For those who don’t know the tool: Vantage is a real-time ray tracing renderer that can sit beside Enscape and slot into USD and MaterialX heavy pipelines when you want fast lookdev without a nap.
Chaos Vantage 3 update 2 comes with a focus on practical scene-side control: new post looks, more object shapes, deeper simulation tweaks, and workflow glue that keeps artists in the viewport longer.
The headline addition is a Toon post effect. It adds a stylized look as a post step, which means you can push a non-photoreal pass without rebuilding materials or rerouting a full shading graph. The feature is presented as a post effect, so it lives where you would expect to audition looks quickly, then iterate.
Water got attention too. The Water surface object now supports Circle, Infinite, and Custom shapes, making it easier to fit a surface to a set or shot without faking scale. The watre surface animation can also be previewed in real time, and Wind picked up an Affect water option in the Environment tab to toggle that preview on or off.
VR workflows also moved forward. There is support for VR joysticks teleportation and object manipulation, aimed at navigating and adjusting scenes more directly inside a headset. If your review culture leans on immersive approvals, this is the kind of change that reduces mouse time and increases useful gestures. If your review culture leans on never touching a headset, nothing breaks.
Splats and smoke get more production-like controls
Gaussian splats gained explicit support for creating and importing Gaussian splats objects, and those objects now have editable properties. That makes splats feel less like a read-only curiosity and more like a scene element you can actually manage.
The Fluid simulator object also expanded in ways that map cleanly to shot polish. Smoke expansion and Temperature expansion properties were added, giving more control over how sims evolve. The simulator can now export OpenVDB cache files, which matters because it turns an internal sim result into something you can hand off, archive, or try elsewhere.
On the quality side, micro vorticity generation and detail improved, and the default pivot moved to the bottom center of the grid container. These are the sorts of adjustments that make an effect feel less like a demo and more like a tool you can steer.
There is also a performance angle. Multi GPU performance improved, and the fluid simulator performance improved. A temporary memory usage spike was removed when changing resolution with NVIDIA DLSS.
UI changes that reduce scavenger hunts
Update 2 added a new Create Objects button in the toolbar that centralizes all available object creation in one place. The Scale type-in dialog gained an object size in scene units property, which helps when you need a known dimension and do not want to eyeball a gizmo. Background Image in Screen mode can now be offset on X and Y, and first person navigation gained an option to move along the camera view direction instead of horizontally. That navigation option is a global preference set in Edit then Preferences then Interaction, which is a very specific breadcrumb trail, but at least it is now a breadcrumb trail that goes somewhere. Creation behavior also improved in a small but meaningful way: creating a fluid simulator object now automatically sets selected objects as emitters.
Enscape 4.17.0 quietly patches the sharp edges
Enscape 4.17.0 shipped with a mix of performance and workflow changes, plus a long list of targeted bug fixes. On the improvements side, NVIDIA DLSS was updated to version 310.5 with bug fixes and stability improvements. Light clustering behavior improved in orthographic view so lights group and separate more predictably while zooming and navigating. The Visual Settings Presets panel now starts expanded by default.
For Archicad, all-user installation support improved by registering Enscape in the AddOns folder. On Windows, users created after installation will also have it installed.
There are also fixes for clearcoat handling in light reflections, a sky that can appear pixelated in video previews and exports, and Billboard geometry disappearing when the camera gets very close. Asset Library placement performance improved in older placement modes. The Material Editor feedback button for the AI Material Generator was fixed. The V-Ray Scene Export path was addressed too: large scene files caused by duplicating geometry of asset instances, plus a case where Scene Export could crash.
Batch Rendering got a crash fix when canceling while Light Management is active. Enscape Impact fixes address energy performance results display when reopening after a successful analysis run, and invalid Impact Report data in imperial units.
Pricing and where this lands on your budget spreadsheet
Pricing for Vantage is specified as $54.90 per month for Vantage Standalone when billed annually, shown as $658.80 for one license billed annually.
Pricing for Enscape is specified as $47.90 per month for an Enscape Solo plan when billed annually, shown as $574.80 for one license billed annually.
Both sets of numbers are the kind that make producers ask whether you can do it with screenshots. You can, but you will not like it.
https://forums.chaos.com/forum/chaos-vantage/chaos-vantage-announcements/1245724-chaos-vantage-v3-2-0-released
https://forum.enscape3d.com/index.php?thread%2F31054-enscape-4-17-0-released%2F=
