Chaos Arena vs Notch

Chaos Arena is a Windows solution for real-time ray tracing and in-camera visual effects on virtual production stages. It moves 3D content to LED walls without preprocessing and supports carrying assets from pre-production through post-production. Arena renders global illumination, reflections, refractions, and shadows with real-time path tracing, plus single-pass rendering. Artists can adjust lights, exposure, assets, and materials during production through its interface and Material Editor. Assets from Maya, Houdini, 3ds Max, and Blender can be used. Camera tracking protocols include FreeD, Vicon, stYpe, OptiTrack, and EZtrack, with tracking data saveable as Alembic. Stage features include distributed rendering, dual-GPU rendering, and Genlock through NVIDIA Quadro Sync. Arena supports ACEScg, HDR, OpenColorIO, USD, MaterialX, real-time depth of field, lens encoders, regional decal color correction, and ray-traced Gaussian Splats. Chaos says one GPU can render a quarter of a trillion polygons at 60 fps. The product is described as out of beta and production-ready. Pricing is available by contacting Chaos for a quote or demo.

Notch is a real-time 3D motion design tool for building graphics and interactive visual workflows. Its node graph connects elements in a project, and four NURA physically based GPU renderers can be switched without changing the scene, lighting or materials. Tools include compositing, cloners, video processing, physics, materials, particles, volumetrics, JavaScript scripting and networking controls. Notch supports camera tracking, LED-stage and greenscreen workflows, and live compositing. It connects to systems including Kinect, tracking SDKs, lidar and Windows Touch, and supports OSC, MIDI, ArtNet, NDI, Spout, streaming protocols, virtual webcam output and a Web/HTTP API. Notch requires Windows 10 or later on 64-bit x86 with a discrete GPU; its After Effects beta supports versions 22 through 26 on Windows. The free NotchLC plugin supports Adobe video applications on Windows and macOS. Pricing includes Indie at $279 a year for non-commercial use with 1080p export, plus a free 60-day trial.