Utopias, by definition, can never be realized. But for people working in architectural design visualization, two huge leaps forward have propelled us toward that ideal state.
And to celebrate, NVIDIA and its partners led by Lenovo, Chaos Group, KitBash3D and CGArchitect are launching a real-time rendering design challenge, called “Building Utopia,” with great prizes at stake.
The first leap came with the introduction of NVIDIA RTX technology in 2018 at the SIGGRAPH Conference. NVIDIA RTX provided the industry with the graphics and compute power needed to instantly create accurate, photorealistic, ray-traced renders with physically based materials and lighting.
Archviz specialists used to have to wait overnight for their CPU render farms to produce a high-fidelity animation of an architectural scene. Come morning, they’d sometimes find that the job had crashed — and then would have to run the render all over again.
With NVIDIA RTX, millions of designers around the world suddenly had the ability to render huge models in real time while they iterated on designs.
The second leap happened with Chaos Group announcing the general availability of Vantage, which uses the RT Cores in NVIDIA RTX technology to enable the real-time exploration of V-Ray authored scenes within a 100 percent ray-traced environment.
Using Vantage, project teams can more effectively visualize models with photorealistic views and flythroughs of building interiors and exteriors. It’s a big help for everything from conceptual designs for bid preparation and imagining new projects, to iterating on options during detailed design.
Creating compelling renders of buildings is a critical part of design reviews with clients and for producing marketing assets to help with commercial sales. Chaos Vantage with NVIDIA RTX reduces the time spent waiting for renders to resolve, so archviz specialists can go through more iterations to find the best expression of their vision for presenting the scene.
Building Utopia Design Visualization Challenge
Participants in the Building Utopia real-time rendering challenge will have access to a futuristic 3D model provided by KitBash3D and will submit short animations created using Chaos Vantage.
Entries will be judged on various criteria including overall originality, cinematography and use of lighting. The contest is led by Lenovo and hosted by CGArchitect. Deadline for submissions is Jan. 25, 2021. Winners will be announced online March 26, 2021.
The winners will receive fabulous prizes, including a Lenovo ThinkPad P15 with an NVIDIA RTX 5000 professional GPU or an NVIDIA RTX 8000 or RTX 6000 professional GPU, along with a one-year V-Ray Collection. Register now to join the Building Utopia challenge.
“Lenovo has long supported creatives across industries — bringing together the power, speed and reliability needed for today’s increasingly complex design and visualization workflows,” said Chris Ruffo, worldwide segment lead for AEC and Product Development at Lenovo. “We are thrilled to partner with NVIDIA, Chaos Group and CG Architect to launch the Building Utopia competition, rewarding extraordinary work, while challenging entrants to really push the boundaries of what is possible with today’s real-time rendering technology.”
“Chaos Vantage and real-time ray tracing on RTX is a game changer for design visualization,” said Lon Grohs, head of Creative at Chaos Group. “The Building Utopia challenge will be an incredible showcase of what artists and designers can achieve with this groundbreaking technology.”
Chaos Vantage joins over 50 industry-leading software products that have integrated support for NVIDIA RTX technology.
Featured image rendered in Chaos Vantage.