Chaos and Enscape merger

[Simon Ng]

https://corona-renderer.com/news/chaos-and-enscape-to-merge-backed-by-ta-associates-and-lea-partners

Quite excited by this news. I wonder if we'll finally see a version on Enscape on 3DS Max.

[Scott Schroeder]

I'm wondering if this will replace Vantage/Vision which never could compete with Enscape. The fact that this hopefully means that Enscape can read vray materials is going to be a huge game changer for us as I can finally share materials with the other teams.

[Jon Berntsen]

Chaos needed to do something, at least. Vantage needs animations and easy to use stuff like Twinmotion do, not to speak of constantly new objects. Twinmotion with its huge improvements in each released version seems like everything we would need from Vantage. Twinmotion is just a few versions away from, if not already, great render quality and post effects. Its huge drawback is that it doesn't have vray stuff support.

With more and more use of OSL and physical materials, I really don't see chaos' place in the future if they don't jazz up the realtime animated object/shaders and dynamic weather system. As for initial model work, enscape wouldn't cut it, not in a lifetime, but why would we need vray in eg 3ds max when all rendering is done in Enscape/Vantage and vray materials are replaced by physical material anyway? No need to pay for that.

Heck, even phoenixFD will eventually be outgunned (in the archviz field) by very simple to use flames, water, smoke etc. 1 minute to set up, direct visual feedback. So I think Chaos needs a kickstart on this  kind ů of product, which I believe will merge with Vantage before 2024, and become the flagship of their product line. I simply cannot see it in any different way. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by Jon Berntsen

[Scott Schroeder]

It's going to be interesting to see where this all goes. I know there is a good amount of trepidation from the Enscape user side that Vray being a part of the development will try to overcomplicate Enscape and turn it into something like Vantage. To me, Vantage sacrifices too much in performance for physical accuracy that most people don't notice or care about. Overall, I'm not super worried about the future of Vray and Enscape, but Corona is another deal. Now that both companies have merged but are under control from financial backers, I can see one of the bean counters wondering why Corona exists when you have Vray and asking to cut Corona since it's not heavily tied to big film and VFX money.

In my humble opinion, we're always going to need Vray in Max because real-time isn't there yet and won't be there for many many years. Sure, it's there for single family housing and minimalistic Scandinavian kitchen renders, but it is absolutely not there yet for larger scale projects. Twinmotion/Lumion/Enscape fall down when we try to do an arena project in them and still get the same quality we get out of Vray. Unreal is the only engine that comes close, but still struggles to deal with the sheer amount of geometry when we import the people for the crowds. Sure, if I had Madden or FIFA sized development teams for crowds, it can be done. But in arch viz where pretty much a team of 1-2 people is responsible for every aspect of the project, Unreal becomes a little harder to implement at a large scale. The other thing that is going to hold back real-time, is the current issues we are all facing with GPU prices. Had the the RTX 30 series not hit massive price spikes, I think we'd be a lot closer to real-time dominance, but as it stands no one can really afford (or want to) to pay 4 times MSRP for a GPU. Hell, when I can sell my old RTX 2060 for 3 times what I paid for it, that's a clear sign something is off. GPU's shouldn't be treated as a return on investment item, they should depreciate as soon as you buy them and not increase in value.

[Francisco Penaloza]

It is interesting news for sure, In my opinion, they will keep all three renders for a while to try to cover as much as possible the market that now is being impacted by other real time software, such Twinmotion, Lumion, Unreal, Unity.

To me V-Ray focus now is VFX, big budget and the user base is pretty savy and nerdy so they can write their own scripts if they need something else.

On the other side, AEC business is always again time. so that's why Enscape just blow everyone else out of the park with their simplicity and quality render.
To me V-Ray wills stay as it is now, Corona will stay for those boutique ArchViz studios(not sure for how long) and Enscape will just dominate the AEC. On my company nobody uses V-Ray on Rhino or REVIT anymore. Enscape is just so much better when time is the essence. I never understood Chaos Vantage/Vision. I think those were just try to stay in the fight with other real-time apps. Is like V-Ray for Unreal. Not sure why you will want to do that.

VelveltElvis is right that the main problem with Enscape absolute dominance is the host software. Rhino, REVIT, Sketchup are not designed for large Arch Viz work so every time you push them too much it just breaks.  This make seance, that's why V-Ray for 3D Max is the de facto on the arch Viz industry for a while. The problem is for a large part of the market that need animations, and V-Ray/Corona can't compete with the many frames per seconds than Twinmotion or Lumion can give you. Yes the quality is not the same but there is a big market that good enough is the king.

For specialized artist such myself it is sad to be content doing Lumion animations when you can see how much better will look and how much flexible is with V-Ray and 3D Max; but without a affordable render farm those animation are just gone for in house projects.