We’re standing on the precipice of a new dawn in visualization, where exciting tools and technologies will allow everyone to create anything they can imagine, without limitations. And Chaos is determined to be at the forefront of this creative revolution. But how?
That’s the question we set out to answer with Chaos Unboxed Live. This online keynote, led by CEO Christian Lang, gave an overview of the company’s future direction and unveiled the product innovations coming your way in 2024. Here’s the video plus a recap of the key announcements.
The principles driving product development
The future of Chaos products revolves around three core principles:
1. Accelerating creativity: We’ll provide user-friendly yet powerful tools with AI enhancements. Chaos aims to empower users without replacing their creativity by offering them a better brush to bring their visions to life faster and with greater control.
2. Delivering fully interconnected solutions: A seamless workflow is key, allowing creations to flow effortlessly between different parts of the process without requiring rework.
3. Being available everywhere: Ensuring accessibility across all platforms, from desktops and browsers to mobile devices and virtual reality, empowering users to meet their audiences wherever they are.
Based on these three principles, Chaos is taking visualization in new and innovative directions across its product portfolio, including Enscape, V-Ray, Corona, Vantage, Cylindo, and Cosmos, plus new products on the way.
What's coming in 2024
Let’s dive into what was announced and how it will help make life easier and more fun for architects, designers, and artists. For the full recap across all products, be sure to check out the article on the Chaos Blog.
Enscape
We’re extremely excited to announce that in 2024, a new building performance module for Enscape will allow architects to visualize the energy efficiency of a building while designing in real time. This will place the power of insightful decision-making directly into your hands and democratize analysis, which in turn will help you deliver more sustainable designs.
“Bringing this to Enscape connects the BIM model with performance analysis within the real-time visualization mode you already know. Your analysis will dynamically update with your changes, just as your visualization updates with Enscape. Understanding your design’s energy efficiency will soon be common knowledge amongst your team.
By unifying the workflow connecting the BIM model, performance analysis, and visualization, we will be giving you a dynamic solution that will inform you of your design’s energy efficiency as you make modifications. We believe this will provide more transparency and better collaboration, ensuring everyone understands a project’s energy efficiency throughout the design process,” explained Phillip Miller, VP Product.
Head of Innovation, Vladimir Koylazov (Vlado), went on to explain: “Within this solution, we will be able to show important aspects of a design such as day-lighting, energy usage, and comfort analysis. This will allow you to see the impact of your design choices, and be confident in the earliest stage of creating a sustainable building — which is exactly when you can actually make the most impact.”
Also announced at Unboxed Live was how we’re bringing the Enscape and V-Ray feature sets closer together, ensuring seamless workflows for all users. Think Cloud Collaboration support and access to elements of the Chaos Cosmos asset library, so you can shift projects between programs seamlessly and fearlessly.
That’s not all: Enscape will also receive a real-time solution for rendering stylized visuals in a hand-drawn manner, plus integrated GPU and mobile viewing capabilities.
V-Ray
Now onto our our industry-leading photorealistic rendering solution. Open-source 3D software Blender has built a massive, passionate userbase, and its regular updates and free nature have attracted everyone from complete beginners to large studios. People often ask us if V-Ray for Blender could be a thing, and the answer is yes, it will be! And we’re working on it right now.
V-Ray will also receive significant enhancements to ensure compatibility and accessibility across various platforms and tools. We’ve been building up to this with the Bridge between V-Ray and Enscape, and USD and MaterialX support, which help our customers work seamlessly across platforms and with studios worldwide.
New storytelling platform
Also coming this year is an independent product for rapid archviz storytelling. This solution will accept and combine scenes directly from any Enscape or V-Ray integration and enable you to enhance your scene quickly, explore design variations, animate the possibilities (yes, we just said animate!), and even orchestrate crowds and traffic.
“We feel this will be the perfect solution for architects and visualization specialists to quickly tell their design’s story and include far more detail, permutations, and animation than is possible in any CAD tool,” explained Phillip Miller.
The storytelling platform will also work across all the products Chaos supports, so you can hit the ground running and never hit a dead end. More on this to follow soon.
Cosmos
More AI: Chaos Cosmos, the asset library that is growing in size and becoming a crucial part of the Chaos ecosystem, will receive chat-driven material creation. Specify the material you want, and then art direct it to your project’s exact needs by adding scratches or logos, making it more metallic, or just turning it up to 11.
Smoother client collaboration and reviews
We aim to revolutionize design collaboration with a new platform that allows real-time 3D design reviews and seamless collaboration for teams and clients, regardless of their location, device, or even platform.
By prioritizing accessibility and fostering engagement through photorealistic 3D experiences, we're redefining how architects, designers, artists, and clients connect and communicate, breaking down barriers and creating a truly unified experience for all. More to follow soon.
Chaos AI Lab
Here at Chaos, we’re committed to staying on top of AI's incredible possibilities, while ensuring that users and artists maintain creative control. That’s why we’ve formed the Chaos AI Lab to investigate how we can integrate AI technology into Chaos products in a way that is useful and respectful.
The first fruits of the Lab, mentioned in this article, include adding real-time stylized visualization so Enscape itself looks hand-drawn, giving you more artistic results and flexibility when you present. And that’s just one example of what the AI Lab is working on. Watch this space!
More to come from Chaos Unboxed in 2024
To experience the buzz and to hear all of the announcements made at Chaos Unboxed Live, be sure to watch the keynote.
This keynote is just the start of the Chaos Unboxed series. We have more events, both online and in the real world, coming up throughout the year, so you can see the latest innovations in action, ask questions, and meet fellow Chaos users.
The first event will take place in Berlin on March 21, followed by Toronto on April 4, and New York on April 17. Plus we have events planned for London, Dubai, and Paris later in the year.
