There are no updates, last time I checked 12 months went by without single material added. Maybe they add them to private clients, or maybe they just sell the machines I have no idea what is their strategy (I guess there is none).
The ScanMTL should at least support 3rd party Scans like X-Rite, there are thousands of scans from big brands like Maharam or KVADRAT.
I still use the Scans a lot, I use them as BRDF replacement for generic shader, so I will take for example wool scan, and add my own diffuse & displace map on top. This will give me fuzziness and specular that I could never replicate with generic shader.
BUT...the big but, is that it's very expensive, both in terms of rendering and surprisingly also memory, the shaders are very memory hungry. So it's not like you can use this technique for full-scene, I tried, not possible :- ). But for specific fabrics & leathers, it's very good.
I was surprised how little difference there is in car-shaders. Effectively, the generic GGX BRDF in PhysicalMTL can replicate any plastic or metal in 99perc. accuracy, so no point in using ChaosScans for any of that. It's only the fabrics, leathers, and woods (but those 5 or 6 are scanned in useless way...) which are much more unique.
