Eleven V-Ray and Phoenix FD Products Now Available Through One License; More Flexibility for Projects, Classes and Coursework

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – April 1, 2020 – Today, Chaos Group launches the V-Ray Education Collection, a new offering that provides access to 11 V-Ray and Phoenix FD products through a single license. Students, schools and educators can now use Chaos Group’s industry-standard renderer and fluid simulation software for $149 a year (an 86% savings compared to purchasing individually). 

"We wanted to make it easier for students and educators to access a full suite of software, as they learn and teach visualization for architecture, design and visual effects,” said Veselina Zheleva, Chaos Group education director. “With our new collection, users can easily switch between the leading 3D applications, helping them branch out, reduce costs and expand their curriculums.”

Students
The V-Ray Education Collection offers students more flexibility as they begin to master workflows and build their portfolios. As coursework and interests develop, students can apply different versions of V-Ray to their own unique challenges. With options for architecture (Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, 3ds Max), visual effects (Maya, Houdini), real-time (Unreal) and more, students can now hone in on the areas that matter most.

Universities and Educators
With one price across products, schools and teachers no longer have to limit themselves as they design courses. They can choose the right product for the job, and then switch it if plans or industry trends start to shift. As cost is a historical barrier to departmental growth, the V-Ray Education Collection has been priced to spur new classes and expanded curriculums, so administrators won’t have to wait for new budgets whenever they have a good idea.

The V-Ray Education Collection includes full versions of 11 products and free upgrades for the length of the license. Free access to Chaos Group’s commercial support team is also included, providing on-demand support from set-up to settings.

The V-Ray Education Collection Includes:

• V-Ray for 3ds Max
• V-Ray for Maya
• V-Ray for SketchUp
• V-Ray for Rhino
• V-Ray for Revit
• V-Ray for Modo
• V-Ray for Unreal
• V-Ray for Houdini
• V-Ray for Cinema 4D
• Phoenix FD for 3ds Max
• Phoenix FD for Maya

To learn more, please visit Chaos Group’s education page.

Pricing and Availability
The V-Ray Education Collection is available now for any accredited institution, educator, student or training center and priced at $149 a year. Licenses can be purchased directly or through one of Chaos Group’s education resellers.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Photorealistic Renderer Gains Over 20 New Features and Improvements, Bringing Smart Tech to the BIM World

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – December 3, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group launches V-Ray Next for Revit, building scene intelligence, asset management and simple workflows deep into the design process. Architects can now be more creative in their favorite tool, using dozens of new features and improvements to produce photorealistic imagery faster than ever before.  

"We’ve distilled four years of R&D into a tool that will instantly make sense to architects, so they can save more time as they move from concept to construction,” said Ana Lyubenova, product specialist for Revit at Chaos Group. “V-Ray Next is not just the next step in our evolution, it’s helping Revit do things it couldn’t do before.”

A Better Revit

• New Asset Editor – Create, edit, save and manage V-Ray materials all in one place. Advanced materials give designers even more control when fine-tuning their designs, simplifying the process of recreating real-world materials with complex surfaces.
   
• Appearance Manager – Basic Revit assets can now be switched to photoreal V-Ray assets at render time to keep BIM models unaffected and clean.
   
• Better Entourage – With .vrscene linking, architects can now quickly populate visualizations with high-quality entourage from any V-Ray product, giving designs a more custom look.
   
• Randomize Objects – Add variety to plants and trees by randomizing the scale and rotation of V-Ray Proxy and V-Ray Scene instances.
   
• Lighting Analysis – Easily evaluate real-world lux values from daylight and fixtures to determine the true illumination levels of a design. 

Smarter, Faster

• Speed Boosts – Rendering speeds are now up to 50 percent faster in V-Ray Next. Improvements to GPU rendering offer another 200 percent, further extended through V-Ray’s new Adaptive Dome Light, which can show improvements up to 2x.
   
• Auto Exposure & White Balance – The V-Ray Physical Camera can now set the correct camera exposure and white balance automatically, offering picture-perfect renders every time.
   
• Real-Time AI Denoiser – No-input denoising eliminates image noise almost instantly to give an immediate sense of lighting. 
   
• New Lens Effects – Add an extra touch of photorealism with the fully redesigned camera lens effects. Simulate real-world bloom and glare; add lens dust and scratches; or get feedback in the Aperture Preview for more refined control.

More Efficient

• Improved Toolbar –  Redesigned icons and features make for a more intuitive user experience.
   
• Revit Decals – With full support for Revit Decals, users can now easily render paintings, signs, screens and more.
   
• Settings & Work-Sharing – V-Ray settings can now be saved within a Revit project, making it easy to adopt and share the same render settings across teams and projects. 
   
• Direct Render Saves – A streamlined workflow now allows for direct saves to a Revit project from the V-Ray Frame Buffer.
   
• Background Image – Stunning light setups can now be combined with custom background images through a merged dialog, making it easier to separate out different elements of a lighting simulation.

“V-Ray Next for Revit elevates our design process, helping us achieve professional grade renders straight out of Revit,” said Miguel Colina, Architectural Designer at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. “Thanks to its photorealistic lighting and proxy implementation, we can save time in post-production and focus on our design intent.”

For a full list of new features, please visit: chaosgroup.com. 

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray Next for Revit is available now. A full Workstation license is priced at $750, with upgrades available for $395. V-Ray Next for Revit can also be rented for $350 annually or $60/month. For a free 30-day trial, click here.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Animation Support, NVIDIA RTX GPU Scaling, a New Noise Algorithm and More Expand World’s Most Realistic Real-Time Ray Tracer

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – August 13, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group previews major features coming to Project Lavina, its groundbreaking application for 100% ray tracing in real-time. Project Lavina can fully ray trace massive 3D scenes without workarounds or raster graphics. Artists simply drag and drop their V-Ray scenes to explore them immediately in real-time – without the complex setup of a game engine.

At SIGGRAPH 2019, Chaos Group demonstrated the new features through several scenes including a one-billion polygon KitBash3d city designed by Blizzard Entertainment’s Evan Butler and a fully interactive walkthrough of Kevin Margo’s CONSTRUCT construction site, including looping fight animations that were displayed at a minimum of 24 frames per second, using an RTX Studio laptop. With the ability to support multiple RTX GPUs, Chaos Group projects VR frame rates in the near future.

The latest developments include:

• New real-time Chaos denoiser
• Multiple GPU support
• Animation support
• Enhanced camera controls and transitions
• Automatic collision and stair/ramp detection
• Material swapping
• Drag-and-drop IBL environments
• LUT color profiles
• Scene merging
• Selection and transformation of objects
• Hide/unhide selections
• Interactive depth of field

“We’ve come a long way in five years,” said Lon Grohs, Global Head of Creative at Chaos Group. “When CONSTRUCT started, Kevin was visualizing characters at 24 frames a second with over $250,000 in hardware behind him. Today, he could just use Lavina, achieving full ray tracing with even higher fidelity on a $1,000 RTX card. Artists have never seen anything like this. Now that it’s within reach, it’s going to change everything.”

To express interest in the beta, sign up now. To read the original Project Lavina announcement, click here. 
 

About Chaos Group

Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – July 29, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group releases V-Ray for Houdini, a production-proven renderer built for high-end VFX and animation projects. Artists can now assemble their scenes in a procedural environment, using V-Ray for Houdini for even more control. Able to handle the most demanding pipelines, V-Ray for Houdini is production ready thanks to Ingenuity Studios, who have been using it since 2017 to create high-profile pieces for Billie Eilish and The Walking Dead.

“We started using the alpha build about 30 minutes after it was released,” recalls Grant Miller, owner and VFX Supervisor at Ingenuity Studios. “We wanted to move scene assembly into  Houdini, so we’d have more control over our instances and a tighter loop on VFX and look dev. If V-Ray for Houdini could take us there, we were all in.”

V-Ray for Houdini’s first test was on Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” video, whose CG snakes helped Swift poke fun at negative press and earn over a billion views. From there, its growth was organic, as new features and boosts continued to win over artists used to working with Maya and Mantra.

“I can't speak enough to the responsiveness of the Chaos team,” said Miller. “They turned around countless features and bug fixes in no time. Their dedication to making V-Ray for Houdini a first-class integration is a big source of confidence.”

Taylor Swift - …Ready For It? 
After the success of “Look What You Made Me Do,” Ingenuity were tapped again for Swift’s next video “...Ready for It?”, a Ghost in the Shell-inspired affair that had to pack robot faces, digital eyes, magical orbs, energy blasts, lightning and shattering glass into three and a half minutes. The ambitious video also had a set piece – a glass box – that had to correctly refract Swift and the effects around her at all times. 

Since the team was still transitioning to V-Ray for Houdini, the box setup was created in V-Ray for Nuke. The VFX work was then completed in Houdini with .vrscene files exported for later use in Nuke, allowing the team to do look dev on the lightning and clouds in Houdini with full trust that everything would match when rendered, since V-Ray was used on both applications. 

Billie Eilish (feat. Khalid) - Lovely
Having proven their prowess with glass boxes and pop stars, Ingenuity was an easy choice for Interscope Records, who also wanted a glass box around Billie Eilish and Khalid for their single, “Lovely.” This time, the glass box and visual effects would take center stage, as “Lovely” would be shot entirely in one take using green screen. As the song progresses, Ingenuity’s effects would play off the glass box metaphor, calling back to the sadness of the lyrics as creeping frost and rippling water hold our subjects in.

“Billie and Khalid needed to be integrated inside the glass box and subsequently refract through it,” said Miller. “By exporting .vrscenes from Houdini and rendering with V-Ray for Nuke, we were able to keep their keys and roto live, making adjustments as the video progressed without the need to render updated keyed footage and round-trip it back through CG or FX. Having the flexibility to easily send assets and FX from one package to another made this all possible.”

 Ingenuity used V-Ray for Houdini for look development. The interplay of glass box and VFX made Houdini a prime tool for experimentation, allowing the team to populate their environment with clouds, lightning, water, frost and splashes and see what worked best. After decisions were made, the studio rendered scenes as they saw fit, sometimes in Houdini, sometimes in V-Ray for Nuke, giving Ingenuity more flexibility with their pipeline and Eilish 303 million views and counting.

The Walking Dead - Field of the Dead 
V-Ray for Houdini helped Ingenuity yet again when it effortlessly rendered a six billion poly scene for The Walking Dead – complete with rolling volumetric fog and a digimatte sky. In this scene, Rick Grimes enters a field of 9,000 zombies, a horrific sight that goes on as far as the eye can see. After the foreground elements were keyed and tracked using blue screen, the artists used Houdini to scatter the bodies on an art-directed terrain mesh.

While each character ranged from 500,000 to 900,000 polygons, depending on outfit and hairstyle, Ingenuity was able to keep the render times low using V-Ray for Houdini’s instancing features – a key to success for a shot that ran for several hundred frames. These features also removed the need for Level of Detail (LoD) tricks, helping Ingenuity bring a cinematic look to a popular production.

2018 / 2019 TV Season
Whether The Walking Dead or another show, work can vary widely over the course of a TV season, requiring tool sets that help Ingenuity turn effects around on a dime. This season was especially busy and saw the team creating explosions for The Passage and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a horde of rats for Counterpart, tropical birds for Superstore, and a theatre set extension for Blackish.

“V-Ray for Houdini really crossed a threshold in terms of feature support and usability this past year,” said Miller. “We’d been using it and definitely enjoying the benefits, but at this point, it’s our primary tool for scene assembly and lighting.”

With V-Ray for Houdini, Ingenuity was able to hit their two-week turnarounds, producing cinematic effects for several projects at once. “The procedural nature of Houdini allows us to easily update our assets over the lifetime of a shot, without breaking shading or simulation setups,” added Miller. “From a practical standpoint, this means that the second we have a blocked in model of an asset, we can publish it as a v1 and start rigging. V-Ray for Houdini helps us start right away so we can take on more projects at once. And that workload is only getting more intense.”

For a full feature list, please visit the V-Ray for Houdini product page.

Pricing/Availability
V-Ray for Houdini is available now for Houdini and Houdini Indie 16.5.473 and later, with support for Windows, Linux and MacOS. Licenses are available for $80 a month and $470 annually. 

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Annual Presentation Series Returns with Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Talks on 'Game of Thrones,' 'Captain Marvel,' 'The Orville' and More

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – June 27, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group announces the lineup for Total Chaos @ SIGGRAPH (previously V-Ray Days), featuring in-depth production talks on Captain Marvel, Game of Thrones and more. Total Chaos will also play host to “Vlado in Renderland,” covering the latest in V-Ray research and development, as well as a new “Women in Technology” panel featuring speakers from VFX production studios such as Zoic Studios and Pixomondo.

The free two-day event will be held in room 409A of the Los Angeles Convention Center, on the second-floor concourse. Presentations begin Tuesday, July 30 at 10:00 a.m. While the sessions are open to all SIGGRAPH attendees, seating may be limited. Due to the exclusive content being shown, recording is not permitted.

For the second year in a row, Digital Domain will dive deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, exploring recent films like Captain Marvel. Game of Thrones’ iconic credits will be discussed by Elastic Art Director and Head of 3D Kirk Shintani, who will chart a 10-year journey from season one through eight. Pixomondo will also be on hand to break down a fiery space battle recently featured on Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville.

On day two, industry players from Pixomondo, Magnopus, ARwall and Zoic Studios will lead an all-women panel focused on the best ways to carve out a niche in CG. Using insights from their careers, the speakers will explain how to identify strengths, advance skill sets and find an authentic voice in a competitive industry.

Other presentations will cover visual architectural design (KPF), real-time workflows (Method Studios) and the latest developments from Chaos Research, the new research arm of Chaos Group. Corona advances in rendering caustics and scene assembly with V-Ray for Houdini (Ingenuity Studios) will also be shown.

Total Chaos @ SIGGRAPH Presentation Schedule:

Tuesday, July 30

• KPF “The Visual Architectural Design Process” by Cobus Bothma, Director of Applied Research, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
   
• Chaos Group “Vlado in Renderland 2019” by Vladimir Koylazov, Co-Founder & Head of Software Development, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
   
• Digital Domain “Creating Superheroes the V-Ray Way” by Deke Kincaid, Pipeline Supervisor, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m
   
• Chaos Group “Making Caustics Mainstream with Corona Renderer 4” by Ondra Karlík, CTO & Main Developer of Corona Renderer, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
   
• Ingenuity Studios “Agile Workflow Tips with V-Ray for Houdini” by Grant Miller, Partner & VFX Supervisor, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Wednesday, July 31

• Chaos Research “Beyond Pretty Pictures: Pushing the Boundaries of Color 3D Printed Objects” by Jaroslav Křivánek, Partner, Research & Development, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
   
• Method Studios “Innovative Real-Time Solutions: Where Tech, Art and Film Converge” by Lee Carlton, CG Supervisor, 11:00 a.m.– 12:00 p.m.
   
• Elastic “Game of Thrones Main Title Design: A 10-Year Journey” by Kirk Shintani, Art Director & Head of 3D, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
   
• “Women in Technology: Carve Your Niche in the Industry” panel, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
   
• Pixomondo “Choreographing Chaos: The Orville’s Epic Space Battle” by Nhat Phong Tran, VFX Supervisor & Daniel Carbo, VFX Producer, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
   

Additional SIGGRAPH presentations:

In addition to Total Chaos @ SIGGRAPH, Chaos Group staff and developers are set to present several talks to the community, highlighting new developments in V-Ray and Corona. 

• “Path Guiding in Production,” featuring Chaos Research expert Jaroslav Křivánek along with panelists from Weta Digital and NVIDIA, July 28, 2:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m., Room 403AB
   
• “Optimal Multiple Importance Sampling,” featuring Jaroslav Křivánek along with authors from Charles University, Saarland University and more, July 29, 10:45 a.m. – 12:35 p.m., Room 153
   
• “V-Ray GPU & Lavina Showcase,” featuring Phil Miller, Alex Yolov and Peter Matanov, July 31, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., NVIDIA’s Innovation Theater in Booth 1303
  ​​​​​​​

To see Chaos Group’s full schedule, please visit https://www.chaosgroup.com/siggraph2019. If you would like to schedule a meeting at the show, please contact david.tracy@chaosgroup.com.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

Unreal Material Support Brings Academy Award-Winning Ray Tracing to Full User Base; Free for Current Users

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – May 30, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group releases V-Ray for Unreal Update 1, bringing new capabilities to the only production rendering workflow designed for real-time. With new support for native Unreal materials, designers can now ray trace every part of their scene from their existing Unreal projects. Viewport rendering has also been added, making it easier than ever to produce photorealistic beauty shots and reference checks from within Unreal.

“As the need to create custom applications and configurators continues to grow, the design industry needs more power in one place,” said Simeon Balabanov, V-Ray for Unreal Product Manager. “With support for native Unreal materials, V-Ray for Unreal can offer 100 percent ray traced accuracy to all workflows, so V-Ray quality is always available, no matter where your project starts.”

Unreal Materials
With V-Ray for Unreal, Unreal materials are automatically converted into V-Ray equivalents at render time, allowing all projects to use V-Ray from the Unreal Editor. Now, thousands of new users can access V-Ray quality and light baking without adjusting their established workflow, blending the best of real-time and ray tracing into a single pipeline.

Viewport Rendering
Users can now render interactively as they iterate, seeing the results of changes to lights and materials directly in the Unreal viewport. As looks develop, users can activate V-Ray to produce beauty shots or cycle through options at the highest fidelity possible. Physically based lighting also allows V-Ray for Unreal to act as a reference tool, providing designers with the most realistic view of how their assets will look in a real-world situation.

A Better Bridge
With new 1:1 support for Datasmith material translations, Update 1 makes it possible for CAD designers to utilize the full power of V-Ray technology and its physically based materials, giving them a ground truth representation they can rely on.

Speed and Memory Optimizations
Numerous optimizations have been added across the board, including better memory usage around large data sets and scenes with millions of polygons. Light baking is also now up to 60 percent faster without sacrificing quality.

To see V-Ray for Unreal’s full capabilities, please visit the product page.

Pricing/Availability
V-Ray for Unreal Update 1 is free and available now to current customers. Update 1 also adds support for Unreal Engine 4.22. New seats can be purchased by a variety of methods including monthly ($80), annual ($470) and education pricing, which comes as a flat $99 fee for students, educators and universities. Interested parties can also visit the website for a free starter’s guide.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.
 

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – May 23, 2019 – Every Game of Thrones fan knows, you don’t skip the credits. They are your first clue into where the story is going. But after seven seasons, the story had brought everyone to Westeros, creating a new challenge for artists used to making sense of the sprawl. With less distance, the show would be even more centered on relationships, giving Elastic a chance to re-shape their iconic credits around the worlds within.

To Elastic, this meant journeying inside some of Westeros’ most famous landmarks, fulfilling a brief that put everything on the table, as long as the visual language and clockwork shots remained intact.

“When we heard that, our brains went into overdrive,” said Kirk Shintani, Art Director and Head of 3D at Elastic. “There have been so many things we wanted to update and change since season one, but we never had the time. Once we knew we were going inside the buildings, we suddenly had no choice. We had to start from scratch and all of our old ideas came tumbling out.”

Going into the locations posed a new set of questions for the artists, who needed the audience to immediately understand where they were. Beginning and end points, unique characteristics and the way rooms flowed together were all up for discussion. Elastic’s old rules around depth of field and camera movement also had to be thrown out. What had worked on the exteriors no longer applied, leaving the team questioning how to include the right details at the right scale.

“We wanted to avoid hiding the transitions in any way and keep the moves seamless, so when you transition from a super wide into a tight interior, it would feel as claustrophobic as possible,” said Shintani. “Asset sizing played a huge role in this. If we were to make the entire Red Keep a foot tall, then the Iron Throne would be the size of a pea. So we worked backwards from our smallest interior element and set exterior scale from that.”

Behind the scenes Elastic used V-Ray for Maya to render the animations, which continued to adapt over the course of the season to reflect changes in the narrative. The new structures also gave Elastic license to do something they’d wanted to do for a long time: add more details. All of which were refined with the help of V-Ray Next’s IPR system.

“Creative is king at Elastic, so we always want to keep pushing and tweaking until we get the best result possible,” said Shintani. “Interactive rendering with V-Ray IPR is really fast, so we were able to dial things in quickly and just keep tweaking. We probably did about 3-4x more work in season eight than we did in season one, but we were able to do it in the same amount of time, with a ton more detail. V-Ray was essential in making this happen.”

White Walkers

With the White Walkers on the move, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff wanted to amp up the tension with a weekly reminder of their progress. To accomplish this, Elastic developed a concept from season one where land pieces changed as power shifted throughout the kingdom, similar to a Risk board. Adapted to the White Walkers, the path became a series of icy blue tiles that would flip each week on their way to Winterfell.

But since the Westeros map is spherical, the implementation of the tiles proved more challenging than Elastic originally thought. The new world now included dozens of layers of wood, making the process of laying out each tile much more involved. Looking for a tactile quality, the team used V-Ray for look development before deciding on glass with a white wood base. Once selected, V-Ray Proxies were applied to optimize the rendering, bringing more speed to the elaborate five-month project.

Winterfell

Unlike past iterations, Elastic had to account for both the structure and the area around Winterfell, which needed to be played up to show Walkers in the distance. The famous Godswood Tree would also be redesigned with more scale and density. In a nod to past seasons, Elastic had the camera sweep around the tree, providing a moment of familiarity before they shattered expectations and took fans inside.

Lighting The Great Hall and Crypt proved difficult at first, as the team’s old tricks didn’t work on interiors. The mission quickly became keeping the light alive, as the team learned how light interactions between the window cutouts, gaps and gears would help it move throughout the shots. Using V-Ray light fog, the artists made the environmental elements work to their advantage, ensuring that the shafts of light would naturally react to the motion of the gears and wood, even in dark spots like the Crypt.

King’s Landing

Besides being the largest asset in Westeros, King’s Landing would also undergo the most change in season eight, requiring a full redesign from the ground up. With new elements like The West Gate and Throne Room coming in, the previous design needed more detail and scope to support a flight from the outside in.

Instead of building both exterior and interior models, Elastic put everything into one asset – so as the camera flies down into the spiral staircase, there would be a perfect, unbroken transition from the exterior to the Skull Room. The team worked with the showrunners to include specific details, like a crossbow pointed at a dragon skull and the spiral staircase itself, only to find out later that these were actually Easter eggs that foreshadowed future events.

“Dan, David and Greg [Spence] gave us just enough to get it right, so just like the fans, we could have our own aha! moments down the road,” said Shintani.

When it came to the finale, Elastic got a bit more. Knowing that King’s Landing would be leveled in episode five, showrunners asked Elastic to reflect the devastation in the credits, giving them just enough concept art to get the gears turning.

“We were all a little bit hesitant to look at it, since we didn't want to spoil it for ourselves! Once we started, Dan and David kept telling us to destroy more, so we just kept breaking everything,” said Shintani. “We really wanted the idea of the mechanical underpinnings to come through, so if you look back at any of the destruction, you'll notice that the parts are still moving and clicking in place, as if something inside has broken. This way the locations don’t feel static or like a pile of parts. They are still part of a larger structure within.”

V-Ray’s speed came through for them again, handling all of the geometry and textures so they could continue to test ideas before showing them to the wider Game of Thrones team.

“We’d create something and Dan and David would say keep going,” said Shintani. “IPR and the ability to iterate quickly allowed our team to keep refining on schedule until we got it just right. By the end of production we were up to 2 million frames, with some scenes coming in at almost 100 million polygons. And V-Ray continued to come through for us, just like it always has. When we first fired it up for season one, it was part of what gave the credits their unique look. And now here we are, almost ten years later, still creating CG together. It’s been a wild ride.”

To learn more, tune into a special CG Garage episode with Kirk Shintani on the history of the Game of Thrones credits, from season one to season eight.

About Chaos Group

Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

About Elastic

Elastic is a group of filmmakers whose collective voice utilizes a cross-section of visual mediums. Launched in 2008 by the founders of Rock Paper Scissors and VFX studio a52, Elastic produces some of the most captivating and innovative work in entertainment and advertising.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group

David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com

www.chaosgroup.com

Liaison Inc.

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

www.liaisonpr.com

Emerging 3D Visualization Conference Returns May 16-18; Google, Zaha Hadid Architects and Porsche Among Presenters

SOFIA, Bulgaria – April 17, 2019 – This May, Total Chaos returns to Bulgaria with over 60 new ways to inspire the creative community. Created as a way to snapshot the current state of computer graphics, Total Chaos has broadened its scope with new speakers and masterclasses, targeting every industry that uses 3D.

Now in its second year, Total Chaos provides a shared space for 3D artists and developers to connect and grow, as they explore how topics like AI, real-time ray tracing, light fields and collaborative VR will continue to change professional workflows. Using the three tracks (Art, Craft, Code), attendees can build schedules based on their interests or industry, as they take in the cutting edge of visualization design.

The conference begins with a full day of Masterclasses on May 16. Delivered by top 3D professionals, the classes will provide in-depth training on topics like parametric design for architecture, product and automotive design, visual effects for large-scale production pipelines and cinematic approaches to architectural visualization. Total Chaos follows on May 17-18 with the three parallel tracks covering the latest projects, technology and R&D guiding 3D workflows.

Architecture
For architecture fans, Total Chaos will be a deep dive into the complementary worlds of design and visualization. World-renowned architecture firms like Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners, KPF, Kengo Kuma & Associates, WeWork, Woods Bagot and Gensler will be on hand to share their approaches to 3D visualization and its importance throughout the design process. While visualization houses like Beauty and The Bit, Factory Fifteen and Slashcube will explain why V-Ray and Corona are the engines behind their work.

VFX
The blockbuster visual effects behind Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War and more will be discussed by a who’s who of VFX studios including Industrial Light & Magic, Ingenuity Studios and Digital Domain. Attendees can also get one of the first behind-the-scenes looks at Hellboy, whose opening shots and various creature designs were brought to life by local Bulgarian studios Nu Boyana FX and Worldwide FX.

Advertising
Method Studios has been taking the film-centric work of digital doubles into advertising. Method Studios’ CG Supervisor Lee Carlton will share how his team worked around the inherent difficulties of 3D scanning and capturing a toddler on set, achieving a new milestone in the creation of digital humans with one of the youngest real-world references to date. Ioanna Ivanova, a rising talent at London’s INK, will also chart her journey into creating advertising content for high-profile automotive clients like Audi, Honda and Aston Martin.

Automotive
The ultra-secretive world of car design will be revealed with multiple presentations from Volvo and Porsche, including how GPU rendering and VRscans are not only informing the process, but helping companies create photorealistic graphics for the LA Motor Show.

Games
Blur Studio is set to discuss their world-famous game cinematics, as well as their hit Netflix series Love, Death & Robots, a stunning NSFW animation anthology. Ubisoft’s open world techniques will also be examined, as they explain how they built more credibility into the environments of Assassin's Creed Origins and its mythological DLC, The Curse of the Pharaohs.

Product Design
Jan Kokol, Design Consultant for the world’s biggest crystal producer Swarovski, will reveal his approach to overcoming the complex challenges of jewelry design, using a custom workflow that combines Rhino, Grasshopper, V-Ray Next, VRscans and Ennoble, a crystal and gemstone design plugin he co-developed at Swarovski. OTTO, one of Europe’s largest e-commerce companies, will also discuss how they are changing their hugely successful home and living department with a fully digital approach and CGI.

Technology
From Paul Debevec, Senior Scientist at Google VR, to Stephen Parker, CTO of Professional Graphics at NVIDIA, Total Chaos tech talks will contain some of the top researchers and computer graphics luminaries in the world. Startups like Visual Vocal and Promethean AI will also offer their own exciting takes on the future, showing how new tech and Chaos Group products are helping artists and companies shape the worlds of tomorrow.

For the full lineup, please visit: the Total Chaos event page.

Pricing/Availability
Total Chaos tickets are available now and can be purchased on the event page in either Student, Professional or Masterclass form.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Production Studio Explores Different Animation Styles with Help of V-Ray Renderer; New Anthology Now on Netflix

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – March 18, 2019 – There have always been blips of mature content on the animation spectrum, but never anything like Love, Death & Robots. Released last weekend, this new anthology kicks open the doors for adult-oriented content in the medium, giving a generation of fans raised on Liquid Television a way to explore the many sides of human nature in the most visceral way possible.

The brainchild of Tim Miller and David Fincher, Love, Death & Robots weaves the provocative world of ‘70s comic books into 18 short stories that run the gamut from sci-fi to horror. In this world, viewers go from “sentient dairy products” to “werewolf soldiers” pretty quick, which inspired Miller’s Blur Studio to call on friends and rivals to bring in a little stylistic diversity.

“When we put out the call to the other studios, people went wild,” said Jerome ‘Jed’ Denjean, Head of CG at Blur and VFX Supervisor for Love, Death & Robots. “We’ve been competing against some of these companies for years and admire them greatly. It was thrilling to bring everyone together and let them apply their unique visions to these shorts. It was here where all the creative freedom really paid off.”

Blur not only led the project, they contributed three shorts of their own. Seeing this as a chance to flex their creative muscles, Blur built on the hyper-realistic game cinematic style they are known for, and expanded into a more hand-painted, 2D-esque version of 3D. Behind every experiment was V-Ray, the Academy Award-winning renderer that’s been guiding Blur’s pipeline since 2009.

“V-Ray is so versatile and dependable that we couldn’t imagine not using it on these shorts, which is pretty amazing when you see how different they all look,” said Denjean. “We’ve always thought that animation audiences deserved more mature storylines, and now we’re finally at a place where we have the freedom and technology to give them what they want.”

Sonnie’s Edge
Blur’s first short is the first point of contact viewers have with Love, Death & Robots. A cyberpunk’s delight, Sonnie’s Edge represents a bleak, futuristic version of London teeming with violence and grime. Our heroine is a fighter in the “beastie” world, where people telepathically tap into the body of a vicious creature to do battle with another.

Director Dave Wilson wanted to create a rich, neon-colored culture that would balance the tone of the short and the rundown structures it takes place in. Here, cinematic digital humans would mix with their surroundings in a highly stylized, photorealistic way. To achieve this, the artists applied V-Ray to nearly every part of the creative process, from look dev and compositing to the final animated frames.

“V-Ray helped us add depth and atmosphere into sequences at speeds we'd only dreamt of before; not to mention, gave us full control over all the unique lighting in our scenes,” said Chris Bedrosian, CG Supervisor on Sonnie’s Edge. “During the animation phase, V-Ray's progressive renderer provided rapid feedback that our animators then used to see how the animation would work within the scene’s anticipated lighting. It was really helpful.”

Progressive rendering and careful collaboration between the lighting and animation departments proved important, as it allowed the team to visualize performances long before wholesale rendering began, with a level of fidelity that went far beyond the traditional playblast. These quick and detailed progressive renders also afforded the lighting team an opportunity to anticipate and respond to character lighting challenges well before they were under the pressure of looming deadlines, ensuring that much of the show was 'lit' and rendered before the full lighting/compositing teams went to work.

Suits
Suits, on the other hand, provided a different challenge as it was a completely new style for Blur. “Suits is filled with a lot of hand-painted textures and a language that’s closer to 2D,” said Denjean. “Tim always wanted us to try our hands on something lighter than what our clients usually ask for, so this was a great opportunity to widen our range and learn some new techniques.”

But as Blur went to work portraying the story of a community of farmers going to battle with aliens using homemade mechs, they ran into a challenge. “Chasing a non-photoreal illustrated look is harder than it seems, since you have to break the reality of lights,” said Gabe Askew, Scene Assembly Lead on Suits. “For example, we wanted rim lights to stay consistent in both placement and size without getting shadowed by another object. We relied on V-Ray’s render elements support again to do this. Things like normals passes, Cryptomattes, extra tex passes, etc. all went into building a stylized look, which gave our compositors the controls illustrators dream of.”

Shape-Shifters
Of all the creature effects Blur submitted to Love, Death & Robots, Shape-Shifters’ werewolf Marines might be the most impressive. Like most werewolf stories, Shape-Shifters incorporates a human and wolf angle, with both states being portrayed in full 3D.

“The goal was to be as photorealistic as possible. Since everything was in 3D, we also knew that photorealism had to extend across the entire frame, so we built as much detail into our environments as possible,” said Darren Butler, CG Supervisor on Shape-Shifters.

With V-Ray Proxies, the team could throw billions of polygons into a scene to attain layer after layer of geometric detail. The Military Bunker scene alone had over 150 proxies, ranging from a chain link fence to trees and pebbles. “No details were spared and V-Ray shredded through those scenes at calculation time,” said Butler. “V-Ray Volume Grids gave us the flexibility and ease of rendering the atmospherics in the shots with accurate shadowing, lighting, and camera blur. Once we defined the look for one or two shots, we simply dropped them into the scene and hit render with great results, and little to no tweaking per shot.”

As the story builds, a werewolf dies, leading the hero to engage in a revenge quest against an enemy (werewolf) combatant. This culminates in Blur’s bloodiest Love, Death & Robots moment, as the full power of their pipeline helps the photoreal flesh and fur fly.

More on CG Garage
To celebrate the release of Love, Death & Robots, Chaos Group’s CG Garage has recorded a special episode with Jerome Denjean, covering everything from his own creative history to how the project came together. A future podcast with Tim Miller is also in the works. Jed’s podcast is available now.

Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots is streaming now.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

About Blur Studio
Los Angeles-based Blur Studio is an award-winning content production company with a focus on story-driven animation and visual effects. Owned by “Deadpool” director Tim Miller, Blur creates blockbuster film VFX, CG game cinematics, location-based entertainment experiences and television series content.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Photoreal Renderer Becomes Project Control Center, Bringing New Abilities to Rhino and Grasshopper

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – March 7, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group introduces V-Ray Next for Rhino, the first smart renderer made for designers. Tailored tools have expanded the core capabilities of Rhino and Grasshopper, linking photorealistic rendering, scene intelligence and asset management into a powerful new workflow that centralizes the design/visualization experience.

“V-Ray Next for Rhino turns four years of R&D into a mechanism of change, fixing issues that used to cost designers a lot of time and energy,” said Konstantin Gaytandzhiev, Product Specialist for Rhino at Chaos Group. “As we continue to roll out new features, we’ll continue this journey, making V-Ray Next faster, smarter and more in tune with how people actually want to work.”

Render Faster
V-Ray Next is faster everywhere you look. Thanks to the optimized materials and overall performance gains in V-Ray Next, rendering speeds are now up to 50 percent faster than before. Improvements to GPU rendering offer another 200 percent, further extended through V-Ray Scene Intelligence, which can show specific improvements up to 7x.

Render Smarter
V-Ray Scene Intelligence, introduced in V-Ray Next, automatically analyzes a 3D scene at the start of a render to optimize some of the most common decisions a designer will make. For instance, the new Adaptive Dome Light (ADL) now offers more accurate, image-based environment lighting that’s up to 7x faster. This is especially helpful for interiors, where it removes the need to add separate light portals at windows and openings.

V-Ray Scene Intelligence has also improved the V-Ray camera, which can now set exposure and white balance automatically, allowing for picture-perfect renders every time. No-input denoising is also available through the new NVIDIA AI denoiser, which eliminates image noise almost instantly, giving an immediate sense of lighting. This type of denoising is perfect for interactively fine-tuning the look of a scene.

Powerful Asset Management
The new asset management system acts as a new project control center, helping designers streamline workflows and coordinate across projects. Now, designers can manage all of their V-Ray scene assets in an intuitive way, using the live preview function to fine-tune the look of lights, textures and materials from a central location.

Unparalleled Grasshopper Support
V-Ray Next for Rhino launches with the most comprehensive Grasshopper toolset on the market, bringing new abilities to the parametric design tool. With live interactivity, designers can use V-Ray from within Grasshopper to produce stunning visualizations of abstract curves and repeating patterns, without exporting anything back to Rhino. Users can also now animate sunlight, cameras and Grasshopper definitions from the V-Ray timeline. Definitions stay parametric throughout the rendering process, in both Grasshopper and Rhino.

Additional Features Include:

Enhanced GPU Rendering – Designers can now access the full power of GPU rendering in V-Ray, adding support for bucket rendering, volumetric effects such as smoke and fog and compatibility with VRscans, Chaos Group’s library of physically accurate, scanned materials.

More Accurate Viewport Previews – Improved accuracy in the Rhino viewport with enhanced reflections, refractions, bump maps and more.

Automated Rendering with V-Ray Batch – With access to V-Ray Swarm, it’s now easier to render snapshots and variations of a project, as well as views from multiple Rhino files.

New Lighting Analysis Tool – Visualize a scene’s real-world illumination values (lux) using the new lighting analysis render element.

New Scripting Support – Use RhinoScript or Python to automate V-Ray tasks and properties, or access V-Ray capabilities not present in the UI.

"V-Ray Next for Rhino is, without a doubt, the most amazing leap forward in the history of V-Ray for Rhino," said Polyhedra co-founders Federico Fernandez and Andrea Montis. "We're finally able to edit everything without relying on other 3D applications or leaving the software. And these speed boosts are making our dreams come true!"

For a full list of new features, please visit: chaosgroup.com.

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray Next for Rhino is available now and is compatible with Rhino 5-6. A full Workstation license is priced at $790, with upgrades available for $395. Annual licenses are available as well for $350 per year. For a free 30-day trial, click here.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Unlimited Rendering Power for 3D Artists and Designers; No Hidden Fees

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – February 28, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group launches Chaos Cloud, an intuitive new cloud rendering service designed to help artists and designers visualize anything they want, from anywhere. With one click, users can now tap into the unlimited power of the cloud to render immediately, hit deadlines and finish faster than ever before.

“Artists love the idea of throwing hundreds of computers at a job but dislike the hidden costs and challenges that come with traditional cloud rendering services,” said Boris Simandoff, Chaos Cloud Director of Engineering at Chaos Group. “Chaos Cloud simplifies this process, reducing it to a single button inside the world’s most popular renderer. With so many artists and designers already using V-Ray, the benefits of the cloud can now be accessed by the widest group possible.”

Chaos Cloud is backed by five years of R&D and an extensive beta program that saw users render six million frames and over 500,000 jobs over the course of six months. Thanks to these tests, artists can now easily render an entire animation in the time it takes to render a single frame, without having to track assets, manage licenses or set up virtual machines. Chaos Cloud also removes the need to pack scenes, a laborious process that required artists to manually assemble bitmaps, scripts and plugins every time they wanted to render to the cloud. Now, this all happens automatically.

Behind the scenes, smart features are hard at work, removing all the complexity commonly associated with cloud rendering.

SmartSync
With SmartSync technology, data only needs to be uploaded once to the Chaos Cloud. After that, only the parts of a scene that change will need to be resynced, keeping upload times to the absolute minimum and ensuring quick iterations as you work.

SmartVault
All data uploaded through Chaos Cloud is stored in its secure SmartVault database for easy recall and additional renders. SmartVault keeps track of asset “fingerprints,” so they never need to be uploaded again – regardless of how they’re named, what scene they’re used in or where they’re stored locally.

Live View and Remote Control
Since the Chaos Cloud interface is entirely browser-based, artists can also control it from almost any device, including a smartphone. With Live View and Remote Control, users can monitor progress, preview images, pause or even cancel renders from anywhere with an internet connection.  

While V-Ray rendering is the first offering on the Chaos Cloud, plans are already underway for Corona Renderer and Phoenix FD. In the future, Chaos Cloud will also add compatibility for distributed and GPU rendering, promising even faster speeds in the years to come.

"Chaos Cloud is undeniably the best rendering cloud out there,” said Gerardo Capote, beta tester and Lead 3D Artist at Embraer Executive Jets. “With a friendly user interface and unparalleled reliability, it provides peace of mind to any studio when you render on the cloud.”

“Chaos Cloud is perfect for time-critical projects and production deadlines,” said Ralf Pohl, beta tester and Senior Keyexpert 3D Visualization & Virtual Reality, Siemens Healthcare GmbH. “It’s very user-friendly and we look forward to integrating it in our render pipeline.”

Sign up now for 20 free credits.

Pricing and Availability
Chaos Cloud is available now and accessible via a button within V-Ray for 3ds Max, Maya, Rhino, Cinema 4D, Revit, Modo, Houdini [beta] and SketchUp (Next and 3.6 editions).

Unlike some cloud rendering services, pricing for Chaos Cloud is all-inclusive. There are no hidden fees or extra charges for licensing, uploads, downloads, storage or starting your render job immediately. Customers purchase packages of Chaos Cloud credits, which are available with volume discounts. Right now, packages begin at $100 for 100 credits and prices go as low as 55 cents per credit for larger packages. Upon sign-up, every user will get 20 free credits. Since every scene is different, Chaos Group has also compiled a gallery of samples to help see how render times and credit cost vary by scene.

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Prague, Los Angeles, Seoul and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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

Premier Photorealistic Renderer for SketchUp Now Up to 7x Faster with New 3D Scene Intelligence

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – February 7, 2019 – Today, Chaos Group releases V-Ray Next for SketchUp, boosting the speed and simplicity of SketchUp’s premier renderer. Now, with a few clicks, anyone can create high-quality ray-traced visuals using one of the world’s most widely used design programs. Automatic scene analysis and adaptive lighting join dozens of new features, bringing more performance to the design process.

Backed by over four years of R&D, V-Ray Next rapidly accelerates the SketchUp workflow, building massive speed and intelligence gains under the hood, so designers can produce faster, cleaner renders with little to no extra effort. This latest version is also immediately compatible with the new SketchUp 2019, as well as versions 2016-2018.

“We are extremely pleased to see that a flagship renderer is available immediately after the launch of SketchUp 2019. The latest release, coupled with V-Ray Next, is a highly compelling solution for designers pursuing striking photorealistic visuals,” comments Jack McCarthy, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Trimble.
 

Render Smarter

New V-Ray Scene Intelligence can now automatically analyze a 3D scene at the start of a render, optimizing some of the most common decisions an artist will make. For lighting, the new Adaptive Dome Light (ADL) offers more accurate, image-based environment lighting that’s up to 7x faster. The ADL is exceptionally fast when working with interiors, and removes the need to add Portal Lights at windows and openings.

Finding the perfect camera exposure or white balance is no longer an issue. Once a scene loads, Auto White Balance and Exposure return the right settings, making the entire process point-and-shoot simple. A new NVIDIA AI Denoiser has also been embedded, so users get automatic noise removal and clean updates as they work.
 

Render Faster

With a 30-50 percent speed increase across the board, and additional increases coming in from the ADL, updated materials and improved GPU rendering, V-Ray Next is now the fastest way to produce a photorealistic image from SketchUp. The GPU renderer is over 200 percent faster alone, accelerating nearly every V-Ray feature including fog and atmospheric effects.
 

Work Faster

V-Ray Next is tightly integrated into SketchUp to speed up workflows throughout the program.

A new Scene Interaction Tool now provides direct access to any level of the SketchUp hierarchy, so designers can interactively adjust materials and light properties whenever an object is selected. A new V-Ray Toolbar has also been included, providing new access to top tools and simplified UI controls that will make it easier to set up cameras, adjust render settings and manage scenes.

The new asset management system will help users find and track V-Ray assets, using a custom library that can be shared across SketchUp projects. Any setting change will also now result in a live preview, helping designers experiment with lights, materials and textures, all in one place.
 

Additional Features Include:

New Lighting Analysis Tools - Now easier to visualize a scene’s real-world illumination values in lux or footcandles.

New Metalness Material Properties - A new addition to the standard V-Ray Material offers improved compatibility with Substance Designer and PBR materials.

Color Correction Curves - Fine-tune texture colors right in SketchUp without heading back to an image editor.

Material ID & MultiMatte Render Elements - Render 2D masks of 3D objects for quick fixes in Photoshop and other image editors.

Improved V-Ray Scenes and Materials Exchange - Fluid asset transfers from other V-Ray applications (Rhino, Revit and 3ds Max).

For a full list of new features, please visit: chaosgroup.com.
 

Pricing and Availability
V-Ray Next for SketchUp is available now and is compatible with SketchUp 2016-2019. A full Workstation license is priced at $790, with upgrades available for $395. Annual licenses are available as well for $350 per year. For a free 30-day trial, click here.
 

About Chaos Group
Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photorealistic imagery and animation for architecture, design, and visual effects. Chaos Group’s award-winning physically-based rendering and simulation software is 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 ray-traced rendering, cloud computing and real-time ray tracing is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, visit: chaosgroup.com.

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Press Contacts:

Chaos Group
David Tracy, david.tracy@chaosgroup.com
www.chaosgroup.com

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