Chaos releases Vantage 2.2
Chaos has updated Vantage, its real-time ray tracing renderer, intended for exploring large V-Ray scenes for architectural visualization and VFX.
Vantage 2.2 adds supports for DLSS 3x render upscaling, updates the OptiX and OIDN denoisers, adds a new firefly removal filter, and support for key 3ds Max and Maya hair formats.
A hardware-accelerated ray tracer for exploring large production scenes in real time
First released in 2020, Vantage is a hardware-accelerated ray tracing renderer intended for exploring large V-Ray production scenes in near-real time.
Chaos’s pitch for using Vantage over other real-time rendering solutions – particularly Unreal Engine, which is free for this kind of work – is ease of use.
Rather than having to convert scenes created for offline renders for use in a game engine – still time-consuming, despite tools like Datasmith – Vantage can render the original .vrscene files.
It doesn’t support every feature of V-Ray – you can find a list of supported features for each V-Ray host application in the online documentation – but it’s intended to be a close visual match.
The initial release was targeted at visualization, but this year Chaos added support for rendering deforming meshes, like animated characters, and began pitching Vantage at VFX work.
Vantage 2.2: updates to DLSS and the render denoising tools
The release extends Vantage’s support for Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), NVIDIA’s AI-based image reconstruction tech, support for DLSS 3.5 having been introduced in Vantage 2.1.
That latest update adds support for the 2.25x and 3x render upscaling modes.
There are also updates to the software’s integrated NVIDIA OptiX and Intel OIDN render denoisers, plus a new firefly filter that can be applied to renders to reduce denoising time.
Support for common 3ds Max and Maya hair formats
For Autodesk users, Vantage 2.1 also adds support for many key 3ds Max and Maya hair formats, including XGen, Chaos’s own V-Ray Fur, and the Ornatrix and Hair Farm plugins.
Other changes include support for V-Ray Displacement and Intel’s Meteor Lake integrated GPUs, support for Intel’s discrete Arc A-Series cards having been added in the previous update.
Price and system requirements
Chaos Vantage is compatible with Windows 10+ and DXR-compatible AMD, Intel or Nvidia GPUs.
The software is rental-only, with subscriptions costing $108.90/month or $658.80/year. It is included free with V-Ray Premium and Enterprise subscriptions.
Read a full list of new features in Chaos Vantage 2.2 in the online documentation
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