Chaos V-Ray will soon support AMD GPUs, so users of the photorealistic rendering software can choose from a wider range of graphics hardware including the AMD Radeon Pro W7000 series and the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro processor that has an integrated Radeon GPU.

Until now, V-Ray’s GPU renderer has been limited to Nvidia RTX GPUs via the CUDA platform, while its CPU renderer has long worked with processors from both Intel and AMD.

Chaos plans to roll out the changes publicly in every edition of V-Ray, including 3ds Max, SketchUp, Revit and Rhino, Maya, and Blender.

At Autodesk University last month, both Dell and HP showcased V-Ray GPU running on AMD GPUs – Dell on a desktop workstation with a discrete AMD Radeon Pro W7600 GPU and HP on a HP ZBook Ultra G1a with the new AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, where up to 96 GB of the 128 GB unified memory can be allocated as VRAM.

“[With the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395} you can load massive scenes without having to worry so much about memory limitations,” says Vladimir Koylazov, head of innovation, Chaos. “We have a massive USD scene that we use for testing, and it was really nice to see it actually being rendered on an AMD [processor]. It wouldn’t be possible on [most] discrete GPUs, because they don’t normally have that much memory.”

This new capability has been made possible through AMD HIP (Heterogeneous-Compute Interface for Portability) — an open-source toolkit that allows developers to port CUDA-based GPU applications to run on AMD hardware without the need to create and maintain a new code base.

“HIP handles complicated pieces of code, like V-Ray GPU, a lot better than OpenCL used to do, says Koylazov. “Everything we support in V-Ray GPU on other platforms is now supported on AMD GPUs.”

Chaos isn’t alone in embracing AMD GPUs. Earlier this year, product design focused viz tool KeyShot also added support, which we put to the test in our HP ZBook Ultra G1a review.

The post Chaos V-Ray to support AMD GPUs appeared first on AEC Magazine.

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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Chaos has launched V-Ray for Blender, bringing its production rendering technology to the open source 3D creation tool for the first time.

According to Chaos, V-Ray for Blender enables everything from photorealistic scenes to stylised animations. Intuitive controls let users mimic real-world camera effects and lighting using Chaos’ Global Illumination technology, which simulates natural light behaviour. The software also supports adaptive lighting and PBR-ready materials.

“Blender’s open-source model and active community make it one of the most versatile 3D creation tools for users of any level, and adding V-Ray takes it a step further,” said Allan Poore, chief product officer at Chaos. “With this plugin, Blender artists can render with confidence, all without compromising a thing.”

Blender users will also have access to over 5,600 free, high-quality assets through the Chaos Cosmos asset library, all of which can be accessed within Blender.

Once a scene is ready to render, users can access noise-free, interactive viewport rendering with the Nvidia AI Denoiser and the Intel Open Image Denoiser, or produce clean, final images through the V-Ray denoiser. From there, they will have a full range of post-processing tools for colour correction, light mix, compositing layers and masking, all available directly within the Blender UI.

V-Ray for Blender supports CPU, GPU and hybrid rendering configurations, making it fully scalable based on available hardware. Users can also utilise Chaos Cloud to move their data off their local machines and render in the cloud.

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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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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.

The post Chaos unveils Envision for architectural storytelling appeared first on AEC Magazine.

Gaussian splats, a technique which uses AI to create a rich 3D scene from a series of photos or videos, can now be rendered in the beta version of V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max.

The technology enables users to place buildings within their real-world context, or integrate scanned objects directly into the 3D scene

“We can get correct raytraced camera effects like motion blur, DoF and distortion, as well as proper interaction with other CG elements in the scene – reflections, refractions and matte/shadow surfaces,” explains Georgi Zhekov, product manager at Chaos.

The implementation works with Gaussian splats .PLY files produced by other popular tools like Postshot, Polycam, Luma.ai, Kiri, nerfStudio etc. PLY files are imported through a V-Ray Gaussian Geometry node.

Gaussian splats will first be supported in 3ds Max but will also be rolled out to other V-Ray integrations, including Maya, Houdini and Cinema4D.

Test rendering of Gaussian splats with V-Ray. The splats were created with PostShot out of drone video footage of the city of Hanoi. Image / video credit: Vladimir Koylazov, Chaos.

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Two years ago, Chaos, the developer of V-Ray, merged with Enscape to create a single entity to cover all aspects of visualisation from real time to photorealism.

V-Ray and Enscape remain entirely separate products, with extremely passionate sets of users. The message is still clear: Enscape is for design decisions while V-Ray is for the highest tier of visual quality.

One of the key aims for the new look Chaos was to bring both applications closer together, to deliver a seamless end-to-end workflow for architectural visualisation.

Autumn 2022 delivered the first fruits of this integration, with a bridge between Enscape and V-Ray. The idea is that users can work in the best tool for the job without having to recreate each asset from scratch.

Within a single BIM environment, users could start in Enscape and then render in V-Ray at the click of a button with materials mapped accordingly. Then at the tail end of 2023, a V-Ray Scene (.vrscene) could be exported from Enscape so a viz artist could instantly pick up in a tool like 3ds Max, where an architect left off in Revit.

Petr Mitev, vice president, solutions for designers at Chaos, admits that this is just the beginning. The workflow can still be improved in many ways. One way is to add bi-directionality, as he explains, “If you’re iterating throughout the design process, it could be that the 3D artist makes more progress and then the architect has to then reconcile that.”

Drawing from his personal experience as an architect, Mitev explains how a viz artist might add additional lights in V-Ray because interior renderings benefit greatly from being well lit. The problem is, he says, is that once you’ve shown the client that rendered space and they like it, the architect now has to bring that same lighting back into Enscape.

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Another way to improve the workflow, is through what Mitev describes as ‘quality of life’ improvements. For example, sometimes a VRayScene export is too large or sometimes a certain asset or material doesn’t translate correctly. “We want to improve the handling of specific Enscape materials,” he says. “If you’ve ever seen our grass or our water, sometimes when users make the switch to V-Ray in that connection, they’re kind of surprised that it looks different.”

While better translation will help in the short term, the longer-term goal is to serve up all materials – for Enscape and V-Ray – through the Chaos Cosmos content library.

“We want to get into a pattern where a certain model or a certain texture, whatever it might be, has different levels of detail,” says Mitev. “So, if you’re in Enscape, and you have this material, which is suitable for Enscape [real time] performance, but the moment you want to take it to V-Ray, then Cosmos can deliver a much higher resolution thing [asset].”

Embracing collaboration

Like most real time visualisation tools, Enscape is well known for being GPU hungry. To deliver a fluid real time experience it requires a powerful graphics card, especially at high-resolutions and with enhanced realism, including ray tracing.

Of course, not everyone has access to a high-end GPU, so this limits the reach of Enscape’s real-time rendering, both within an architectural practice and with other stakeholders, including clients.

Enscape is addressing this on two fronts: one by optimising rendering so it is accessible on lower powered devices and two by using pixel streaming, where the graphics processing is done on a local server or in the Chaos Cloud using high-performance GPUs for the best visual quality and interactive experience.

Of course, driving this development is a greater need for collaboration. As Kam Star, chief product officer at Chaos, explains, it’s becoming increasingly important to experience the scene in real time with others.

“The real value here is collaborative design review, and to be able to do it in a way that brings everybody together, whether you’re the client or the engineer or the architect, or even construction personnel on site,” he says.

“Being able to mark up, being able to handhold somebody, walk them through something, capture comments based on a particular location or a particular view and be able to converse around that.”

Chaos currently has some collaborative tools within the Chaos software suite. Chaos Cloud Collaboration, which comes from the V-Ray side of the business, allows teams to upload and mark up images and panoramas. As Star explains, that will provide the foundation for real time collaboration in Enscape.

“[Chaos Cloud Collaboration] already has all of the kind of tools that you need in order to set who the team is, what kind of access they’ve got, tracking, all those kinds of things. We’re leveraging that in our streaming solution, but also within Enscape over the course of the year.”

Mitev adds that the next stage of development is to hook up the collaborative annotation feature to Enscape and make it sync bi-directionally to Chaos Cloud. “Chaos Cloud can really become our collaborative platform, whether it’s 2D or whether it’s 3D, it doesn’t matter, but that should be the single point of truth,” he says.

In recent years, VR has proven to be a very powerful platform for design review. We asked Chaos if its plans for collaboration in Enscape will extend to immersive environments? “That’s the direction,” says Star. “With VR we recognise that some of the interfaces will be slightly different to what we’ve got right now – because you need them to be different. But the model we’re building, internally, we call it build once, use everywhere.

“If the customer has created something, they should be able to experience it on any device and be able to interact with it, without having to worry too much about, ‘oh no, I’m on Windows or Mac now. Oh no, I only have my Android tablet today or Apple Vision Pro’. It’s just about being able to use and interact with things without [hardware] getting in the way.”

Story time

Chaos is working on a new ‘story-telling’ solution, codenamed Project Eclipse, that will allow architects and visualisers to ‘rapidly enhance’ scenes started in Enscape or V-Ray.

The standalone tool is designed to work seamlessly with exports from all Chaos rendering integrations and is fully compatible with the Chaos Cosmos content library.

Star describes Project Eclipse as a fully ray traced 3D assembly and animation application. “It’s aimed at architectural visualisers who want an easy tool to create really beautiful photorealistic animations,” he says, adding that you can enhance scenes with crowds, vehicles, traffic, and custom behaviours.

The software can also be used to present multiple design options to clients. “Here’s this option, and here’s that option, and let’s walk around it in real time,” he says. “Can I see it if the wall is here or there? Can I see it if the kitchen is moved? Can I see it at night? Can I see it with this colour, or can I see it with this material? You set up different options. You can set up the different views and you can then transition between them.”

Star points out that Project Eclipse supports workflows unlike those of competitive products, insofar as it preserves the visualisation effort that’s done in the 3D creation tool. “

It combines the exports from anywhere Enscape or V-Ray resides, preserving the work done with them – so what you see in Enscape or V-Ray where you create is what you get in Eclipse,” he says. “It gives you the ability to assemble scenes from multiple tools,” adding that it will soon support neutral exchange formats such as OBJ, FBX, DAE and 3DS and eventually USD and MaterialX.

One of the aims of Project Eclipse is to enable architects to do the type of work that previously would have to be done by a visualisation specialist in a DCC application like Autodesk 3ds Max or a real time tool like Unreal Engine.

“You don’t need to redo your materials. You don’t need to break the link between, let’s say, Revit or SketchUp or Rhino. You continue to work in the way that you want, and these things are kept in sync. It’s really just simplifying the workflow. You don’t have to go and redo anything if you did it once, you create an option for ‘A’, then an option for ‘B’,” he says.

 Project Eclipse is an internal code name. The as-yet unnamed product will launch later this year.

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Chaos is working on a new Building Performance Module for its architectural visualisation software Enscape that will allow users to visualise the energy efficiency of buildings while designing in real time.

Later this year the company will also launch a new ‘story telling’ solution codenamed Project Eclipse that allow users to ‘rapidly enhance’ their Enscape and V-Ray scenes.

Building Performance Module

According to Chaos, the forthcoming Building Performance Module for Enscape will help drastically reduce the amount of time required for architects to achieve optimum energy efficiency for their designs and improve sustainability ratings.

Users will be able to visualise aspects such as daylight energy usage, and comfort analysis. The aim is to help architects see the impact of their early-stage design decisions and to help create more sustainable buildings.

“[The Building Performance Module for Enscape] will place the power of insightful decision making directly in your hands and democratise analysis,” said Phil Miller, VP product solutions for artists, Chaos.

“Bringing this to Enscape connects the BIM model with performance analysis, and within the real time visualisation mode you already know. Your analysis will dynamically update with your changes, just as your visualisation updates within Enscape.”

Project Eclipse

Later this year, Chaos will launch a new ‘story telling’ solution codenamed Project Eclipse that will accept and combine scenes directly from any Enscape or V-Ray integration, within which users will be able to ‘rapidly enhance’ their scene.

According to Miller, it will allow users to explore design variations, animate the possibilities and even orchestrate crowds and traffic far more rapidly than they can anywhere else.

“We feel this will be the perfect solution for architects and visualisation specialists to quickly tell their design stories and include far more detailed permutations and animation that is possible in any CAD tool,” he said.

Miller added that the new storytelling solution will work across all the products that Chaos supports.

Stylised visualisation

Chaos will be adding real time stylised visualisation to Enscape, that uses AI and natural language processing to give the render a hand drawn, more artistic look.

Image credits: YouTube: ChaosTV

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Evermotion uses a variety of platforms for architectural visualisation — 3ds Max, Unreal Engine, Cinema 4D and Blender. Projects are approached in a modular way, so they are not limited to a single software package.

More recently, the company has started using Lumen, the advanced dynamic global illumination and reflections system for Unreal Engine 5. This has made it much easier and faster for Evermotion’s artists to create collections in Unreal Engine 5.

“The lack of the need to bake lighting is a great plus,” says Evermotion’s Michal Franczak. “With each subsequent version of Unreal Engine 5, Lumen is becoming more and more refined and we are getting closer to the quality of offline renderers in our latest products.

“Of course, not every 3D branch is using this system,” he adds. “For example, the broadcasting and virtual studios industry needs extremely optimised scenes and the absence of any artifacts during live broadcasts, in these projects we still use baked lighting.”

We ask Franczak if Evermotion ever uses V-Ray for Unreal Engine? “We don’t,” he replies, “most of our products go to customers who use Lumen and baked lighting. In addition, Unreal Engine 5 has a very efficient path-tracer, which is perfectly integrated and developed from version to version, so if there is a need to increase the quality even further, it can be turned on immediately, without the need for additional installations.”

Main image: Glass house interior modelled in 3ds Max and rendered in V-Ray

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