Denoiser Masking, Cylindrical Decals and More to Streamline the Visualization Process

KARLSRUHE, Germany — February 14, 2023 — Today, Chaos releases V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, update 1, bringing post-processing upgrades, advanced decal tools and time-saving GPU enhancements to the most complete rendering solution in the world. With more control, artists and designers can keep meeting a level of 3D demand that shows no signs of slowing down.

New masking support for Lens Effects and Denoiser layers gives 3D artists even more say over how their images come together. Whether it’s applying Lens Effects to specific lights and materials, or smoothing out part of the image, designers can now personalize their renders even faster. While in post, users can also start fine-tuning V-Ray Light Materials with Light Mix, making it easier to edit self-illuminating objects in a scene – even after rendering is complete.

For product visualizations and surfaces, update 1 brings cylindrical and bump upgrades to V-Ray Decal. Designers can now easily add anything to curved surfaces, from stickers and labels to surface imperfections. Bottles, jars, rockets, helmets, tanks – Decal’s projection will cover any curve in a few clicks. Additive bumps have also been added, so artists can blend surface and decal bumps to make highly realistic embossed logos, lettering, cracked paint, spray effects and more.

Additional Features and Improvements Include:

Time-Savers

• Custom Camera Resolutions – Custom resolutions and aspect ratios are now maintained for each V-Ray camera, cutting setup time when switching cameras. Multiple camera resolutions can be batch rendered locally or via Chaos Cloud Rendering.

• Initial USD Exporting and Stage Support – Artists can now export V-Ray lights, materials, modifiers and more to the rising USD file format, making it easier to exchange V-Ray data in VFX studios.

• Faster Loading for Heavy Scenes – Scenes with massive amounts of textures and geometry are even less of a challenge now. All V-Ray Bitmaps that load when a scene opens will also be optimized for performance.

• Viewport Composition Guides – A new proportions layer makes it easy to compose the right camera angle with the help of visual guides like the rule of thirds and the golden ratio.

• Faster Fog Rendering – V-Ray Environment Fog now renders up to 30% faster, enabling artists to bring more atmosphere and mood to their creations.

Artistic Aids

• Cloud Collaboration Updates – Users can now collaborate as they create with new tools for visual annotations and versioning. Lines, arrows and other illustrative elements can now be applied to any images or sequence, while Chaos Cloud supports versions and A/B comparisons for faster iteration.

• V-Ray Light Custom Decay – Users can now alter how a light decays based on source distance, opening up a host of artistic effects that detour from physical results.

• NVIDIA AI Denoiser Upscaling – A new upscale setting can take an image from HD to 4K without adding more render time.

• Enhanced Procedural Clouds – Procedural clouds now have more ways to control the final look. Set darkness levels, randomize or add a final touch to a cloud’s exterior with a new contrails setting for more nuanced stills. 

GPU Boosts

• Compressed Textures Mode – V-Ray GPU can now render 4K textures with 50% less memory on average, helping artists add incredible details without sacrificing quality.

• V-Ray Clipper Mesh Mode – Complex cutaways and sections can be rendered using any mesh object. The clipper can also be animated to achieve complex effects without time-intensive Boolean operators.

• Faster SSS in V-Ray Material – Photorealistic skin, plastic, wax and more can be easily created with the updated V-Ray Material. Translucent objects now render up to 2x faster, while low-poly translucent objects render more smoothly. 

• Render Elements Support Through Refractive Surfaces – Users now have post-production control over glass objects and materials. V-Ray GPU also supports the Material ID, Cryptomatte and Multimatte render elements through refractive surfaces. 

To see all the new features, explore V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max’s product page.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, update 1 is available now for Windows. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website.

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 and has 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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Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Academy Award-Winning Renderer Adds New Options for Oceans, Clouds and Volumetrics; Full Houdini Toolset Ready for 8K and Beyond
 

KARLSRUHE, Germany — December 13, 2022 — Today, Chaos releases V-Ray 6 for Houdini, a new update to their production renderer for high-end VFX and animation. With full support for Houdini 19.5 and Solaris, V-Ray 6 can create feature-quality renders at any stage of the process, giving life to gripping procedural creations — from look dev to final pixel.

Houdini 19.5 not only completed the hair toolset, but continued to build up Pyro’s smoke and fire simulations, Solaris Render Region capabilities, and more. Today, artists can render them at the height of photorealism, using an Academy Award-winning renderer. V-Ray for Solaris has also been upgraded, moving to a fully featured Hydra delegate to help artists utilize the full power of SideFX’s USD-based tools. Artists can now streamline layout, lighting and look dev in a single workflow that builds real-time feedback directly into the Houdini viewport.

In addition, V-Ray 6 introduces support for Houdini’s native ocean tools, giving users more control and faster rendering speeds, without the need for texture baking. Artists can also start generating more realistic volumetric effects for clouds, smoke and more with new support for anisotropic scattering, or easily create volumetric masks by exporting Cryptomatte elements without using the Volumetric Geometry mode. 

Additional Features and Improvements Include:

Creativity Enhancers

• New Chaos Cosmos Assets – In the last year, Chaos Cosmos has exploded across the VFX world for the way it fast tracks previz work. Since its initial launch, 1,500 assets have been added, including detailed vegetation, urban textures and photorealistic materials.

• Procedural Clouds – Instant clouds have been added to the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, removing the need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Artists can now customize their scenes, taking full advantage of ray-traced lighting, ground shadows and volumetric effects as they animate.

• V-Ray Decal with Displacement – Artists can now use V-Ray Decal to add displacement to any surface for even more realistic cracked walls, rocks, scratched and rusty surfaces, embossed lettering and more. They can also easily instance their Decals for an advanced material bombing workflow.

• V-Ray Enmesh – It’s time to start repeating geometry across the surface of an object in the most memory-efficient way possible. In just a few clicks, artists can create complex surfaces with lots of detail such as chain mail, car grilles, metal grids, panels, fences, fabrics and more, using their geometry like a texture.

• Improved Dome Light – A new Finite Dome mode now allows users to control the physical size of their light, according to radius and height. This is especially helpful for rendering objects like cars with proper size and scale in relation to image-based lighting (IBL).

Render Boosts

• Adaptive Bucket Splitting – Bucket rendering is now faster than ever before thanks to a clever new algorithm that adapts bucket size for the optimal utilization of hardware and memory. 

• Light Cache in IPR – The output of V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) is identical to the production renderer, so teams can make better decisions in the moment.

• Performance Improvements – Updates include up to 30% faster rendering for Environment Fog, up to 2x faster rendering for the Translucent layer in the V-Ray Material, and enhanced memory efficiency for scenes featuring thousands of instances.  

• V-Ray Profiler – A new profiler now tracks the calculation time of shaders and volumes in a scene. Artists can now locate all the hot spots to quickly optimize pipelines for even faster speeds.

Better Shading

• Thin-Film Materials – A new thin-film layer has been added to the V-Ray Material, making it easy to create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.

• More Accurate Reflections – With the new energy compensation updates, rough metals and surfaces will look even more realistic. 

Do More in the V-Ray Frame Buffer

• Composition Guides – A new proportions layer makes it easy to compose the right camera angle with the help of visual guides like the rule-of-thirds and the golden ratio.

• Panorama Viewer – The spherical panoramas V-Ray pioneered can now be explored and edited without the need of third-party tools.

To see all the new features, explore V-Ray 6 for Houdini’s “What’s New” page.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for Houdini is available now for Houdini and Houdini Indie 19.5 and later, with support for Windows, Linux and MacOS. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including Houdini, Maya, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website.

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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Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Architects and Specialists Can Now Share 3D Visualizations with Ease, Removing One of the Biggest Bottlenecks in the Industry 

KARLSRUHE, Germany — December 7, 2022 — Today, Chaos launches V-Ray 6 for Revit, connecting two of architecture’s most trusted products into a single pipeline. With a new link to Enscape, architects and specialists can finally collaborate on photorealistic visualizations at any part of their process — without losing design intent. When paired with new tools for procedural clouds and remote collaboration, the best visuals in the world are only a few clicks away.

“When we announced the Chaos Bridge, the first thing we heard was, ‘When can we get this for Revit?!’” said Ana Lyubenova, V-Ray for Revit product manager at Chaos. “Now, design decisions remain intact from conception to completion, so teams can iterate faster and not waste precious hours re-doing something that’s already been done.”

Real-Time to Photoreal
What starts in Enscape can now be rendered and edited in V-Ray 6, wherever it needs to be pushed to the highest levels of photorealism. This unbroken chain comes complete with support for Enscape environments, materials and compatible 3D assets, so what the visualization team receives is a 1:1 version of what the architect designed. Even custom skies created in Enscape are automatically transferred.

Procedural Clouds
Since clouds can have a big impact on the look of an outdoor scene, V-Ray 6 introduces a new procedural cloud system, built on Enscape technology. Instead of spending hours browsing through HDRI libraries, or adding skies later in Photoshop, artists can now easily simulate a variety of cloud types and weather conditions — from partly cloudy to overcast. This new system is not only memory efficient, it’s a powerful way to create dynamic timelapse presentations and streaming streaks of sunlight.

Fast Decals
The new V-RayDecal capability quickly projects textures onto multiple surfaces and materials, all while working as a native Revit family. Users can not only adjust its position, size and angles, but project displacement through it, bringing more realism to cracked walls, stains, road marks and more.

Cloud-Based Collaboration
It’s now easier to share work and collaborate with internal/external stakeholders via the cloud. With Chaos Cloud Collaboration, users can share images and image panoramas straight from the V-Ray Frame Buffer and get feedback from reviewers, speeding up the approval process for everyone involved.

Additional Features and Improvements Include:

Lighting

• Finite Dome Light – Set the physical size and scale of your 3D environments when using image-based lighting.

Materials

• New Iridescent Materials – Easily create iridescent materials like coated glass, metals and ceramics using the V-Ray Material’s new Thin Film option.

• Better Translucent Materials – Render materials like frosted glass and marble faster with the V-Ray Material’s improved subsurface scattering mode.

• More Accurate Reflections – Metals and rough reflective materials now render even more realistically thanks to a new energy preservation technique.

• Enhanced Dirt Texture – Ensure that dirt and weathering are in the right places with positioning tools that can easily add or exclude objects. 

• Improved Revit Material Conversions – Native Revit Generic materials now render more accurately. They can also be edited in V-Ray and saved as .vrmat files.

• Material Preview Swatch – The new Sphere swatch preview offers the same intuitive material view users experience in Chaos Cosmos.

Workflow

• Asset Tags – Assets can now be grouped using a new tagging system, greatly improving scene organization for complex projects.

• Central Library – V-Ray’s built-in material library is now part of Chaos Cosmos, so designers can conveniently find and manage all of their assets in one place. The HDRI environments used by Light Gen are also now included in Cosmos.

V-Ray Frame Buffer and Post-Production

• Composition Guides – A new proportions layer makes it easy to compose the right camera angle with the help of visual guides like the rule-of-thirds and the golden ratio.

• Panorama Viewer – The spherical panoramas V-Ray pioneered can now be explored and edited without the need of third-party tools.

To see all the new features, explore V-Ray 6 for Revit’s “What’s New” page.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for Revit is available now. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Houdini, Nuke and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website.

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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Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com





 

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

Procedural Clouds, Memory-Efficient Patterns and Scatter Edge Trimming Now Available in Artist-Friendly Renderers

PRAGUE, Czech Republic — October 17, 2022 — Today, Chaos launches Chaos Corona 9 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, accelerating the 3D design process with new tools for clouds, patterns, motion blur and more. 

With the new Procedural Cloud System, users can now fine-tune the sky to match the needs of their scene, opening up every cloud type for stills and animations. Unlike working with HDRIs, which are hard to modify, the new cloud system is incredibly responsive and able to realistically react to any daytime setting. Airplane contrails can also be animated for an extra dose of realism.

Instead of using opacity or displacement maps, Corona users can now tile 3D geometry just like they would 2D bitmaps and textures. By repeating the actual geometry across surfaces and objects, Corona Pattern offers greater realism to the user, all while cutting the memory requirements typically needed when using displacement. 

Chaos Scatter was one of the major hits of Corona 8; today, it’s being expanded with its most-requested feature: Edge Trimming. Artists can now control the borders of their scatters, making it easier to do things like ensure that lawn edges are neat and tidy. This feature also removes the telltale signs of CG by making sure objects don’t intersect unnaturally.

Memory improvements aren’t just limited to Corona Pattern. With the launch of Out-of-Core Texture Rendering, designers will also see noticeable savings in textures and maps loaded using Corona Bitmap, without any reduction in quality.

A new Shutter Curve for Motion Blur feature is a fully customizable way to define how your shutter opens/closes over time, helping users create everything from artistic looks to ghosting effects in their imagery.

Corona 9 also introduces a handy tool for one of the world’s most eye-catching lenses. With a new depth of field (DoF) option in Corona 9, artists can apply adjustments to fisheye lenses to create looks that would be impossible to create in the real world.

To learn more about Chaos Corona 9, please visit the Corona 9 blog.

Pricing and Availability
Chaos Corona 9 is available now for 3ds Max 2016-2023 (64 bit) on Windows, and for Cinema 4D R17-2023 (64 bit) on Windows and Mac. Subscriptions are now offered in two categories, Solo and Premium. Each option allows users to access both applications through a single license.

Solo is priced at $53.90 a month and $358.80 a year, while Premium is priced at $67.90/month and $478.80/year. Starting with Chaos Corona 9, Premium subscribers will also receive full access to Chaos Scans, Chaos Phoenix, and Chaos Player, opening up new ways for users to produce high-end 3D visualizations.

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.
 

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Czech
Tom Grimes, grimes@corona-renderer.com
https://corona-renderer.com 

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com 

Photorealistic Renderers Now Support Popular Real-Time Architectural Visualization Tool, Ensuring Smooth Transfers Between Architects and Specialists

KARLSRUHE, Germany — October 4, 2022 — Today, Chaos launches V-Ray 6 for SketchUp and V-Ray 6 for Rhino/Grasshopper, kickstarting a new 3D workflow that removes the biggest bottleneck of architectural design visualization. With new Enscape compatibility, architects can finally deliver complete design intent that the visualization team can immediately build on, no do-over required. 

“When applications don’t talk to each other, design intent can quickly get lost as a project moves from schematic to marketing,” said Konstantin Gaytandzhiev, V-Ray for Rhino and SketchUp product manager at Chaos. “With this new bridge, an architect’s design can continue to be iterated on with every nuance intact, removing the open questions that slow teams down."

Real-Time to Photoreal
The most powerful visualization workflow in AEC is now surprisingly simple. Enscape projects can now be rendered/edited in V-Ray 6 when they need to be pushed to the highest levels of photorealism. With support for Enscape materials, environments, lights and compatible 3D assets, V-Ray 6 ensures that all design decisions are kept throughout the project development stages, creating an unbroken chain between designers and V-Ray specialists.

Procedural Clouds
V-Ray users can also use Enscape technology as part of the new Procedural Cloud system. Instead of spending hours browsing through HDRI libraries, artists can easily simulate a variety of cloud types and weather conditions, from partly cloudy to overcast. This new system is not only memory efficient, it’s an unbeatable way to create dynamic timelapse presentations and streaming streaks of sunlight.

V-Ray Enmesh
With this powerful new tool, complex geometric patterns can be quickly created over object surfaces to make detailed panels, fences, fabrics and more in an automated and memory-efficient way.

Additional Features and Improvements Include:

Lighting

• Finite Dome Light – Fine-tune the size and scale of your 3D environments when using image-based lighting.

Materials

• New Iridescent Materials – Easily create iridescent materials such as soap bubbles, oil spills and more using the V-Ray Material’s new Thin Film option.

• Better Translucent Materials – Render frosted glass and marble faster with the V-Ray Material’s improved subsurface scattering mode.

• More Accurate Reflections – Metals and rough reflective materials now render more accurately thanks to a new energy preservation technique.

• New Distance Texture – Designers can now place textures based on their distance from selected objects. This can be used to create a well-trodden path through a procedural lawn or form dark spots under downspouts.

• Enhanced Dirt Texture – Ensure your dirt is in the right place with positioning tools that can easily add or exclude objects. 

• SketchUp/Enscape Materials Support – Native materials can be kept as is or promoted to V-Ray materials as desired.

Workflow

• Asset Tags – Assets can now be grouped using a new tags system, improving scene organization for complex projects.

• Central Library – V-Ray’s built-in material library is now part of Chaos Cosmos, so designers can conveniently find and manage all of their assets in one place.  The HDRI environments used by Light Gen are also now included in Cosmos.

Rendering

• Resumable Rendering – Renders can now be paused/resumed at any time without losing progress.

• Smarter Light Calculation – Light Cache global illumination is now supported in interactive rendering mode. 

• Optimized Animation Export – SketchUp animations can now be exported up to 10x faster for local or cloud rendering. 

V-Ray Frame Buffer and Post-Production

• Chaos Cloud Collaboration – Share your work and collaborate with internal/external stakeholders in the cloud. With Chaos Cloud Collaboration, you can upload your images and image panoramas straight from the V-Ray Frame Buffer, speeding up the approval process for everyone involved.

• Composition Guides – A new proportions layer makes it easy to pick the right camera angle with the help of visual guides like the rule of thirds and the golden spiral.

• Panorama Viewer – Panoramas can now be explored and edited without the need for third-party tools.

• ACEScg Color Management – Gain a wider color palette for your render output with the industry-standard ACEScg color-encoding system. 

To see all the new features, explore the “What’s New” pages for V-Ray 6 for SketchUp and V-Ray 6 for Rhino/Grasshopper today.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for SketchUp is available now for Windows and MacOS, while V-Ray 6 for Rhino/Grasshopper is available for Windows. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including SketchUp, Rhino, Revit, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website.

V-Ray 6 for SketchUp will be available as part of Trimble’s SketchUp Studio within the week.

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Seamless Decals, Beautiful Clouds and Other Production-Ready Features Now Available in Artist-Friendly Renderer

KARLSRUHE, Germany — September 28, 2022 — Today, Chaos launches V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D, expanding artistic control on everything from particles to the sky. C4D users can now access production-ready features like V-Ray Enmesh, the new procedural clouds system and V-Ray Decal.

V-Ray Decal can project anything, from 3D stickers and labels to weathering elements like cracks, stains and scratches, onto any surface — all in a few clicks. Decals can be applied at angle, without extra UVW work or disturbing the underlying materials, giving artists more creative freedom in their work. A displacement setting is also available for when users want even more realism.

VRayEnmesh is a new system that repeats geometry across the surface of an object in the most memory-efficient way possible. With Enmesh, artists can start treating geometry like a texture, creating patterns like panels, fences and fabrics that are ready for their close-up. Enmesh is so easy on the memory, users can add billions of polygons to a scene without compromise. 

Procedural Clouds have been added to the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, removing the need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Artists can now customize their scenes, taking full advantage of ray-traced lighting, ground shadows and volumetric effects as they animate.

Additional Updates Include:

• Particle rendering support – Quickly render particles based on different parameters such as size, speed and color. It’s now easier to create a wide variety of effects — from splashes and foam to bubbles and sparks.

• ACEScg Support – Gain a wider color palette with an industry-standard ACEScg color-encoding system, complete with automatic adjustments for textures, dispersion, sun & sky and light temperature.

• Finite Dome Light – Fine-tune the scale and depth of your product designs/HDRI renders with the V-Ray Dome Light’s new, more flexible ground projection capabilities.

• Light Cache in IPR – The output of V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) is now identical to the production renderer, so teams can make better decisions in the moment.

• Better Reflections – With the new energy compensation updates, rough metals and surfaces will look even more realistic. 

• Better Translucent Materials – Render frosted glass and marble faster with the V-Ray Material’s new illumination mode.

• Thin-Film Materials – A new thin-film layer has been added to the V-Ray Material, making it easy to create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.

• Panorama Viewer – Panoramas can now be explored and edited in the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB), without the need for third-party tools.

• Composition Guides – A new proportions layer makes it easy to pick the right camera angle with the help of visual guides like the rule of thirds and the golden spiral.

• VFB IPR Selections – Materials, objects and focal points can now all be selected while rendering, with a simple mouse click.

For a full feature tour, please visit the V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D “What’s New” page.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D is available now for Windows, Mac OS, and is compatible with Cinema 4D versions R21 to 2023. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including Cinema 4D, Maya, Houdini, 3ds Max, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website. 

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.
 

######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Production Renderer Introduces V-Ray Profiler, Procedural Clouds, and a Memory-Efficient Geometric Pattern Tool    

KARLSRUHE, Germany — August 31, 2022 — Today, Chaos releases V-Ray 6 for Maya, the latest version of its Academy Award/Emmy-winning production renderer. A staple of over 400 major projects, V-Ray has been used across the streaming and feature film world, including recent effects for The Batman, For All Mankind and Stranger Things 4. V-Ray 6 for Maya expands its feature set with geometric tiling, procedural clouds, a new shader profiler, and more.

VRayEnmesh is a new system that repeats geometry across the surface of an object in the most memory-efficient way possible. With Enmesh, artists can start treating geometry like a texture, creating patterns like chainmail, car grills and fabrics that are ready for their close-up. Enmesh is so easy on the memory, users can add billions of polygons to a scene without compromise.

Procedural Clouds have been added to the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, removing the need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Artists can now customize their scenes, taking full advantage of ray-traced lighting, ground shadows and volumetric effects as they animate.

V-Ray 6 for Maya also introduces a new profiler that tracks the calculation time of shaders and volumes in a scene. Artists can now locate all hot spots in their scene, helping them optimize pipelines for even faster rendering. By pairing V-Ray Profiler with Memory Tracking, V-Ray 6 for Maya users now have everything they need to tackle the monitoring and optimization of their projects. 

Other features in V-Ray 6 for Maya include:

• USD Improvements – V-Ray 6 support the latest MayaUSD version and includes new enhancements for OpenVDB volumes and V-Ray material export, promoting an easy exchange with Solaris and USD-powered pipelines.

• Performance Improvements – Updates include up to 30% faster rendering for Environment Fog, up to 2x faster rendering for the Translucent layer in the V-Ray Material, and enhanced memory efficiency for scenes featuring thousands of instances.  

• Improved Dome Light – A new Finite Dome mode now allows users to control the physical size of their light, according to radius and height. This is especially helpful for rendering objects like cars with proper size and scale in relation to image-based lighting (IBL).

• Thin-Film Materials – A new thin-film layer has been added to the V-Ray Material, making it easy to create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.

• Chaos Cloud Collaboration – For project reviews, V-Ray 6 for Maya adds push-button cloud collaboration, making it easy to share renders through Chaos Cloud via the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB). Clients/teams can now add comments and annotation, see panorama views and more — from anywhere in the world.

• Background Cloud Submissions – Users now have uninterrupted access to Maya whenever they submit to Chaos Cloud Rendering, preserving their iterative cycle.

• Decal Displacement – VRayDecal can now add displacement to any surface, bringing even more realism to cracked walls, rocks, embossed lettering, and more. 

• More Accurate Reflections – With the new energy compensation updates, rough metals and surfaces will look even more realistic. 

• Light Cache in IPR – The output of V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) is identical to the production renderer, so teams can make better decisions in the moment.

• V-Ray Frame Buffer Upgrades – A panorama viewer, a Proportion Guides Layer for composition development, and a Flip button have all been added to the VFB to help designers make better decisions as they assess their work.

• New Chaos Cosmos Assets – In recent months, Chaos Cosmos has exploded across the VFX world for the way it fast tracks previz work. Over 1,500 assets have been added since V-Ray 5, including detailed vegetation, urban textures and photorealistic materials.

• V-Ray GPU Improvements – Artists now have support for nearly all of the new V-Ray 6 features. A faster Light Cache and a new Device Selector that allows them to assign devices to tasks are available, as well.

To see all the new features, explore the V-Ray 6 for Maya “What’s New” page today!

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for Maya is available now for Windows, MacOS and Linux. All V-Ray subscription plans work for all supported host applications, including Maya, Cinema 4D, Houdini, 3ds Max, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Unreal. Pricing can be found on the Chaos website.

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Emmy-Winning Renderer Secret Weapon Behind Some of the Show’s Scariest Scenes Yet

KARLSRUHE, Germany — August 23, 2022 — From children of the 1980s to teenagers and everyone in between, Stranger Things has connected with audiences worldwide. The fourth season is the most epic yet, racking up a record 1.15 billion viewing hours from Netflix subscribers. With superpowered showdowns, exploding helicopters and sinister vine attacks, these episodes presented Scanline VFX with its fair share of challenges to battle with, thankfully V-Ray was its weapon of choice.

“The visual effects work in previous seasons was stellar, but this season was more like nine blockbuster movies,” says Justin Mitchell, VFX Supervisor at Scanline VFX. “We were given some huge sequences and complex effects to work on across eight of the episodes.”

Picking up eight months after season three, Stranger Things 4 finds our heroes separated for the first time, a situation made all the more difficult by the complexities of high school, a sinister new supernatural threat and revelations about Eleven’s origins. Scanline had a hand in many of the season’s most exciting moments, with the climactic events of Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine forming the bulk of the work.

One Big Disintegration
Chapter Seven builds to a critical moment in the story of Stranger Things when a young Eleven stands up to the villainous One in the Rainbow Room of Hawkins Lab. The superpowered face-off ends when Eleven throws One through a window and causes his body to erupt in a maelstrom of ash and light, creating the first rift, a nightmarish portal to the Upside Down.

Scanline put V-Ray’s superior capabilities through their paces to achieve this jaw-dropping effect. To start with, Scanline built a full 3D replica of the Rainbow Room and a digital double of One, with which they matched the performances of the actor and stunt professional. One’s digital double contained a full series of bones and internal organs. “I don't know how much of that appears in the final image, but you get a sense of the volume,” adds Mitchell, “I wanted it to be volumetric and not simply a shell tearing into an empty space.” 

Houdini’s procedural generation tools then took care of tearing the detailed mesh into discrete particles, as One’s body dissolves into ash and light. While V-Ray quickly and efficiently rendered the sequence’s physically accurate effects, meaning Scanline could render multiple lighting passes and extra textures, allowing them to deliver interactive lighting that created a burning effect as One disintegrates.

Black Hawkins Down
The action ramps up in Chapter Eight when Eleven, having been drawn into a trap, makes a superpowered escape from Dr. Brenner’s shady laboratory and the attacking military forces. Her newly restored powers bring a helicopter crashing down outside the facility, a major moment for a character at their most vulnerable. 

Scanline was tasked with adding and animating the CG helicopter, using V-Ray to create a cinematic spectacle as it spirals down to the ground. “I love V-Ray,” adds Mitchell, “it’s our renderer of choice. Whether we’re working on huge superhero movies or high-concept TV shows, we can always count on its power and stability.”

A real helicopter was filmed for the sequence, however, the action demanded that Scanline add the helicopter into approximately half of the shots. In lieu of crashing an actual helicopter into the set, the impact and subsequent explosion would be done in CG.

An on-set fireball gave the crash an explosive presence and provided a practical element for Scanline to build the rest of this big-screen sequence around. Artists created a digital double of the real helicopter, as well as the military Humvees and trucks that it would crash into on the ground. Digital fireballs and debris were then added to further augment the explosion alongside sparks, dust, and rotor wash from the crumpling helicopter – small details that when combined, led to one of Stranger Things’ biggest moments yet.

Rifts Apart
Stranger Things 4 sees various rifts open across Hawkins, shattering the barrier between our world and the nightmarish realm of the Upside Down. It’s a defining moment for the show, as the level of threat expands beyond anything we’ve seen before and Scanline’s VFX work had to ensure that the audience felt the danger.

“There are so many rifts this season, appearing at different scales, in different materials and environments,” says Mitchell. “We had to develop a common language between them.” Scanline used almost every 3D trick in the book to pull off these shots, cooking up a cocktail of rigid bodies, cloth, soft bodies, fluids, hair and particles to visualize doorways that could spell doom in season five.

By far the most complex rift came in Chapter Nine, Scanline’s biggest episode of the season. As rifts carve their way across Hawkins, destroying everything in their path, one opens at the bottom of Lover’s Lake. Realizing that the real-world effect of such an event would be decidedly uncinematic, like a bath emptying, Scanline utilized their creative license. “We had to devise a visual representation that was more dynamic, which is why we've got these two facing waterfalls that tear across the lake,” Mitchell explains.

It’s exactly the kind of effects-heavy sequence that would devour rendering resources without a tool as robust as V-Ray. Scanline made extensive use of the denoiser to get shots through the pipeline efficiently, achieving stunning renders in a practical timeframe, a crucial advantage when you have 220 shots to deliver across eight episodes of television.

Chapter Vine
From slithering vines to flying bat creatures, everything living in the Upside Down is part of a villainous hive mind. For Chapter Nine, Scanline added CG vines inside the creepy Creel House that come alive, animating their interaction with the actors and adding FX spores, dust and atmos to emphasize the eerie atmosphere.

“The vines are in many shots that are part of the Upside Down,” says Mitchell. “Most of them are created and dressed by the art department, but in this sequence, they needed to really move.” V-Ray’s speed meant that Scanline could iterate with different levels of subsurface on the CG vines, deciding, in the end, to scale back and balance a slimy, organic feel with the look of the physical vines on set.

Scanline used a digital replica of the Creel House to animate the vines and matchmoved the actors’ on set performances for the terrifying moment that the vines grab hold and pin them to the wall. On-set elements helped to integrate the CG vines in the scene and V-Ray ensured realistic shadows and reflections, perfectly integrating with the practical effects. 

The Upside Down is characterized by its unearthly atmosphere and the sequence was made all the more difficult by the kids’ flashlight beams intersecting with various atmospherics. Scanline undertook painstaking work to layer elements in front and behind the volumetric light emanating from the flashlights, something V-Ray’s light and atmospheric tools make it uniquely qualified for.

With several shots across the season needing as many as a hundred render passes, V-Ray’s denoiser was crucial to delivering high-quality renders within a practical time frame, without devouring resources. While it’s far from the most exciting feature, it’s a reminder of the importance of reliability on projects like Stranger Things 4.

“V-Ray has a lot of great advanced features,” says Mitchell, “but what you really want is a renderer that's robust, fast, and just works. That’s definitely the case for V-Ray.”

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

Production Studio Explores Rendering Workflow for the Creepy Netflix Short

KARLSRUHE, Germany — August 2, 2022 — From Fight Club to Mank, David Fincher is a master at using low-key lighting and dark palettes to explore the pitfalls of human morality. Now, the director has taken his characteristic aesthetic to Bad Travelling, a thriller about a dishonest crew sailing alien seas – and a monster who strikes a murderous deal with the ship’s captain. 

The Love, Death + Robots episode marks Fincher’s first completely computer-animated film. It’s also the first time he’s directly contributed to the Netflix anthology he executive produces alongside Tim Miller. To create the nautical world of Bad Travelling, Fincher worked with the team at Miller’s animation and VFX firm, Blur Studio, who used V-Ray for 3ds Max’s lighting tools to help Fincher embrace the darkness.

“David Fincher read the original short story that inspired Bad Travelling 15 years ago, and I guess the idea never really left his mind,” said Co-CG Supervisor at Blur Studio, Jean Baptiste Cambier. “Even though Bad Travelling was his first animation project, we quickly understood that Fincher was naturally curious, always looking to find new ways to explore his craft. However, there were definitely new things for him to learn about working with animation as a medium. Unlike live action, animation does not often leave much room for on-set happy accidents or instinctive decisions – everything is thought about, planned, and calculated.”

To counteract this, the Blur team leveraged V-Ray’s Light Selects and Physical Camera Exposure controls to bridge the gap between live action and CG. By rendering sequences this way at an early stage, they were able to achieve more intuitive results with shots that didn’t look overworked. The team also built a proprietary tool for Nuke called Light Rig, which allowed them to treat V-Ray’s Light Selects as a cinematographer would on set. The exposure of each individual light could be controlled interactively, without re-rendering, ensuring that the environment, characters, and fluid sims could be lit on the fly, in real time. 

Lighting like Fincher
Work on lighting began early in Blur’s lookdev process, which involved refining the aesthetic of each sequence before assets were made. “Fincher is keenly aware of the practicality of different textures, surfaces, and materials, and the physics of how they react to light in the real world,” said Compositing Supervisor at Blur, Nitant Ashok Karnik. “His eye for color is insanely precise. For example, when we were establishing lighting for the ship’s cargo hold, Fincher specified that he only wanted oil lanterns and moonlight – specifically 1,800K and 4,000K respectively. And of course, they were all spot-on in look and feel.” 

As well as lighting and color, Fincher was also very intentional about how the audience should feel during key scenes. The sunset in the story, for instance, had to look ugly with greenish hues reminiscent of Se7en. Meanwhile, the ship where the film takes place had to feel disgusting, with a dark cargo hold below deck that would feel hellish and dank – exactly the kind of place the story's crustacean monster would be found.

“We worked hard to make these characters feel like they were in a horrible, wretched place, and to make the audience feel as uncomfortable as the characters looked,” said Karnik. “We also played with lighting on the characters. For the antihero, Torrin, our art director had the idea of using a 50/50 lighting style, where only half his face was lit. Conceptually, we thought this lighting mirrored how morally gray his behavior was. You can see this transition from the beginning of the short, where the light wraps across Torrin’s face, to the end where he’s murdered his entire crew and his face is half-lit.”

Swaying the sea
Being able to create a realistic, horrifying seascape was also key to ensuring the final animation felt immersive. To do this, the Blur Studio team used V-Ray’s infinite VRayPlane to define the horizon lines throughout each sequence. 

“Everything in Bad Travelling happens on a boat at sea,” said Cambier. “This represents a relatively contained space, so we knew that our representation of parallax and scale was key to making the final render look realistic.” 

Once the horizon lines were defined, the team had to create the illusion of constant swaying from the ocean’s waves, which had to be checked in animation previews. There were two ways to do this: sway the whole boat and all the characters on it, as well as the cloth and hair; or simply move everything around the boat to give the illusion of swaying.

“The choice was quickly made to sway all that is around the boat, as it would have been a nightmare to animate everything happening on the deck,” said Cambier. “Using the VRayPlane was essential for this too. It allowed us to do some simple coding to include and snap that infinite ocean in all our renders, from animation to lighting all the way to the final comp.”

Delivering in record time
Despite having just six months to deliver 386 shots, the Blur Studio team was able to complete Bad Travelling on schedule by optimizing their workflow. “Chaos have been our partners in crime for a very long time. Even David Fincher’s relationship with V-Ray goes way back: his video for ‘Only’ by Nine Inch Nails (created with Digital Domain) was the first time V-Ray’s photorealistic ray tracing was used in a commercial project,” said Cambier. 

“For a studio like Blur, each new version of V-Ray has a shorter render time, which is really a game changer. We can either decide to render our shows faster, therefore allowing us to move faster between projects, or we can decide to push our quality, by turning on features like shutter imperfections, caustics, or textures in fog. Either way, we have more power to keep a show within its original scope and schedule, giving artists time to find a healthy work/life balance, without making any sacrifices on the quality of our final render.”

To read an in-depth interview with the Blur Studio team, check out the Chaos blog.

About Chaos 

Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray, has been honored with both an Academy Award and an Engineering Emmy for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

New Object Scattering Tool, Procedural Clouds and More Added to Industry’s Most Complete Rendering Software

KARLSRUHE, Germany — July 7, 2022 — Today, Chaos releases V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, a major upgrade to its all-in-one photorealistic rendering software. Artists can now use powerful new world-building and workflow tools to quickly distribute 3D objects, generate detailed 3D surfaces and add procedural clouds to create beautiful custom skies, helping them do more without additional plugins. V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max also introduces a cloud collaboration tool to speed up reviews and approvals.

Chaos Scatter enables artists to easily populate their scenes with millions of 3D objects to produce natural-looking landscapes and environments without adjusting objects by hand. Objects can now be distributed, spaced and randomized with a system that is built to conserve memory, even more so when used with V-Ray Proxy objects that only load at render time. To help users get started with Chaos Scatter, there are free 3D models and scatter presets available in the Chaos Cosmos content library.

New procedural clouds, built on technology from Enscape, have been added to the V-Ray Sun and Sky system, so artists can create custom skies. Artists can now easily simulate a variety of cloud types and weather conditions, from partly cloudy to overcast. When these clouds are ray traced with V-Ray, they respond accurately to lights, shadows and volumetric effects, rendering them as realistic as possible. Procedural clouds can also be animated to create dynamic time-lapse skies and streaming streaks of sunlight.

VRayEnmesh is a powerful new tool that tiles patterns of 3D geometry across objects to create complex surfaces at the highest level of detail. Because the surfaces are created with full 3D geometry, it's ideal for making intricate panels, fences and fabrics that can be viewed at close range. VRayEnmesh efficiently generates huge amounts of geometry at render time, without bogging down scene performance.

V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max also incorporates a free Chaos Cloud Collaboration service that shares images from V-Ray to Chaos Cloud. Clients, team members and other stakeholders can now easily review, markup and comment at any time, streamlining the process for everyone involved in the project.

Other new features include:

• Upgraded V-Ray Frame Buffer – An improved V-Ray Frame Buffer includes a 360° panorama viewer, a flip composition button, helpful composition guides and the option to share renders via Chaos Cloud.

• Improved dome light – A new Finite mode lets users specify the height and radius of a dome light. Dome light ground projections are also improved with full control over blend settings.

• More accurate reflective materials – Metals and rough reflective surfaces are rendered more accurately using a new energy compensation method.

• Thin-film materials – A new thin-film layer in the V-Ray Material helps users create iridescent materials like soap bubbles and oil spills.

• Improved subsurface scattering – Subsurface scattering in the V-Ray Material renders faster, and low-polygon translucent objects render smoother.

• Decal displacements – VRayDecal can now project displacement maps onto any surface to add realism to cracks, rocks, embossed details and more.

• Batch loading of multi-sub textures – Multiple textures can now be added to the VRayMultiSubTex map all at once.

• Improved UI – Material and texture interfaces are now faster for a smoother experience. 

• V-Ray Proxy hierarchy – Through a new hierarchy view, users can control object visibility and material overrides within a V-Ray Proxy.

• V-Ray GPU Improvements – Supports nearly all new V-Ray 6 features and enables faster Light Cache and a new Device Selector to assign processors to tasks.

To see V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max in action, watch the What’s New video or register for the upcoming webinar on July 28, 2022.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max is available now. Starting with V-Ray 6, V-Ray subscription licenses work for all supported host applications to include 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Unreal. V-Ray 6 is available in three packages:

V-Ray Solo:

• Works with all supported host applications

• Fixed license for use on one computer (cannot be shared between users)

• Includes access to the Chaos Cosmos content library

• $466.80 per year. Also available as a monthly or three-year subscription

V-Ray Premium:

• Works with all supported host applications

• Floating license for use on any computer (can be shared by multiple users)

• Includes additional Chaos applications: Phoenix, Player, Scans and Vantage

• Includes access to the Chaos Cosmos content library

• 20 Chaos Cloud credits per year

• $694.80 per year. Also available as a monthly or three-year subscription

V-Ray Enterprise:

• Includes everything in V-Ray Premium with a discount for purchasing five or more seats

• $598.80 per year. Also available as a three-year subscription for a further discount

Customers with perpetual licenses of V-Ray 3 for 3ds Max, V-Ray Next for 3ds Max or V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max can upgrade their perpetual licenses to V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max, or switch to a new subscription package at a discount.

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

 ######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com

KARLSRUHE, Germany — May 26, 2022 — Today, Chaos announces it has acquired CGarchitect, home to the largest architectural visualization community online. To celebrate, Chaos is making all accounts free, opening up some of the site’s most prized features to help users advance their careers in a more effective way.

For over 20 years, CGarchitect has been the hub for professional architectural visualization, playing host to over 100,000 user-generated images, 400,000 forum posts, and the 3D Awards, collectively known as the “Oscars” of archviz. The site will remain an independent, product-agnostic platform dedicated to helping users share work, find jobs, and connect with others around the world.

To create a direct line to the community, CGarchitect’s day-to-day operations will be overseen by Lon Grohs, Director of Creative and Communications at Chaos and a former archviz artist, who previously worked as a Principal and Creative Director at famed architectural visualization studio, Neoscape. 

“Chaos and CGarchitect have been inextricably linked since the beginning, as friends, business partners, and supporters of this community,” said Grohs. “When we heard that Jeff needed to move on, we knew we had to step up so this powerful network he created could live on and keep serving the people that use it everyday.”

“Few companies care and know about our industry like Chaos, which makes them the perfect stewards for everything we’ve built,” said Jeff Mottle, founder of CGarchitect. “When I started this, all I wanted was to foster a community that remained connected and excited about the work. Now, I just want everyone to thrive. With Lon at the helm, I have no doubt the site will continue to give people what they need to stand out and be seen.”
With free accounts, all members can now access:

• Advanced story builder – Create custom, magazine-like layouts for your projects, filled with high-resolution images and animations.
• AI search tools – Look for images with AI searches optimized for visual similarity, color palettes, and more. 
• Mood boards – Discover new points of inspiration or reference in over 105,000 images, all of which can be instantly assigned to a public or private mood board.
• Advanced job CRM – Track applications across channels, sort and rank applicants, even search for candidates in real-time – all in one place.
• Free job posts – Share open positions and attract top talent without constraints.

To learn more, check out our podcast with Lon Grohs and Jeff Mottle.

About Chaos 
Chaos develops visualization technologies that empower artists and designers to create photorealistic imagery and animation across all creative industries. The firm’s physically based renderer, V-Ray®, has been honored with both an Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy® for its role in the widespread adoption of ray-traced rendering in motion pictures and television. 

In 2022, Chaos merged with Enscape, a leading provider of real-time rendering and design workflow technology for the AEC industry. Enscape offers innovative solutions that connect directly into modeling software, integrating design and visualization workflows seamlessly into one. Together, the newly combined company is creating an end-to-end ecosystem of 3D visualization tools accessible to everyone. 

For more information, visit chaos.com and enscape3d.com.

######

Press Contacts:

Chaos
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaos.com
www.chaos.com

Liaison
Colin McLaughlin, (503) 796-9822, colin@liaisonpr.com
www.liaisonpr.com