Artists can bypass game engines and use their normal pipeline to put ray-traced 3D content on LED walls; NVIDIA DLSS 4 support enhances photorealism.
Chaos has launched Chaos Arena, a new virtual production tool that allows artists to bypass game engines and use their normal pipeline to put ray-traced 3D content on LED walls in a matter of minutes. Arena aims to deliver fully path-traced quality renders in real-time, accurately capturing lighting and seamlessly blending virtual environments with physical sets.
“Virtual production has been transformative, but the current process is full of crashes and rebuilds that can cost studios thousands of dollars per minute,” said Christopher Nichols, Director of Special Projects at the Chaos Innovation Lab. “Arena will not only let artists use the same assets from pre to post, but adds in a level of real-time path tracing and stability that wasn’t possible before today. This is exactly what Hollywood needs to rein in budgets and kick off the next big wave of independent filmmaking.”
Arena was designed to help studios quickly move their 3D scenes from popular tools like Maya, Houdini, Blender and 3DS Max onto LED screens, without a game engine. Artists can build their assets, bring a V-Ray scene file into Chaos Arena, and start their virtual shoots. Chaos is also working on USD and MaterialX support, to allow artists to bring in assets or shaders from outside of the Chaos ecosystem.
Arena is powered by Chaos Vantage, one of the first path tracers to support NVIDIA’s DLSS 4 ray reconstruction/upscaling technology, a suite of neural rendering tools designed to boost FPS and image quality. By implementing DLSS 4’s new denoiser algorithm (built on a new AI transformer model) users can enjoy a noticeable improvement in the visual fidelity of wires, hairs and interior scenes without upgrading their current RTX cards. This boost ensures that even after denoising and/or upscaling, users will see perfect anti-aliasing of objects and textures as fine as 1 to 2 pixels.
“Virtual production is reaping the benefits of the latest wave of technological advancement,” added James Blevins, co-founder of MESH and former post-production supervisor on The Mandalorian. “Arena’s utilization of DLSS 4 has given me and my productions the opportunity to get great environmental work to the wall as quickly as possible. It really feels like a tool that’s enabling the art department.”
Arena is available now and priced on a daily or annual rate. Arena can also be tested in a trial format that includes a watermark.
Source: Chaos
Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.
