Chaos Hopes to Make Virtual Production Better, Quicker and Cheaper With New Software Development (EXCLUSIVE)
Summary
German visualization tech developer Chaos, whose software includes the Engineering Emmy and SciTech Academy Award-honored V-Ray renderer, is developing new tech aimed at offering studios what it believes will be a less costly, more efficient and higher quality option for virtual production volumes. The Western-themed short, which is expected to debut in the spring, is being lensed by American Society of Cinematographers past president Richard Crudo, while the virtual production line producer is James Blevins, co-founder of virtual production firm MESH and a former post supervisor on “The Mandalorian.” The goal of the new renderer is to help productions more quickly move 3D-created scenes from popular creation tools such as Maya and Houdini onto LED screens. They could not necessarily spend a lot of time converting data,” Chaos Labs’ director of special projects Christopher Nichols suggests, noting that the company is seeking feedback from artists as they develop the tech. “It represents a huge step forward for cinematographers by allowing us to do our jobs more creatively, quickly and efficiently,” adds Crudo. Nichols believes that the ray tracing approach is “the most accurate” at representing lighting and cameras, but the challenge has been that “you can’t always get a real time experience.” In order to get those real time experiences, virtual production workflows today typically involve a game engine, which uses “rasterized” rendering.