From scanline rendering to photorealism, real-time viz to realt-ime ray tracing, architectural visualisation has always evolved hand in hand with technology.

Today, the sector is experiencing what is arguably its biggest shift yet: generative AI. Tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Flux, and Nano Banana are attracting widespread attention for their ability to create compelling, photorealistic visuals in seconds — from nothing more than a simple prompt, sketch, or reference image.

The potential is enormous, yet many architectural practices are still figuring out how to properly embrace this technology, navigating practical, cultural, and workflow challenges along the way.

The impact on architectural visualisation software as we know it could be huge. But generative AI also presents a huge opportunity for software developers.

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Like some of its peers, Chaos has been gradually integrating AI-powered features into its traditional viz tools, including Enscape and V-Ray. Earlier this year, however, it went one step further by acquiring EvolveLAB and its dedicated AI rendering solution, Veras.

Veras allows architects to take a simple snapshot of a 3D model or even a hand drawn sketch and quickly create ‘AI-rendered’ images with countless style variations. Importantly, the software is tightly integrated with CAD / BIM tools like SketchUp, Revit, Rhino, Archicad and Vectorworks, and offers control over specific parts within the rendered image.

With the launch of Veras 3.0, the software’s capabilities now extend to video, allowing designers to generate short clips featuring dynamic pans and zooms, all at the push of a button.

“Basically, [it takes] an image input for your project, then generates a five second video using generative AI,” explains Bill Allen, director of products, Chaos. “If it sees other things, like people or cars in the scene, it’ll animate those,” he says.

This approach can create compelling illusions of rotation or environmental activity. A sunset prompt might animate lighting changes, while a fireplace in the scene could be made to flicker. But there are limits. “In generative AI, it’s trying to figure out what might be around the corner [of a building], and if there’s no data there, it’s not going to be able to interpret it,” says Allen.

Chaos is already looking at ways to solve this challenge of showcasing buildings from multiple angles. “One of the things we think we could do is take multiple shots – one shot from one angle of the building and another one – and then you can interpolate,” says Allen.

Model behaviour

Veras uses Stable Diffusion as its core ‘render engine’. As the generative AI model has advanced, newer versions of Stable Diffusion have been integrated into Veras, improving both realism and render speed, and allowing users to achieve more detailed and sophisticated results.

“We’re on render engine number six right now,” says Allen. “We still have render engine, four, five and six available for you to choose from in Veras.”

But Veras does not necessarily need to be tied to a specific generative AI model. In theory it could evolve to support Flux, Nano Banana or whatever new or improved model variant may come in the future.

But, as Allen points out, the choice of model isn’t just down to the quality of the visuals it produces. “It depends on what you want to do,” he says. “One of the reasons that we’re using Stable Diffusion right now instead of Flux is because we’re getting better geometry retention.”

One thing that Veras doesn’t yet have out of the box is the ability for customers to train the model using their own data, although as Allen admits, “That’s something we would like to do.”

In the past Chaos has used LORAs (Low-Rank Adaptations) to fine-tune the AI model for certain customers in order to accurately represent specific materials or styles within their renderings.

Roderick Bates, head of product operations, Chaos, imagines that the demand for fine tuning will go up over time, but there might be other ways to get the desired outcome, he says. “One of the things that Veras does well is that you can adjust prompts, you can use reference images and things like that to kind of hone in on style.”

Post-processing

While Veras experiments with generative creation, Chaos is also exploring how AI can be used to refine output from its established viz tools using a variety of AI post-processing techniques.

Chaos AI Upscaler, for example, enlarges render output by up to four times while preserving photorealistic quality. This means scenes can be rendered at lower resolutions (which is much quicker), then at the click of a button upscaled to add more detail.

While AI upscaling technology is widely available – both online and in generic tools like Photoshop – Chaos AI Upscaler benefits from being directly accessible at the click of a button directly inside the viz tools like Enscape that architects already use. Bates points out that if an architect uses another tool for this process, they must download the rendered image first, then upload it to another place, which fragments the workflow. “Here, it’s all part of an ecosystem,” he explains, adding that it also avoids the need for multiple software subscriptions.

Chaos is also applying AI in more intelligent ways, harnessing data from its core viz tools. Chaos AI Enhancer, for example, can improve rendered output by refining specific details in the image. This is currently limited to humans and vegetation, but Chaos is looking to extend this to building materials.

“You can select different genders, different moods, you can make a person go from happy to sad,” says Bates, adding that all of this can be done through a simple UI.

There are two major benefits: first, you don’t have to spend time searching for a custom asset that may or may not exist and then have to re-render; second, you don’t need highly detailed 3D asset models to achieve the desired results, which would normally require significant computational power, or may not even be possible in a tool like Enscape.

With Veras 3.0, the software’s capabilities now extend to video, allowing designers to generate short clips featuring dynamic pans and zooms, all at the push of a button

The real innovation lies in how the software applies these enhancements. Instead of relying on the AI to interpret and mask off elements within an image, Chaos brings this information over from the viz tool directly. For example, output from Enscape isn’t just a dumb JPG — each pixel carries ‘voluminous metadata’, so the AI Enhancer automatically knows that a plant is a plant, or a human is a human. This makes selections both easy and accurate.

As it stands, the workflow is seamless: a button click in Enscape automatically sends the image to the cloud for enhancement.

But there’s still room for improvement. Currently, each person or plant must be adjusted individually, but Chaos is exploring ways to apply changes globally within the scene. Chaos

AI Enhancer was first introduced in Enscape in 2024 and is now available in Corona and V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max, with support for additional V-Ray integrations coming soon.

AI materials

Chaos is also extending its application of AI into materials, allowing users to generate render-ready materials from a simple image. “Maybe you have an image from an existing project, maybe you have a material sample you just took a picture of,” says Bates. “With the [AI Material Generator] you can generate a material that has all the appropriate maps.”

Initially available in V-Ray for 3ds Max, the AI Material Generator is now being rolled out to Enscape. In addition, a new AI Material Recommender can suggest assets from the Chaos Cosmos library, using text prompts or visual references to help make it faster and easier to find the right materials.

Cross pollination

Chaos is uniquely positioned within the design visualisation software landscape. Through Veras, it offers powerful oneclick AI image and video generation, while tools like Enscape and V-Ray use AI to enhance classic visualisation outputs. This dual approach gives Chaos valuable insight into how AI can be applied across the many stages of the design process, and it will be fascinating to see how ideas and technologies start to cross-pollinate between these tools.

A deeper question, however, is whether 3D models will always be necessary. “We used to model to render, and now we render to model,” replies Bates, describing how some firms now start with AI images and only later build 3D geometry.

“Right now, there is a disconnect between those two workflows, between that pure AI render and modelling workflow – and those kind of disconnects are inefficiencies that bother us,” he says.

For now, 3D models remain indispensable. But the role of AI — whether in speeding up workflows, enhancing visuals, or enabling new storytelling techniques — is growing fast. The question is not if, but how quickly, AI will become a standard part of every architect’s viz toolkit.

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Following its beta launch last year, Chaos has released Chaos Envision, a real-time storytelling tool that helps architects and designers turn 3D models into immersive, cinematic presentations. Chaos has also announced a range of ‘affordable’ suites of curated, industry-specific tools for architectural design, architectural visualisation, and media and entertainment.

“Envision offers new alternatives for architects that have had to find workarounds to avoid compromising on quality, speed and flexibility in their presentations,” said Petr Mitev, VP of solutions for designers at Chaos. “Now, anyone can produce high-fidelity visuals much earlier in the process, tapping V-Ray-like photorealism to resolve internal questions and get more stakeholders on board.”

Chaos Envision can bring multiple 3D components into its collaborative environment. The software accepts content from any application that hosts Enscape or V-Ray and can import common industry formats, so users ‘don’t have to worry about scene prep or data loss’. All lighting, materials and assets from their original CAD or Enscape design will carry over as-is.

Users can add entourage with Chaos Cosmos, and through a direct integration with the Chaos Anima engine, drag-and-drop ‘hyper-realistic 4D people and crowds’ with AI-enhanced behaviour into scenes, and then direct their movement by assigning them a path. Paths can also be applied to other objects and cameras for more cinematic looks.

In addition, Envision supports variation-based animation to help designers depict sun studies, construction phasing or even cycle through design options

Each visualisation can also be rendered with ray-traced realism. According to Chaos, this gives designers access to real-time and offline accuracy, even when polygon counts run into the trillions.

“What stands out to me is being able to import different rendering software files into Envision and edit them there without having to go back to the original programmes, all without any lag,” said architect David Tomic.

Chaos Suites

The new industry-specific Chaos Suites for architectural design, architectural visualisation, and media and entertainment, offers three options: Solo, Premium and Collection based on one of the flagship products—Enscape, V-Ray or Corona.

With the Architectural Design suites users start with the Enscape Solo option, or upgrade to the Enscape Premium suite, which includes the AI-powered Veras for faster ideation, design interactions and enhanced image details. The Enscape Collection adds Chaos Envision and Enscape Impact

With the Archvis suites, the Solo suite features V-Ray or Corona, along with the complete Chaos Cosmos asset library, while the Premium version adds the Chaos Phoenix dynamic simulator, the Chaos Player and 20 Chaos Cloud credits. The Collection includes everything from the Premium suite, as well as Chaos’ real-time ray tracer Chaos Vantage and the crowd/people animation system Chaos Anima.

The Media & Entertainment suites are built around V-Ray and include Vantage, Anima, Phoenix, Player and 20 Chaos Cloud credits—everything artists need to bring any idea to life.

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Chaos, a specialist in arch viz software, has acquired EvolveLab, a developer of AI tools for streamlining visualisation, generative design, documentation and interoperability for AEC professionals.

According to Chaos, the acquisition will reinforce its design-to-visualisation workflows, while expanding to include critical tools for BIM automation, AI-driven ideation and computational design.

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Founded in 2015, EvolveLab was the first to integrate generative AI technology into architectural modelling software, demonstrating the massive potential of mixing imaginative prompts with 3D geometry. Through its flagship software Veras – which AEC Magazine reviewed back in 2023 – EvolveLab connected this capability to leading BIM tools like SketchUp, Revit, Vectorworks, and others, before expanding into smart documentation and generative design.

Looking ahead, the role of AI in traditional visualisation software will only expand, making the acquisition of EvolveLab a smart strategic move for Chaos. It will be fascinating to see how the two development teams collaborate to integrate their respective technologies.

Read what AEC Magazine thinks

Even before the acquisition, designers relied on the combination of EvolveLab and Chaos tools, using Veras and Enscape to accelerate both design and reviews. In the schematic design phase, this means rapidly generating ideas in Veras before committing the design to BIM where Enscape’s real-time visualisation capabilities pushes the project even further.

“Over a year ago, we began exploring AI tools to speed up our workflows and were excited to discover Veras, a solution specifically designed for AEC that seamlessly integrates with host platforms,” said Hanns-Jochen Weyland of Störmer Murphy and Partners, an award-winning architectural practice based in Hamburg, Germany. “Veras is now our go-to for initial ideation before transitioning to renderings in Enscape. This powerful combination accelerates concept development and ensures reliable outcomes.”

“At Cuningham, we integrate EvolveLab’s Veras and Glyph alongside Chaos’ Enscape to enhance our design process,” said Joseph Bertucci, senior project design technologist of Cuningham, an integrated design firm with offices across the United States. “Using both Enscape and Veras allows us to visualise, iterate, and explore design concepts in real-time while leveraging AI-driven enhancements for rapid refinement. Meanwhile, Glyph has been a game-changer for auto-documentation, enabling us to efficiently generate views and drawing sets, saving valuable time in project setup. These tools collectively streamline our workflows, boosting efficiency, precision, and creativity.”

Chaos and the EvolveLab teams are exploring ways to integrate their products and accelerate their AI roadmaps. EvolveLab products will remain available to customers. The EvolveLab team will join Chaos, with Bill Allen serving as director of product management and EvolveLab chief technology officer Ben Guler as director of software development.

EvolveLab apps include Veras, for AI-powered visualisation; Glyph, for automating and standardising documentation tasks; Morphis, for generating designs in real-time; and Helix, for interoperability between BIM tools.

What AEC Magazine thinks

Like many long-established architectural visualisation software developers, Chaos has undoubtedly sensed growing competition from AI renderers over the past few years.

While tools like EvolveLab’s Veras aren’t yet mature enough or offer the necessary control to replace software like Enscape, they are already capable of handling certain aspects of the arch viz workflow—particularly in the early phases of a project. AI renderers can also enhance final outputs, improving visual quality. In fact, last year, Chaos introduced its own AI Enhancer for Enscape, which uses AI to transform assets like people and vegetation into high-quality, photorealistic visuals—minimising the need for high-poly, resource-intensive models.

Looking ahead, the role of AI in traditional visualisation software will only expand, making the acquisition of EvolveLab a smart strategic move for Chaos. It will be fascinating to see how the two development teams collaborate to integrate their respective technologies.

While EvolveLab’s AI rendering technology and expertise were likely the main drivers behind the acquisition, Chaos has also gained access to powerful tools for BIM automation, AI-driven ideation, and computational design. In our interview with EvolveLab CEO, Bill Allen  last year, he spoke of the company’s ambitious vision, including auto-generated drawings.

With the launch of Enscape Impact last year—bringing building performance analysis into Enscape’s real-time environment—Chaos has already shown its willingness to expand into new areas of AEC technology. Now, with advanced AEC design tools in its portfolio, it will be interesting to see how the company continues to evolve.

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When it comes to arch viz, everyone dreams of a silky-smooth viewport and the ability to render final quality images and videos in seconds. However, such performance often comes with a hefty price tag. Many professionals are left wondering: is the added cost truly justified?

To help answer this question, we put some of the latest workstation hardware through its paces using a variety of popular arch viz tools. Before diving into the detailed benchmark results on the following pages, here are some key considerations to keep in mind.

This article is part of AEC Magazine’s 2025 Workstation Special report

GPU processing

Real-time viz software like Enscape, Lumion, D5 Render, and Twinmotion rely on the GPU to do the heavy lifting. These tools offer instant, high-quality visuals directly in the viewport, while also allowing top-tier images and videos to be rendered in mere seconds or minutes.

The latest releases support hardware ray tracing, a feature built into modern GPUs from Nvidia, AMD and Intel. While ray tracing demands significantly more computational power than traditional rasterisation, it delivers unparalleled realism in lighting and reflections.

GPU performance in these tools is typically evaluated in two ways: Frames Per Second (FPS) and render time. FPS measures viewport interactivity — higher numbers mean smoother navigation and a better user experience — while render time, expressed in seconds, determines how quickly final outputs are generated. Both metrics are crucial, and we’ve used them to benchmark various software in this article.

For your own projects, aim for a minimum of 24–30 FPS for a smooth and interactive viewport experience. Performance gains above this threshold tend to have diminishing returns, although we expect hardcore gamers might disagree. Display resolution is another critical factor. If your GPU struggles to maintain performance, reducing resolution from 4K to FHD can deliver a significant boost.

It’s worth noting that while some arch viz software supports multiple GPUs, this only affects render times rather than viewport performance. Tools like V-Ray, for instance, scale exceptionally well with multiple GPUs, but in order to take advantage you’ll need a workstation with adequate power and sufficient PCIe slots to accommodate the GPUs.

GPU memory

The amount of memory a GPU has is often more critical than its processing power. In some software, running out of GPU memory can cause crashes or significantly slow down performance. This happens because the GPU is forced to borrow system memory from the workstation via the PCIe bus, which is much slower than accessing its onboard memory.

The impact of insufficient GPU memory depends on your workflow. For final renders, it might simply mean waiting longer for images or videos to finish processing. However, in a real-time viewport, running out of memory can make navigation nearly impossible. In extreme cases, we’ve seen frame rates plummet to 1-2 FPS, rendering the scene completely unworkable.

Fortunately, GPU memory and processing power usually scale together. Professional workstation GPUs, such as Nvidia RTX or AMD Radeon Pro, generally offer significantly more memory than their consumer-grade counterparts like Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon. This is especially noticeable at the lower end of the market. For example, the Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada, a 70W GPU, is equipped with 16 GB of onboard memory.

For real-time visualisation workflows, we recommend a minimum of 16 GB, though 12 GB can suffice for laptops. Anything less could require compromises, such as simplifying scenes and textures, reducing display resolution, or lowering the quality of exported renders.

CPU processing

CPU rendering was once the standard for most arch viz workflows, but today it often plays second fiddle to GPU rendering. That said, it remains critically important for certain software. Chaos Corona, a specialist tool for arch viz, relies entirely on the CPU for rendering. Meanwhile, Chaos V-Ray gives users the flexibility to choose between CPU and GPU. Some still favour the CPU renderer for its greater control and the ability to harness significantly more memory when paired with the right workstation hardware. For example, while the top-tier Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Generation GPU comes with an impressive 48 GB of on-board memory, a Threadripper Pro workstation can support up to 1 TB or more of system memory.

CPU renderers scale exceptionally well with core count — the more cores your processor has, the faster your renders. However, as core counts increase, frequencies drop, so doubling the cores won’t necessarily cut render times in half.

Take the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX, for example. It’s a powerhouse that’s the ultimate dream for arch viz specialists. But does it justify its price tag—nearly 20 times that of the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9950X—for rendering performance that’s only 3 to 4 times faster? As arch viz becomes more prevalent across AEC firms, that’s a tough call for many.

Chaos Corona 10

Chaos Corona is a CPU-only renderer designed for arch viz. It scales well with more CPU cores. But the 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX, despite having six times the cores of the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and achieving an overclocked all-core frequency of 4.87 GHz, delivers only three times the performance.

Chaos V-Ray 6

Chaos V-Ray is a versatile photorealistic renderer, renowned for its realism. It includes both a CPU and GPU renderer. The CPU renderer supports the most features and can handle the largest datasets, as it relies on system memory. Performance scales efficiently with additional cores.

V-Ray GPU works with Nvidia GPUs. It is often faster than the CPU renderer, and can make very effective use of multiple GPUs, with performance scaling extremely well. However, the finite onboard memory can restrict the size of scenes. To address this, V-Ray GPU includes several memory-saving features, such as offloading textures to system memory. It also offers a hybrid mode where both the CPU and GPU work together, optimising performance across both processors.

D5 Render 2.9

D5 Render is a real-time arch viz tool, based on Unreal Engine. Its ray tracing technology is built on DXR, requiring a GPU with dedicated ray-tracing cores from Nvidia, Intel, or AMD.

The software uses Nvidia DLSS, allowing Nvidia GPUs to boost real time performance. Multiple GPUs are not supported.

The benchmark uses 4 GB of GPU memory, so all GPUs are compared on raw performance alone. Real time scores are capped at 60 FPS.

Enscape 3.3

Enscape is a very popular tool for real-time arch viz. It supports hardware ray tracing, and also Nvidia DLSS, but not the latest version.

For testing we used an older version of Enscape (3.3). This had some incompatibility issues with AMD GPUs, so we limited our testing to Nvidia. Enscape 4.2, the latest release, supports AMD.

We focused on real time performance, rather than time to render. The gap between the RTX 5000 Ada and RTX 6000 Ada was not that big. Our dataset uses 11 GB of GPU memory, which caused the software to crash when using the Nvidia RTX A1000 (8GB).

Lumion Pro 2024

Lumion is a real-time arch viz tool known for its exterior scenes in context with nature.

The software will benefit from a GPU with hardware raytracing, but those with older GPUs can still render with rasterisation.

Our test scene uses 11 GB of GPU memory, which meant the 8 GB GPUs struggled. The Nvidia RTX A1000 slowed down, while the AMD Radeon Pro W7500 & W7600 caused crashes. The high-end AMD GPUs did OK against Nvidia, but slowed down in ray tracing.

Twinmotion 2024.1.2

Twinmotion from Epic Games is a real-time viz tool powered by Unreal Engine. It includes a DXR path tracer, for accurate lighting and Global Illumination (GI) and will benefit from one or more GPUs with hardware raytracing – AMD or Nvidia.

Our test scene uses 20 GB of GPU memory, massively slowing down the 8 GB GPUs. The 8 GB AMD cards caused the software to crash with the Path Tracer. The high-end AMD GPUs did OK against Nvidia but were well off the pace in path tracing.

Nvidia DLSS – using AI to boost performance in real-time

Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is a suite of AI-driven technologies designed to significantly enhance 3D performance (frame rates), in real-time visualisation tools.

Applications including Chaos Enscape, Chaos Vantage and D5 Render, have integrated DLSS to deliver smoother experiences, and to make it possible to navigate larger scenes on the same GPU hardware.

DLSS comprises three distinct technologies, all powered by the Tensor Cores in Nvidia RTX GPUs:

Super Resolution
This boosts performance by using AI to render higher-resolution frames from lower-resolution inputs. For instance, it enables 4K-quality output while the GPU processes frames at FHD resolution, saving core GPU resources without compromising visual fidelity.

DLSS Ray Reconstruction
This enhances image quality by using AI to generate additional pixels for intensive ray-traced scenes.

Frame Generation
This increases performance by using AI to interpolate and generate extra frames. While DLSS 3.0 could generate one additional frame, DLSS 4.0, exclusive to Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwellbased GPUs, can generate up to three frames between traditionally rendered ones.

When these three technologies work together, an astonishing 15 out of every 16 pixels can be AI-generated.

DLSS 4.0 will soon be supported in D5 Render, promising transformative performance gains. Nvidia has demonstrated that it can elevate frame rates from 22 FPS (without DLSS 4.0) to an incredible 87 FPS.

This article is part of AEC Magazine’s 2025 Workstation Special report

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Chaos is gearing up for the beta launch of Chaos Envision, a new photorealistic real-time ray traced 3D assembly and animation tool, designed to help architects and visualisers streamline the process of architectural storytelling.

One of the key aims of the software is to enable architects to do the type of work that previously would have to be done by a visualisation specialist in expert tools like Autodesk 3ds Max or Unreal Engine.

Scenes can be assembled from multiple sources, including vrscene exports from Enscape, V-Ray and Corona, with ‘no prep needed’. There are also plans to support neutral exchange formats, such as OBJ, FBX, DAE, 3DS, USD and MaterialX.

“You can have the design in Revit and the terrain in 3ds max, or an interesting facade in Rhino, and then you can assemble everything in Envision,” says product manager, Ana Lyubenova.

According to Chaos, visualisation starts immediately, and original data is loaded directly and accurately, preserving the visualisation effort that’s done in the 3D creation tool, even as each scene evolves.

“Whatever you have created with Enscape will be preserved when you import it in Envision, so you can continue working, adding stuff from the Chaos Cosmos library and then animate on the timeline,” says Lyubenova.

Once inside Chaos Envision, scenes can be enhanced with realistic animated humans and crowds through direct integration of the Chaos Anima engine.

Anima’s 3D human models move and avoid obstacles automatically, while the crowd animation system utilises collision backgrounds, character distribution and socialisation area controls to make it easier to create realistic crowd movement. The software also introduces variety to the scene by randomizing the colour of the clothes each 3D human is wearing.

Animated vehicles, custom behaviours, vegetation can also be added to Chaos Envision, before videos are published using the ‘flexible and intuitive’ animation system.

The software allows users to present multiple design options to clients, through animated videos that transition between variations, phases, views, materials, times of day and more.

Chaos Envision is capable of handling very large scenes. “We’re speaking about trillions of polygons,” says Lyubenova.

Chaos Envision is due to enter beta later this month.

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Enscape 4.1, the latest release of the BIM-centric real time visualisation tool, includes Chaos AI Enhancer, a new feature designed to elevate the visuals and export better-looking assets, such as people and vegetation, straight from Enscape.

Many of Enscape’s people and vegetation assets are produced in-house, keeping a strict budget of polygons that allows users to place multiple assets without experiencing a loss in performance.

Chaos AI Enhancer is designed to elevate the visual quality of these assets using an AI engine that identifies which pixels should be enhanced.

According to Chaos, these AI-optimised, realistic assets are crucial for creating vibrant scenes that help clients understand the design intent faster. Trees, flowers, people and more not only add emotions but are important to highlight perspectives and spatiality, the company stated.

Enscape 4.1 also includes new artistic visual modes that add the ability to create images simulating pencil or watercolour drawings. The new visual styles are available for screenshots, batch rendering, and video exports.

Other features include coloured shadows for artificial light sources, which means coloured glass and coloured semi-transparent furniture now drop coloured shadows when artificial lights are on (in addition to sunlight). Decoration objects will leave a coloured impression.

Coloured sun shadows has been updated so users can now add textures to the glass material (by uploading them) and the drop shadows will reflect those texture patterns.

The fog setting also has more accurate colouration at sunrise and sunset, meaning the distinctive orange hue is consistently represented regardless of the quality setting used. In high and ultra settings, the fidelity of fog shadows is improved, and coloured shadows interact with fog realistically.

Enscape 4.1 also includes a new Integrated Graphics Native Renderer so the software can be used on Windows computers with Intel and AMD CPUs (no separate dedicated GPU needed).

Finally, Enscape 4.1 includes a new add-on designed to integrate real-time rendering with building performance analysis. Learn more about Enscape Impact below

Enscape Impact launches in beta

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Chaos has introduced Enscape Impact (beta), a real-time energy modelling add-on for Enscape 4.1, the latest release of its BIM-focused visualisation software. Developed in partnership with IES, Enscape Impact is designed to make building performance analysis more accessible for architects and designers, by simplifying the analysis process.

With Enscape Impact, architects and designers can quickly view the energy performance of their building and optimise it within their usual design workflow. The software is integrated with Archicad, Revit, Vectorworks, SketchUp and Rhino, but only on Microsoft Windows, not on Mac.

Enscape Impact is not intended to provide building performance certification directly. Instead, it aims to offer real-time feedback that brings architects ‘close to certification-level accuracy’. According to Chaos, what used to take several hours or even days can now be done in minutes.

The software allows users to calculate and benchmark key performance metrics, such as peak loads and total carbon emission. The data is presented within Enscape’s real-time visualisation environment, making it easier to comprehend and communicate the impact of design decisions.

There’s also a dials panel with ‘easy-to-read’ charts and diagrams that display how geometry adjustments impact building performance

According to Chaos, the unified energy analysis and visualisation workflow is not only important for architects, but also for engineers working on a project, significantly cutting down the cost and time required to bring a poorly performing project back into meeting sustainability goals.

“Previously, the design process was separated into architects using BIM for design, while engineers conducted performance analysis separately in software like IES offers”, explains Ruth Kerrigan, chief operating officer, IES. “This led to duplicated visualisation efforts and frequent misalignment between design intent and analytical models. Thus, the loop of recreating and aligning took long and engineers’ reports were often too technical for clients and architects.”

The free trial version of Enscape Impact will be available for anyone who upgrades to Enscape 4.1 until October 2024.

To learn more about the aims of Enscape Impact, read this AEC Magazine article.

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Chaos is working on a new feature for Enscape that allows users to elevate the quality of their visualisations, specifically people and vegetation assets, using AI

Chaos AI Enhancer is currently available in the Enscape 4.1 Preview 6 for users with a non-trial license. The feature is still in development, but will be officially released soon.

Many of Enscape’s people and vegetation assets are produced in-house, keeping a strict budget of polygons that allows users to place multiple assets without experiencing a loss in performance.

Chaos AI Enhancer is designed to elevate the visual quality of these assets using an AI engine that identifies which pixels should be enhanced.

Chaos admits that in the preview release, while AI processing may sometimes produce unwanted artifacts. However, it is working on perfecting this feature, and future updates will introduce advanced masking features to mitigate these issues, the company states.

Chaos AI Enhancer can be accessed through the Enscape UI, with a new button now visible on the renderer toolbar.

Chaos says adding details to a rendering with AI is similar to creating a screenshot. The enhanced images are automatically saved to the download folder. The processing time depends on the scene size, and it might take a few minutes while Enscape is blocked.

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Chaos has shared more details about its partnership with IES designed to bring real time building performance analysis to its real-time rendering tool Enscape.

The public beta of the new Building Performance module, covered in detail in AEC Magazine last month, will be available in the second half of 2024, with the commercial release to follow. The initial release will be available for free to all Enscape users.

The integrated solution will allow users of all Enscape-supporting CAD platforms on Windows (Revit, Rhino, Vectorworks, SketchUp and Archicad) to conduct energy, daylight and thermal comfort analysis during any phase of design.

The software is designed to shorten the feedback loop between analysis and decision and create a streamlined workflow where design visualization and performance analysis work hand-in-hand.

“This is an exciting step forward for sustainable design. Our customers will be able to visualise the performance of a building while designing, with a focus on criteria such as energy usage, thermal comfort, and daylight in real-time,” said Petr Mitev, VP product, solutions for designers, Chaos.

“Better sustainability insights mean better buildings. By empowering architects and designers to make informed decisions from the beginning, they will be able to make more sustainable design recommendations. We hope that by using Enscape’s forthcoming building performance module, architects can substantially reduce energy consumption in their buildings while also reducing costs for the building owner.”

Ruth Kerrigan, Chief Operating Officer, IES, said, “This venture will enable architects and designers to identify the impact of design changes to energy efficiency, dynamically adjust modifications, and empower informed decision-making as it democratises building performance analysis.”

Enscape: building performance analysis

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Chaos has released Enscape 4.0 on Windows and Mac OS X, the first time in the history of the real time viz tool that the software has been released simultaneously on both operating systems.

According to Chaos, the Mac version features 95% of the functionality of the Windows version, the highest in the product’s history. Mac users now have access to adjustable assets, collaborative annotations and more.

Enscape 4.0 includes over 1,700 adjustable assets covering furniture, clothes, vehicles and plants. They can be customised so users can dial in the ‘right feeling’ for a 3D scene.

With dynamic asset placement, users can pick, place, and edit assets using the Enscape rendering window. Any changes will be reflected live and can be quickly applied to multiple assets at a time.

Through the custom asset library teams can bring bespoke assets into Enscape. Custom assets can also be assigned colours, materials, and other key attributes to tailor them to different projects.

Enscape 4.0 also adds site context so architects can see what their building will look like onsite, without topographic modelling.

There’s also a new BIM Mode which allows users to find all single or grouped elements in a scene with a click. According to Chaos, this makes it easy to perform visual searches using BIM data attached to the scene.

Chaos has also improved collaboration thanks to live annotations that can be used to address change requests, material suggestions and other issues across global teams.

Elsewhere, thirty-two unique people assets have been added to the Enscape Asset Library, with a variety of different poses, outfits and accessories.

In addition, Enscape 4.0 adds 178 new variations of vegetation assets representing trees, bushes and flowers that grow in Mexico and various desert regions. Each of these can be animated, to add wind gusts and tree flutters.

Chaos has also used the latest Nvidia ReLAX Denoiser to enable users to reduce noise in image, video and VR captures. According to Chaos, the denoiser’s effects are especially visible in enclosed interior spaces with minimal direct light — particularly on glossy or metallic surfaces.

Additional features and improvements specifically for Windows, include: ray-traced artificial lights, an experimental feature to give a more realistic lighting experience; improved reflections and global illumination; and support for the Meta Quest 3 and HTC Vive Pro 2 VR headsets.

Other features include Rhino 8.3 support; Revit Worksharing optimisation; and enhanced integration with V-Ray, thanks to a new scene exporter that can transfer key data from Enscape to V-Ray and other visualization applications, including 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

Meanwhile, read more about the future of Enscape in the following two AEC articles.

Enscape and V-Ray: a collaborative future

Enscape: building performance analysis

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