LOS ANGELES – Chaos Group has released Chaos Vantage, a new application that allows users to instantly explore their 3D scenes in a fully ray-traced, real-time environment. Unlike traditional real-time methods, the import process is simple – no geometry to optimize, UVs to unwrap or lighting to bake. Users simply drag-and-drop a V-Ray scene, or live link from Autodesk 3ds Max, to bring it into real time.
As a result, architects and designers can now interact with their designs in the simplest and most realistic way possible.
Vantage, formerly known as Project Lavina, is designed for massive scenes and can handle billions of polygons without any loss in detail or significant decrease in speed. Vantage automatically reads V-Ray’s physically based lights and materials to produce photorealistic results with 100% ray tracing, even on complex scenes. Vantage is currently averaging 24-30fps on a consumer-grade Nvidia RTX card at HD resolution, with additional speed boosts available using two GPUs.
Vantage can open scene files from any recent V-Ray integration and also live links with V-Ray for 3ds Max, giving users the ability to see every camera, model and lighting adjustment in Vantage as they create. This turns Vantage into a fully ray-traced viewport that allows artists to make their creative decisions with higher fidelity than ever before.
Vantage also includes an Animation Editor that can create, edit and render animated sequences for presentations or previsualization purposes, using a simple transition-based method. With cameras set in Vantage as markers, designers can direct the editor through the various milestones, manipulating transition times and moves at will. An onboard tool keeps track of all new cameras/poses during this process, ensuring scene consistency across a production.
Other features include object transforms and controls, lookup tables, collision detection, layered fog and record camera.
To celebrate the release of Chaos Vantage, Chaos Group has partnered with Lenovo, Nvidia, KitBash3D and CGarchitect to launch the “Building Utopia” real-time rendering challenge. Running until January 25, 2021, the contest will focus on real-time animation using Vantage and a free futuristic 3D city model provided by KitBash3D.
Prizes include a Lenovo ThinkPad with an Nvidia RTX 5000 professional GPU, an Nvidia RTX 8000 professional GPU, and more. Registrations are now open on CGarchitect, with the winners to be revealed on March 26.
Chaos Vantage is available now and is compatible with all V-Ray Next and V-Ray 5 integrations. A one-year license is free until June 2, 2021, after which it will cost $389 annually. Vantage is also included in V-Ray Collection, an annual plan that gives users full access to 15 Chaos Group products and services for $699/year. Vantage uses DXR ray tracing and currently requires an Nvidia RTX series GPU.