Table of Contents

Important note to all users with an active V-Ray Premium/Enterprise subscription

As of 28th of June, 2023, Chaos Vantage 2 is sold as an independent product and is no longer part of the V-Ray Premium or Enterprise subscriptions. For more information visit this link.

All customers who have an active V-Ray Premium/Enterprise subscription receive a complimentary Vantage 2 license for the duration of their current subscription.

Chaos Vantage, v2.3.0


New Features

Materials

  • Support for rendering V-Ray Blend Material (BRDFLayered).

Render element

UI/UX

Output



Modified

Displacement

  • Improved memory used for displacement by varying tessellation level within a mesh.

Denoiser

  • Updated Intel Open Image Denoise to version 2.2.

Light Cache

  • Improved Light Cache to slightly better preserve low intensity samples.

UI/UX

  • Chaos Cosmos Browser UI responsiveness.



Fixes

Displacement

  • Random displacement when using unsupported secondary UV channel of the geometry object.

Scene states

  • Broken sub-states after dropping Environment texture.

  • Wrong Live Link update for Nodes with unsupported materials.

  • Wrong rendering of Glossy Refraction with rotated texture during Live Link with Rhinoл

Lights

  • Sun azimuth rotation values to match geographical azimuth. Old saved .vantage files will be automatically updated to use new values on Save.

Collision

  • Missing "Height ratio" update when collision "Height tolerance" is changed.

Clouds

  • Wrong cloud shading with sun slightly under the horizon.

Lighting

  • Wrong lighting when rendering using direct light reservoir resampling and the scene contains a normal map.

  • Refraction artifacts when rendering with direct light reservoir resampling.

UI/UX

  • Disappearing toolbar in the Debug Log window after second opening.

  • Hiding of the HQ rendering dialog while "Always on top" is enabled.

Denoiser

  • Streak artifacts with Optix denoiser and multi GPU setup.

  • Broken temporal (“reduce flickering”) denoising in multi GPU mode.



Chaos Vantage, v2.2.3


Official Release

Date - February 21, 2024




New Features

Chaos Scatter

  • Support for scattering lights.

  • Support for VRayMultiSubTex.



Modified

Geometry

  • Improved loading speed of .vrscenes with a small number of very detailed meshes.

Fixes

Geometry

  • Slow mesh loading in Chaos Vantage 2.2.2.

Material

  • Crash when a texture is set as bump amount in a material.

Live Link

  • Artifacts on Chaos Scatter instances after changing the material of their source model.

  • Missing sun properties in Chaos Vantage during Live Link in version 2.2.2. Now sun properties are available only when the scene in the host app does not contain a sun light.

  • Incorrect lighting when an object is turned into mesh light during.

Camera

  • Resetting of "Aperture size" when reopening a scene.

Animation editor

  • Animation trim not taken into account in the Render setup dialog.



Chaos Vantage, v2.2.2


Official Release

Date - February 8, 2024




New Features

Chaos Scatter



Modified

Camera

  • Improved camera imported from SketchUp - now view matches when using Two-Point Perspective.

  • increased camera limit from 100 to 1000.
  • Now Field of view does not change between cameras with different focus distance when Lens mode is set to Field of View.
  • Film Gate and Zoom settings are now hidden when Lens mode is Field of View.

Environment

  • Improved physical sky responsiveness.



Fixes

Denoiser

  • Brightness flicker issue when using a combination of DLSS Ray Reconstruction as Primary and NVidia Optix AI as Secondary denoisers

  • Ghosting in offline camera animation with Optix denoiser

  • DLSS preset not getting restored properly on Vantage startup
  • Motion blur not working with the DLSS modes that have upscaling different from 2x

  • Artifacts with "only final pass" denoising

Camera

  • Crash caused by reordering cameras in Camera lister.

  • Crash caused by leveling camera and then saving .vantage file.

Scene states

  • Crash when using sub state with deleted objects.

Displacement

  • Geometry gaps when using stochastic tiling and displacement.

  • Wrong displacement amount caused by object scaling.

Live Link

  • Wrong update of V-Ray Light mesh.

  • Flipped instanced geometries during Render animation with Chaos Vantage from Cinema 4D.

Chaos Cosmos

  • Slow scene load when download of missing Cosmos assets is canceled.

Scattering fog

  • Incorrect GI caused by Scatter fog with "affect secondary" on and "scatter GI" off.

UX/UI

  • Wrong size of checkbox size on high dpi displays.



Chaos Vantage, v2.2.1


Official Release

Date - December 15, 2023




New Features

Geometry

  • Support for material ID for displacement.



Fixes

Geometry

  • Crash with mesh file with thousands of voxels.
  • Displacement UV scale issue in SketchUp.
  • Crash with empty geometry with added displacement.
  • Broken displacement continuity with SketchUp scenes.

Materials

  • Clay mode removing displacement.
  • Clay mode removing light textures.

Live Link

  • Crash with animated ForestPro objects in 3Ds Max Live Link.



Chaos Vantage, v2.2.0


Official Release

Date - December 7, 2023



New Features

Geometry

  • Support for V-Ray Fur, Ornatrix, Hairfarm, and XGen hair.

  • Support for V-Ray Displacement.

  • Support for new V-Ray 6.2  Forest pack and Rail clone instancing.

Materials

  • Support for V-Ray Hair Next material.

Hardware

  • Support for Intel Meteor Lake iGPU.

Batch rendering

  • Render Setup options and render queue items are now stored in the .vantage file.

Live Link

UI/UX

  • Implemented a warning and error count indicator in the status bar.

Rendering



Modified

Geometry

  • Improved GPU peak memory usage when loading the geometry for a scene.

  • Improved check for failed geometry allocations.

DLSS

  • Improved DLSS - added 2.25x and 3x upscale modes (available when Secondary (when static) denoiser is set to Same as Primary).

  • Reduced memory usage.

Denoiser

Scene States

  • Properly update the Scene States helper message on undo/redo.

  • Update scene state button now creates necessary sub-states if ORIGINAL SCENE or SAVED SCENE is currently chosen.

  • Detected changes for scene states when modifying a New file.

Navigation

  • Improved Orthographic camera navigation. Now Navigate around cursor ray hit and Navigate around selection work properly.

UX/UI

  • Improved Viewport Fill - now filter is disabled when sharpness is set to 0.

  • Improved DPI scaling on 150% and similar ratios.



Fixes

Geometry

  • Crash when loading invalid Instancer2 with missing node reference.

UI/UX

  • Bug with wrong UI slider ranges.

  • Wrong trimming of the scene animation track.

  • Auto-exposure and noise mask overlay while using Intel GPUs for rendering.

  • Wrong reloading of a saved .vantage file, with imported .vrscene.

  • Animated cameras from imported vrscenes are not loaded with animation after reload of .vantage file.

  • Wrong camera grouping on import.

Textures

  • Missing texture UVs if their UVW generator is missing.

Output

  • Wrong baking of Exposure bias in EXR when exposure correction is disabled.

  • Camera white balance not getting saved in EXR.



Chaos Vantage, v2.1.1


Official Release

Date - October 10, 2023



New Features

View modes

UI/UX

  • Implemented status messages Info, Modified, Created, Switched for sub-states and scene states.

Modified

Textures

  • Support for mix_amount parameter for 3ds Max's Composite texture.

Fixes

  • Sequence from animated camera in Vantage not rendering when in Live Link.

Installation

  • Possible crash after downgrading Vantage.

Scene States

  • Incorrect Undo action on moved objects after applied scene state.



Chaos Vantage, v2.1.0


Official Release

Date - September 21, 2023



New Features

DLSS

Material

  • Support for refraction glossiness.

Hardware

  • Support for discrete Intel Arc GPUs (experimental).



Modified

Batch rendering

  • Render queue items are now stored between offline rendering sessions.

UI/UX

  • Camera thumbnail now updates automatically when scene states are changed for the camera.



Fixes

UI/UX

  • Crash when clicking the new version notification button in the menu bar.
  • Incorrect render resolution settings when adding multiple cameras using the Group enqueue mode and the <from camera> resolution preset.

Scene States

  • Incorrect Undo action on moved objects after applied scene state.

  • Incorrect NONE sub-state for Objects and Materials
  • Incorrect camera scene state in the camera scene states dropdown menu when editing render queue item.



Chaos Vantage, v2.0.1


Official Release

Date - August 03, 2023



New Features

Scene states

  • Smooth transition between scene states attached to cameras in the animation timeline.

Rendering

Textures

  • Support for Bercon tiles texture.

Animation editor

Auto-exposure



Modified

UX/UI

  • Improved the 'Update textures and meshes for current frame' button - now it is a toggle and when enabled automatically updates meshes and animated textures in the interactive viewport, when playback is not active.

  • Rearranged the rollouts in the Environment tab UI. Renamed Environment rollout to Sky, Cloud settings rollout to Clouds, Sun light rollout to Sun.

  • Moved Sky model settings from Sun rollout to Sky rollout, visible only when Environment mode is Physical sky.
  • The render progress dialog is now movable.

Performance

  • Improved memory usage when using a single GPU (around 30MB per megapixel) to not use double buffering.

Scene states

  • Renamed '<chosen scene state>' to '<current scene state>' in sequence rendering, keeping current changes during the offline rendering.

  • Added a SAVED SCENE state, updated on each "Save scene" or "Save Scene As..." action, preventing the previous accumulation of Auto Saved sub-states.

  • Improved the 'Create scene state' button - now it automatically creates all necessary sub-states where needed and is added in the top toolbar.

  • Renamed the 'DEFAULT' scene state to be 'ORIGINAL SCENE'

Output

  • Improved the output filename when Render elements are enabled in sequence rendering to be better recognized by external applications. 

Gizmos

  • Improved the rendering of the navigation and placement helper objects. 



Fixes

Batch rendering

  • Crash when updating Render queue cameras that to have same output file name.

Cloning

  • Crash when cloning scene objects multiple times.

Scene States

  • Crash when renaming a scene state to a specific name.

  • Missing scene state button in the camera widget when the scene is opened as a config only.

Live Link

  • Crash when opening home screen during Live Link. Now the 'Home sceen' button is disabled during Live Link.

  • Wrong overwriting of the -linkPort console argument by the INI file.

Denoiser

  • Crash when rendering high quality images/sequence with Intel denoiser selected but disabled.

  • Wrong results when rendering on AMD GPUs.

  • Missing denoiser when rendering with 'Only final pass' and pressing 'Stop and Save'.

  • Bug with the denoiser when rendering high quality images/sequences with dynamic textures.

  • Bug with NVIDIA AI temporal upscaling denoising in offline mode.

Lights

  • Wrong loading of mesh lights from vrscenes exported from SketchUp/Rhino/Revit.

Render elements

  • Wrong Normal render element, when "Scattering fog" and "scatter gi" are enabled.

  • Alpha not stored in EXR and PNG when using Intel denoiser or 'Separate files' is enabled. Now Alpha is always generated.

UX/UI

  • Frame scene/selection when using Orthographic camera.

  • Cinemascope resolution presets.

  • Wrong cropping of the light names in the UI.

Geometry

  • Double applying of the VRayScene transformation for Instance objects within a VRayScene.

  • Wrong rendering of imported VRayScene in C4D

Tools

  • “Export static scene” and0 “Export animated scene to Chaos Vantage” now work regardless of V-Ray render engine type in 3ds Max.

Motion blur

  • Motion blur not applied to whole image when using an upscaler.

Chaos Cosmos

  • Wrong redirection for the Cosmos login page.

Camera

  • Fixed the camera position in new empty scene.

  • Strange roll when switching cameras in specific scene.



Chaos Vantage, v2.0.0


Official Release

Date - June 27, 2023



New Features

Scene States

Render Elements

Fog

Textures

  • Support for multiple UV channels.
  • Support for Vertex Color.
  • Support for all options of the Advanced mode of the Color Correction texture from 3ds Max.
  • Support for repeat/offset U/V for UVWGenMaya when not using shading graphs (e.g. for bump maps).

Animation

  • Support for .vrscene file with animated: vertices, vrmeshes, materials, textures and UV parameters, light parameters.

  • Support for animations outside the imported .vrscene range.

Denoiser

Performance

Chaos Scatter

Hardware

  • Support for HDR displays.

  • Support for AMD GPUs (experimental).

Subdivision

  • Support for statically subdivided geometry objects from .vrscene.

Lights

Materials

  • Support for VRmat materials.

  • Support for V-Ray override material (MtlOverride).

UI/UX

  • Helper onscreen text for gizmo manipulators.

  • Rendering quality presets slider with 4 predefined  presets.

Cloning

  • Implemented object cloning functionality with Ctrl+D.

Camera

Tools

Home Screen

Rendering

Geometry

  • Support for embedded vrscene nodes (VRayScene).




Modified

UX/UI

  • Revamped user interface and user experience with reorganized and regrouped parameters. 



Fixes

Live Link

  • Double frame sequence rendering during Live Link with 'Render animation with Chaos Vantage'.

Geometry

  • Wrong placement of meshes at the origin when instanced by an Instancer in an animated .vrscene file.

  • Artifacts near the scene origin caused by self intersection.



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.6


Official Release

Date - June 1, 2023

 

 

 

Fixes

Live Link

  • Wrong first frame and duplicate frames during Live Link sequence rendering.

  • Reverted IPR render state to be enabled automatically when in Live Link

Texture

  • Bug when trying to load RawBitmapBuffer of an image above 16k resolution.

UX/UI

  • Fixed random crash when closing Vantage

  • Wrong denoiser description

  • Inconvenient soft range for the environment lighting intensity parameter

  • Camera panel width issue when "Enlarge font" is enabled



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.5


Official Release

Date - April 20, 2023

 

 

 

New features

Materials

  • Basic support for VRmat materials.

Textures

  • Support for alpha from bitmaps used in V-Ray material's opacity, exported from Maya.

  • Support for all options of the Advanced mode of the Color Correction texture from 3Ds Max.

UX/UI

Geometry

  • Support for Edge trimming option introduced in Chaos Scatter with V-Ray 6 for  3ds Max, update 1.1.



Modified

UX/UI

 

 

Fixes

Clouds

  • Tiling artifacts for thin layer of clouds.

Live Link

  • Wrong undo actions for camera parameters during Live Link.

Lights

  • Textured rectangle lights don't match V-Ray when the light units are not set to default.

UX/UI

  • Deleting parent object in a hierarchy messes children's transformation and Undo history.

  • Render resolution not updating automatically when render Setup dialog is opened.

 

Chaos Vantage, v1.8.4


Official Release

Date - January 25, 2023

 

 

 

New features

Textures

  • Support for for repeat/offset u/v for 2D Placement texture from Maya when used in bump.



Modified

Rendering

 

 

Fixes

Import/Load

  • Crash when importing/loading with animated proxy containing hair geometry.

Texture

  • Crash with EXR file loaded as a V-Ray Normal map in Bump slot material.

  • Texture blurriness when W coordinate is different than 0.

Lights

  • New Default Vantage sun being created each time a non-vrscene is appended.

  • Light intensity to accept only positive values.

Auto-exposure

  • Difference in image brightness when using Auto-exposure and different rendering resolutions.

  • Visual artifacts with fog and Auto-Exposure.

UX/UI

  • Restoring of maximized main window.

  • Active pixels overlay not showing active pixels.

  • Stereo Spherical and Stereo Cube camera types not updating correctly render resolution based on aspect ratio.

Command line

  • Command line rendering with video output file generates separate files.

Rendering

  • Camera types not taken into account, when using sequence rendering.

Batch rendering

  • Wrong FOV for cameras of the render Queue.

Live Link

  • Render animation with Chaos Vantage, from 3Ds Max, doesn't start rendering when a Live link connection is not established.



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.3


Official Release

Date - October 26, 2022

 

 

 

Modified

Performance

  •  Improved performance on the RTX 4090 GPU

UX/UI

  • Increased default value of "Max. sec. ray intensity" from 20 to 200.

  • Grouped exposure, highlight burn and contrast in Exposure group.



Fixes

Live Link

  • Crash related to bump/normal mapping in a live link from V-Ray 6 for SketchUp.

Lights

  • Choppy sun and clouds animation for animated geolocation.

Materials

  • Wrong rendering of scenes that contain VRayOverride material.

Path resolver

  • Incorrect assets being loaded when resolving paths.

UX/UI

  • Wrong resolution for 720p preset in the HQ dialog
  • Missing startup scene.

Render elements

  • Missing render elements in EXR file.



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.2


Official Release

Date - October 13, 2022

 

 

 

Modified

Environment

  • Implemented a default Vantage sun so Physical Sun and Sky option is available in the Environment mode drop-down

UX/UI

Path resolver

  • Improved path resolver now searches every subfolder next to the imported file, for assets.

Motion blur

  • Reduced artifacts from motion blur

Denoiser

  • Improved Vantage denoiser result in refraction and flickering object edges. 
  • Improved refraction quality when switching between Vantage and NVidia AI in Combined denoiser mode. 
  • Improved reflection detail with NVidia AI denoiser.

Auto-exposure

  •  Improved auto-exposure that accumulate samples in dark areas (single GPU only).



Fixes

Rendering

  • Visual popping of textures with "Dynamic textures" option enabled.
  • Wrong blending of the sun disk with the ground albedo.
  • Wrong alignment of the sky texture's horizon line .
  • Temporal denoiser and postprocessing passes breaking with dynamic textures.
  • Reduce flickering being used when disabled in High quality rendering.

Auto-exposure

  • Crash when starting an offline render with "Auto exposure" enabled on systems with 2 GPUs.

Command line

  • Crash when rendering with -denoiser=0.

Live Link

  • Hang when the Live Link drops during a sequence rendering.
  • Random abort while rendering sequence using "Render animation using Chaos Vantage".
  • Live Link in 3ds Max doesn't start with the first click on the Start/Stop button.

  • Distributed rendering in 3ds Max to always deactivate when the Live Link stop button is pressed.

Motion blur

  • Not applying to moving objects when using "Render animation using Chaos Vantage".
  • Not rendering in "Render animation using Chaos Vantage" Maxscript.

Import/Load

  • Errors caused by loading empty string texture filenames.

  • Scene animation range one frame shorter when loading .vantage file. 

UX/UI

  • UI bug when switching between 'Focal length' and 'Field of view'.
  • Transform manipulation and snapping windows not being disabled in Live Link.
  • Inconsistent spinner value changes on secondary monitor .
  • Wrong rotation range for transform type-ins.
  • Chaos Vantage starting at invalid coordinates when monitor layout changes between sessions .

Render elements

  • Missing velocity in EXR.
  • Alpha getting lost in EXR when motion blur is enabled.



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.1


Official Release

Date - July 19, 2022




Modified

License server

  • Updated to latest Chaos License Server 6.0.0

Cloud system

  • Reduced distortion of the contrails used in the cloud system.



Fixes

Live Link

  • 3ds Max hangs during Live Link caused by the cryptomatte render element.
  • Motion blur not rendering offline animation through Live Link from 3ds Ma.

Motion blur

  • Not rendering in offline renders when dynamic textures are enable.
  • Not rendering in "Render animation using Chaos Vantage" Maxscript.

UX

  • Weird dialog placement on secondary monitor



Chaos Vantage, v1.8.0


Official Release

Date - July 14, 2022



New Features

Clouds

Color Corrections

Textures

Performance

Overlays



Modified

Output

  • EXR files now store camera exposure.

UX/UI

  • Shortcut for HQ render dialog opening. Default is Ctrl+R.

  • Functionality to copy the viewport to the clipboard with Ctrl+C shortcut.
  • Implemented sliders for Color Corrections in the Post tab.
  • Improved the UI responsiveness while the HQ Render setup dialog is open.
  • Separated Bump and Normal mapping render options. 
  • Disabled file actions (e.g. Open Scene, Reload Scene) while in Live Link session. 
  • Misleading error message when a scene file is corrupted. 
  • Wrong reporting of geometry statistics in various cases (live link, deleting objects, V-Ray Proxy).

Tools

  • Render Animation with Chaos Vantage UI shows the correct FPS from Max.



Fixes

.vantage file

  • 'Original camera' thumbnail not being properly displayed after loading file.

Performance

  • GPU memory for a VRayProxy not being freed after the proxy is deleted.



Chaos Vantage, v1.7.4


Official Release

Date - June 13, 2022

 

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Improved scroll handling for debug log window

Fixes

Output

  • Crash when saving to EXR files.

UX

  • Strange symbols in debug log after filter search.
  • Duplicate file close confirmation dialog.



Chaos Vantage, v1.7.3


Official Release

Date - June 08, 2022

 

 

 

Modified

Live Link

  • Added support for V-Ray 6 (beta) builds.

Exposure

  • Auto-exposure smoothing over time in High Quality sequence rendering. It is determined from FPS and Auto exposure time. Set Auto exposure time to 0 for previous behavior.

UI

  • Improved message log UI:

    • Added button in the status bar for easier access.
    • Search filter now filters and shows only lines that have the input string.
    • Added Filter menu to specify the type of message to show in the log window.
    • Added Wrap lines button.
    • Added Clear log widow button.
    • Added Open log location button.
     



Fixes

Performance

  • CPU memory leak when uploading textures.
  • Potential delay in version check during startup

Live Link

  • Files not saving with Non-ascii filename characters when using 'Render animation with Chaos Vantage"



Chaos Vantage, v1.7.2


Official Release

Date - May 19, 2022

 

 

 

New feature

Exposure

Texture

  • Support for negative values for textures.



Fixes

Installer

  •  Embedded Chaos Cosmos installer downgrades newer installed version

Lights

  •  Crash when deleting grouped lights

Live Link

  •  Camera type is not consistent throughout the entire animation sequence when using 'Render animation with Chaos Vantage, using Vantage UI'



Chaos Vantage, v1.7.1


Official Release

Date - April 13, 2022

 

 

 

New feature

Texture

  • Partial support for V-Ray Edges texture - rounded corners are not implemented

 

 

Modified

.vantage

  • Geolocated sun animation is saved in the .vantage file

Navigation

  •  Support for mapping Chaos Vantage shortcuts through the SpaceMouse/3DConnexion controller

UX

  • 'Render setup' dialog retains settings when closed and between sessions. 'Save defaults' checkbox is removed from UI

  • Light gizmos now have consistent line width and size at different render resolution and viewport size

UI

  • Upper limit for the number of light tree samples is increased to 16

 

 

Fixes

Environment

  •  Wrong overriding of the current environment texture when using "Open Scene as Config Only..."



Chaos Vantage, v1.7.0


Official Release

Date - March 30, 2022



New Features

Textures

  • Support for normal maps

Clay mode

Ambient  occlusion

Sun animation

Menu

Navigation

  • Support for 3DConnexion SpaceMouse controller

Supported output formats

  • Implemented .jpg/.jpeg file type output



Modified

Ambient light

UX



Fixes

.vantage file

  • The .vrscene environment texture is not used when loading a .vrscene with an associated .vantage file

Memory

  • Memory leak when HQ rendering with denoiser

Live  link

  • Changing a VRayLight from Plane to Dome not updating correctly

Camera

  • Crash when renaming a camera

Geometry

  • Crash when deleting objects



Chaos Vantage, v1.6.2


Official Release

Date - January 11, 2022

 

 

 

New feature

Texture

  • Support for the "auto" color space transfer function of VRayBitmap

 

 

Modified

.vantage

  • When the root .vrscene is not found with its absolute path it's searched for in the folder containing the .vantage file

 

 

Fixes

Multi GPU

  •  Line artifacts in interactive mode when using multiple GPUs

UI

  • Duplicate objects showing up in object list (with scenes from Maya)

Memory

  • Crash when out of GPU memory and the scene has a rectangle light with a texture

Tools

  • Issues in "Import changes from Vantage" MAX script:

    • Importing cameras from a .vantage file does not set the frame rate
    • Unexpected values for the "Exposure value" keys

Live Link

  • Live link failing to start when "Save strings in legacy non-scene files using UTF8" is enabled in 3ds Max

.vantage

  • Error when using "Save scene settings as default"

UX

  • Undo action not working properly after a select-all(CTRL+A) action in the objects list



Chaos Vantage, v1.6.1


Official Release

Date - December 16, 2021

 

 

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Place tool now locks the selected object's current orientation while SHIFT key is pressed

  • A sample HDR file is loaded when opening non-vrscene files

UI

  • Added progress indication when importing FBX, OBJ, 3DS, PLY, STL, TER, DAE, GLTF file formats

Textures

  • Better parity when using the VRayUVWRandomizer in V-Ray for Cinema4D

Non-vrscene files

  • Default up direction (now Y) for OBJ and 3DS files

 

 

Fixes

Live Link

  • Animation rendering started with Vantage UI renders the same frame over and over
  • Animation synchronization bug in 3ds Max

.vantage file

  • Deleting an instance of an appended scene resulting in an incorrectly saved .vantage file

Memory

  • Excessive shared GPU memory usage with certain large .OBJ scenes

Environment

  • HDR rotation not importing with vrscene generated from Revit

Non-vrscene files

  • TerraGen (.ter) files doesn't import

UX

  • Camera view getting reset to the original camera after placing an asse
  • Pressing ESC while using Place tool makes selected object to be unselectable
  • Issues when switching between Still and Sequence in the Render setup dialog



Chaos Vantage, v1.6.0


Official Release

Date - December 06, 2021



New Features

Cosmos materials

Batch rendering

UX

  • Import option in the File menu for easier importing of supported file formats

Supported formats

  • Experimental support for opening and importing FBX, OBJ, 3DS, PLY, STL, TER, DAE, GLTF file formats



Modified

UX

Performance

  • Optimized GPU memory usage:

    • Light Cache is now several times smaller
    • Unused textures are unloaded from the GPU

Live Link

  • Creation and updating of textures for lights



Fixes

Textures

  • VRayMultiTexture and VRayTriplanar randomization options not working with scenes from V-Ray 5, update 2

Memory

  • Crash after loading a new scene after a failed memory allocation

Multi GPU

  • Line artifacts with multi GPU after opening the material browser



Chaos Vantage, v1.5.3


Official Release

Date - November 11, 2021

 

 

 

New Features

Material tab

  • Material name searching, type filtering and sorting(name and creation)
  • Select the material of the selected object button

UX

  • Drag-and-drop material assignment with preview
  • Alt+drag-and-drop replaces material on all object with same material
  • Ctrl+drag-and-drop assigns material to objects and its children

Import

  • Support for ply, obj, bin, geo, hclassic, bgeo, bhclassic, prt, and partial (no animation, hair and particles) support for alembic files

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Cosmos browser doesn't show importer choice inside Chaos Vantage when multiple importers are running

  • Motion blur is not allowed for non-perspective (Cube 6x1, Spherical and stereo) cameras.
     

Performance

  • Optimized memory usage of texture files with a single color

  • Optimized memory usage for material previews

     

Live Link

  • Implemented HDRI environment and dome light creation and updating



Fixes

Live Link

  • Several parameters not working in the Render Animation via Live Link dialog in 3ds Max

Console

  • Incorrect frame rate when rendering through console

.vantage file

  • Animation editor settings not getting saved to .vantage file

Material tab

  • Wrong material thumbnails after loading a new scene



Chaos Vantage, v1.5.2


Official Release

Date - October 21, 2021

 

 

 

 

Fixes

Snapshot

  • "Render High Quality Snapshot"not showing progress bar

Camera

  • Crash with overwritten vrscene camera when used in animation



Chaos Vantage, v1.5.1


Official Release

Date - October 20, 2021

 

 

 

Fixes

Animation editor

  • Render sequence renders only current fame
  • Pause element not exported properly
  • Scene camera in camera animation track cancelling other object animations

Live Link

  • Incorrect transformation of objects, lights and cameras from Cinema 4D



Chaos Vantage, v1.5.0


Official Release

Date - October 19th, 2021


Please note that  .vantage files saved with version 1.5.0 and newer are not compatible with older versions.



New Features

Place tool

Camera

  • Support for per camera resolution

Command Line

Environment

  • Flip horizontally option for the environment texture.

Material tab UI

Output

  • Top/Bottom option for Stereo Cube 6x1 and Stereo spherical outputs  
  • FOV X and FOV  Y have now decimal values instead of single integer

Modified

Live Link

  • Render animation in Live Link session from 3ds Max (requires  V-Ray for 3ds Max upcoming update)

Lights

  • Save all lights parameters in .vantage file

UI

  • Replaced denoiser slider in toolbar with an On/Off button when using the NVidia AI denoiser or Combined denoiser

Camera

  • Enable imported cameras to be drag-able to Camera animation track

Animation editor

Installer

  • Removed Install V-Ray for 3ds Max Live link scripts option and from ||Customize|| > Customize User Interface > Toolbars > Chaos Vantage in 3ds Max
  • Added option to associate . Vantage files so that they can be opened with Chaos Vantage from the explorer



Fixes

UI

  • Wrong display of object hierarchy
  • UI font bug when in non-latin OS
  • Closing Cosmos Browser from 'X' doesn't update UI

Camera

  • Automatic vertical tilt doesn't work correctly with scenes with Y-up axis

Lights

  • Environment map is flipped from Cinema 4D
  • Environment map not importing when "TexRGBTintMax"is used to color correct it

Multi GPU

  • Black spots in denoised offline render on multi-GPU

  vrscene file

  • Incorrect transforms import of meshes in a hierarchy from Cinema 4D when using Cloner in Multi Instance mode
  • Incorrect node visibility animation when some frames don't have a keyframe from Cinema 4D

Crash

  • Crash on app launch with external GPUs


 



Chaos Vantage, v1.4.2


Official Release

Date - July 21st, 2021

 

 

 

New Features

Camera

Output

  • Support for saving EXR (16-bit) images - the main image is linear, without color corrections and post-effects. Available channels: Bumped Normals, Depth, Screen Velocity, Albedo, Additional (Background & Lights)

Materials

  • Basic support for the V-Ray Car Paint 2 Material

 

 

Modified

Materials

  • Improve support for the V-Ray Car Paint Material

 

 

Fixes

Output

  • Light gizmos are rendered in final sequence
  • Chaos Vantage renders different frame number compared to Max    
  • Chaos Vantage renders 1 frame less than the full timeline  

Animation editor

  • Animation timeline cannot display more than 1 transient clips on the right
  • Cannot select transient clip on the right of the timeline

Vantage file

  • Can't save vantage file when path contains non-Latin characters

Crash

  • Crash on app launch with external GPUs



Chaos Vantage, v1.4.1


Official Release

Date - July 2nd, 2021

 

New Features

Textures

  • Support for Substance textures
  • Support for SketchUp native textures and colorization

UX

Geometry

  • Support for animated object visibility from a .vrscene file

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Improved snapping and transforms windows:
    • Added 'S' as shortcut to toggle snap on/off
    • Don't hide the dialogue when exiting free look mode and the window has been opened beforehand
    • Spinboxes display scene units
  • Improved Offline render UI:
    • Added resolution preset
    • Added aspect ratio control

Geometry

  • Support for Edge boundary checking in Forest Pack

Tools

  • Support for importing camera parameters(static and animated) with 'Import changes from Vantage' tool in 3ds Max
  • Imported cameras are now named [VANTAGE FILE NAME]_[CAMERA NAME]_###

Fixes

Camera

  • Auto vertical tilt doesn't keep vertical lines in camera transitions
  • Camera rolls while transitioning between two upright positions

UX

  • Collision detection regression
  • "Orbit" and "Look around" navigation are uncontrollable when on second monitor and >150% dpi scale
  • Scene up vector is not applied correctly to merged .vrscenes/cosmos assets

Materials

  • 2-Sided material doesn't work correctly in SketchUp/Rhino/Revit/Cinema4D

Textures

  • Crash with TexMulti when it has an unsupported sub-texture connected to it
  • Vantage doesn't match V-Ray when TexMulti has an empty textures list and random hue/sat/gamma

Tools

  • "Overwrite existing" in "Import changes from Vantage" doesn't work for Chaos Vantage animated camera
  • Camera Interpolations imported with "Import changes from Vantage" don't match camera interpolations in Chaos Vantage



Chaos Vantage, v1.4.0


Official Release

Date - June 17th, 2021 

New Features

Textures

  • Support for the V-Ray MultiSubTex
  • Support for MultiTexture(CGSource)
  • Support for ForestColor

UX

  • Transforms manipulation window
  • Transform snapping



Modified

Textures

  • Extended support for V-Ray Triplanar texture - Random texture offset, Random texture rotation, Random frame rotation, Random axis, Random mode
  • Extended support for V-Ray UVWRandomizer texture - Randomize by name, face ID, render ID, element, instance ID, object ID, particle ID, node handle



Fixes

Camera

  • Difference in FOV and Focal length values between Max and Vantage
  • Film gate and Focal length not importing correctly with multiple cameras
  • Merged cameras get their focal length set from scene Home camera

UX

  • Drag-n-drop gizmo isn't placed correctly with dedpi > 100%
  • Inconsistency in Transparency overlay between NVIDIA AI and Combined/Vantage denoisers
  • Focus distance shortcut functions like Pick focus tool - now behaves as a virtual focus distance slider by moving the mouse left and right.

Denoiser

  • Super bright pixels become black with NVIDIA AI denoiser


vrscene

  • Wrong position of objects with merged vrscenes with different meters_scale
  • Light gizmos scale depending on .vrscene's scale



Chaos Vantage, v1.3.0


Official Release

Date - May 20th, 2021 

New Features

Materials

  • Support for the V-Ray 2 Sided Material

Denoiser

  • Implemented NVIDIA AI denoiser

Objects

  • Support for object camera/reflection/refraction/overall visibility and cast/receive shadows properties

Camera

  • Support for animated camera parameters from .vrscene - Focus distance, FOV, Focal length, Zoom factor, ISO, F-number, Shutter speed, Vertical/Horizontal Tilt/Shift



Modified

UX

  • Implemented customizable shortcuts
  • Moved Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts menu under Edit menu
  • Moved Navigation preset in Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts menu
  • Statistics for required additional memory in High Quality Snapshot and High Quality Sequence windows
  • Input validation of input fields in UI with Enter, Tab or Space keys



Fixes

Live Link

  • Incorrect update of materials when enabling/disabling certain features

Lights

  • Mesh lights imported as point lights with incorrect intensity - they are now ignored instead

Output

  • Wrong alpha channel when Light Cache is enabled



Chaos Vantage, v1.2.1


Official Release

Date - April 27, 2021

 

New Features

Materials

  • Support for the "Reflect on back side" option in the V-Ray Material
  • Support for the "Double-sided" option in the V-Ray Material

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Enabled focus picker while in Live Link



Fixes

Materials

  • Refract IOR affects reflections when Fresnel IOR is unlocked
  • Glossy fresnel is not correct when using texture for Fresnel IOR 

Chaos Cosmos Browser

  • Wrong scaling of Chaos Cosmos assets when imported to a scene with non-centimeter scale



 



Chaos Vantage, v1.2.0


Official Release

Date - April 14, 2021

 

 

 

New Features

Materials

  • Support for Clear coat in V-Ray Material
  • Support for glossy Fresnel reflections

Camera

  • Support for importing multiple cameras from one .vrscene file

Environment

  • Background override option to affect refraction and mirror reflection rays

Output

  • Support for saving .PNG files with alpha channel

 

 

Modified

UX

  • Animation FPS in Vantage is set based on .vrscene
  • Asset filtering options in the merge scene dialogue on import
  • Disabled tools in the UI that can't be used during Live Link
  • Added specific gizmo shapes for lights depending on their type

.vrscene

  • Improved performance when loading animated .vrscene



Fixes

Live Link

  • Layer and object visibility changes breaking multi-materials in Live Link

Lights

  • Broken disc and rectangle light when loading a new scene after disabling lights

Animation

  • Precision issues with animation of rotating objects



Chaos Vantage, v1.1.1


Official Release

Date - March 04, 2021

 

 

 

 

Fixes

.vrscene

  • Drop-Merge .vrscene doesn't place it to origin
  • Freeze with .vrscenes containing multiple Nodes with same full name

Navigation

  • Camera orbiting and transitions are incorrect for scenes from V-Ray for Cinema 4D

Sun

  • Fixed Sky is not set correctly for scenes with Y up vector

UX

  • Strange artifacts in viewport when using 'Flip Up Axis Y'
  • Camera tab widens when opening 'Advanced Resolution Settings'



Chaos Vantage, v1.1.0


Official Release

Date - March 04, 2021

 

 

New Features

Chaos Cosmos

Sun



Improvements

.vrscene

  • Improved support for .vrscenes coming from Cinema 4D

Materials

  • Support for MtlMulti IDs larger than 31

UX

 

 

Fixes

Live Link

  • Very rare case where Live Link may start with missing objects

High Quality Render

  • Motion blur not working on multiple GPUs
  • First frame of a HQ sequence having big motion blur

Textures

  •  Scenes from V-Ray for Sketchup 5.1 failing to render any textures

UX

  • Viewport selection not working at specific resolutions
  • Transform tools not respecting the single/group select mode
  • Geometry disappearing after scaling it down to zero scale
  • Advanced camera parameter popup not hiding when Camera tab is hidden
  • Overlapping advanced camera parameter popups



Chaos Vantage, v1.0.2


Official Release

Date - February 02, 2021

 

 

 

New Features

UI

 

Fixes

Live Link

  •  Refractive materials render completely black with live link in Maya
  • Update logic issues

High Quality Render

  • Performance regression when high quality rendering is paused and resumed

Driver

  •  ColorCorrection texture and UVWGenChannel issues caused by 46x.xx series drivers



Chaos Vantage, v1.0.1


Official Release

Date - January 19, 2021


 

New Features

UI

 

Modified

UI

  • Tweaks of camera's Advanced parameters windows pop up behaviour
  • Disabled video "Output file type" when rendering sequence with non-perspective camera

 

 

Fixes

Live Link

  • Textures coming from V-Ray for Maya not working correctly

CPU

  • Crash when working with CPU with very high thread count

Multi GPU

  • Performance regression with noise threshold



Chaos Vantage, v1.0.0


Official Release

Date - December 02, 2020



New Features

Environment Fog

  • Added two environment fog layers with individual settings

UX

  • Support for deleting objects in the scene
  • Added "Place" functionality when drag and dropping .vrscene

Live Link

  • Added option for installation of 3Ds Max live link scripts in installer

UI

  • Added toggle opacity button in top toolbar
  • Added option to make Chaos Vantage window always on top 

Video

  • Record the viewport to an .mp4 file in real time
  • Added .mp4 and .mkv export type for animation

Offline Render

  • Added denoising and motion blur option in render high quality snapshot or sequence

Post

  •   Added color space setting for LUT files

Texture

  • Added support for UVWGenRandomizer  

Motion blur

  •  Support for motion blur in offline rendering 

MAX Scripts



Modified

Material

  • Improved bump support with scenes generated from V-Ray 5
  • Improved bump parity between Chaos Vantage and V-Ray

Live Link

  • Improved Live link support  with all V-Ray 5 plugins supporting DR

UI

  • Reworked Camera tab parameters layout
  • Improved icon and camera thumbnail rendering for hi dpi monitors
  • Increased environment "Intensity" cap to 1000
  • Replaced EDITOR, LUT and BLOOM buttons with icons
  • Added Feedback Program tab in Preferences menu 
  • Improved Shortcuts menu layout



Fixes

Material

  • Bump does not render behind refractive objects

Camera

  • Crash when deleting camera while in "Recording camera movement" mode
  • "Level Camera" does not reset correctly camera roll with an Y scene_upDir

Multi GPU

  • Creeping artifacts with 2 GPUs



Project Lavina is now Chaos Vantage.

Project Lavina Beta, v0.6.0


Beta Release

Date - November 04, 2020



New Features

Live Link

  • Experimental 3ds Max to Lavina live link

Texture

  • Support for Triplanar texture

UI

  • Light gizmos for easy selection of non-area lights when a transform tool is selected

Config .vrdx

  • Loading saved Lavina files(.vrdx) now loads associated .vrscenes



Modified

GPU

  • Improved out-of-memory protection for GPU resources

UI

  • Improved indicator for render state - RENDERING, PAUSED, CAM REC., LIVE LINK



Fixes

Camera

  • Issue when saving camera slot shortcut
  • 'Fill' option squashing image when using a portrait aspect ratio

Lights

  •  Non top level lights in a hierarchy can not be disabled

UI

  •  App window not returning to proper size after a spherical or cube offline render

Texture

  •  Opacity map not working when the texture's alpha channel is used



Project Lavina Beta, v0.5.1


Beta Release

Date - October 08, 2020

 

 

 

 

New Features

Camera

  • Added Rotation Focus method to Stereo Spherical and Stereo Cube 6x1 camera types
  • Add support for import of Exposure value in Physical Camera

 

 

Modified

.vrscenes

  • Improved handling of back face materials from V-Ray 5 for SketchUp .vrscenes

 

 

Fixes

UI

  •  Cloning selected objects also duplicate scene lights in Lights tab

CPU

  •  D3D error on machine with large cpu thread count



Project Lavina Beta, v0.5.0


Beta Release

Date - September 03, 2020

 

 

 

New Features

Camera

  • Added Cube 6x1, Spherical and Spherical Stereoscopic camera types to render images and sequences

 

 

Modified

  • Improved performance with GPUs set with NVlink connection

 

 

Fixes

Animation Editor

  •  Camera thumbnails in timelines are squashed with different aspect ratio

Camera

  • Camera jolts when navigating from a stored camera with a roll
  • Frame selected/scene shortcut doesn't work
  • Home camera not loading correct FOV

     

Texture

  •  Forest color texture importing black.



Project Lavina Beta, v0.4.4


Beta Release

Date - August 19, 2020



New Features

Camera

  • Tilt and shift corrections for Physical Camera



Modified Features

UX

  •  Color picker dialogue can be moved around



Fixes

.vrscene

  • Incorrect scaling when merging .vrscenes exported with different meter scale 

Camera

  • Switching between stored cameras with different FOV results in a jump





Project Lavina Beta, v0.4.3


Beta Release

Date - August 03, 2020

 

 

 

New Features

Lights

  • Support for texture in V-Ray Plane/Rectangle light
  • Support for V-Ray Disk/Ellipse light

License Server

  • License server as part of the installation

GPU

  • GPU driver check for currently unsupported and recommended drivers

 

 

Modified Features

Camera

  •  Improved Camera roll navigation action

UX

  •  "Check for updates" button in Help menu
  • Build date and time info in About dialog

 

 

Fixes

Animation Editor

  •  Transient clip in animation editor cannot be selected or modified
  • Pivot point not moving with object when animated from imported .vrscene

Denoiser

  • Artifacts around very bright light source
  • Reflection artifacts when using two GPUs





Project Lavina Beta, v0.4.2


Beta Release

Date - July 22, 2020

 

 

 

Fixes

Video Driver

  • Startup error (D3D error) with 450 series NVidia drivers



Project Lavina Beta, v0.4.1


Beta Release

Date - July 10, 2020

 

 

 

Fixes

Camera

  •  Physical camera parameters not syncing when switching camera slots
  • Physical camera parameters scaling erroneously when loading from vrdx file

Animation Editor

  • Physical cameras not interpolating correctly in animation editor when using FoV
  • 'Aperture size' interpolation in animation editor

Denoiser

  • Denoiser issue when using more than one GPU



Project Lavina Beta, v0.4.0




New Features

Camera

  • Physical camera parameters
  • Camera roll functionality

Material

  • Support for metalness (BRDFVrayMtl)

UI

  • Pivot point selection button to top toolbar
  • Mouse precision toggle button 

MAXScript



Modified Features

Denoiser

  • Improved denoiser:
    • Details from small objects and shadows are less blurry
    • Reduced halo/bloom effect around objects

Animation Editor

  • Improved UX :
    • Increase the pickup radius for selecting thin areas - timeline marker, clip edges.
    • Make the rightmost 20px of a clip with two drag-able controls.
    • Transient clips are not resizable when dragged, only their position change.
    • Transient clips have a better thicker line indicator
    • Increase the limit of the "Def. duration" spinner to 1000 (approx. 10 sec @ 90fps )





Project Lavina Beta, v0.3.1


Beta Release

Date - July 01, 2020

 

 

 

 

Fixes

  • Imported animated sun from .vrscene not being animated in Lavina


Project Lavina Beta, v0.3.0


Beta Release

Date - June 26, 2020

 

New Features

  • Added Animation Editor (experimental)
  • Added Light grouping(instancing) on imported lights
  • Added support for V-Ray Sun and Sky models
  • Added Noise threshold option
  • Added Support for Simple(environment) light portal
  • Added support for CommonTexture and MappedTexture set of texture parameters: Crop, Place, AlphaSource, MonoChannelOutput, RGBChannelOutput, Invert, OutputAmount, Clamp, RGBOffset, RGBLevel

Modified Features

  • Improved Color Picker - interactive updates, color temperature, color presets, color range options
  • Improved UI:
    • Last snapshot render time information
    • Selecting a light focuses it in the light lister
  • Improved visual parity between Lavina and V-Ray


 


Project Lavina Beta, v0.2.3


Beta Release

Date - May 07, 2020


New Features

  • Added new Camera list with thumbnails and set, delete and reorder functionality
  • Added support for Directional, Omni and Spot lights from 3Ds Max
  • Added support for Instanced objects from Maya/Modo/Houdini
  • Added "Display to render ratio" control in the toolbar


Modified Features

  • Improved navigation - Selection Pivot Type
  • Improved denoiser - Artifacts with motion blur with fast moving objects are reduced
  • Improved denoiser - textures behind refractive objects are less blurry
  • Improved UI - RMB to reset value to default



Project Lavina Beta, v0.2.2


Beta Release

Date - April 09, 2020


New Features

  • Support for IES lights
  • Support for Spot lights from Maya/Modo/Katana/Cinema4D/Sketchup/Rhino
  • Object pivot import and manipulation
  • Move Pivot tool
  • Navigation target type option - Ray hit or Camera target


Modified Features

  • Improved navigation - gizmo for orbit pivot and zoom point


Bug Fixes

  • Fixed bug with rotation and scaling in local space


Project Lavina Beta, v0.2.1


Beta Release

Date - March 26, 2020





Modified Features

  • Improved denoiser blending - added simple adaptivity to raw/denoised blending to filter out extreme noise
  • Improved camera navigation
  • Improved camera transitions with quadratic interpolation function instead of linear
  • Improvement: Environment image is now cleared when loading a new scene
  • Improvement: Removed automatic cycle back to first camera when in "Camera" animation mode
  • Improved UI - removed Modifier key option and include them in navigation preset
  • Improved UI - Shortcuts update according to navigation preset


Project Lavina Beta, v0.2.0


Beta Release

Date - March 12, 2020

 

New Features

  • Support for opacity maps in "clip" mode. Only bitmaps are supported
  • Separate background option for camera rays instead of the "environment" color/image
  • Importing of Dome light texture as Environment
  • Navigation presets: Max, Maya, Sketchup
  • "Run" when in Free-Look mode



Modified Features

  • Improved rendering of refractive objects on reflective surfaces
  • Improved light cache - it is cleared when a render setting is changed
  • Improved animation experience: Scene, Walkthrough and Cameras mode
  • Improved scene navigation experience
  • Improved status bar


Bug Fixes

  • Fixed denoiser silhouette artifacts
  • Fixed collision enabled only in Free-Look mode
  • Fixed undo action for some local space rotations