scottmoore

“Beach Ballin’”. That is very funny and yet quite sad. I mentioned on the Facebook page that it takes 16 seconds for me to open a sheet layer to edit, change a si for digit in it’s name and then save it. While 16 sec doesn’t sound like a lot, I would think one should be able to do a simple task like that in 4 seconds tops. So that is roughly 400% slower than it should be. By the way, my timing only included starting at the pressing of the Edit button. The sheet layers window was already opened. Add another 9-10 seconds for that and another 4-5 seconds tonclose the window. Press edit click at the end of the name in the window press delete once type the new single digit number press OK 5 button presses. 16 seconds plus 14 seconds to open and close the SL window. Unacceptable.

I had posted about this on the Facebook page. To me, the last stable version of VW was 2010. It was rock solid and fast. Of course rendering was slow but otherwise it was a serious pleasure to work on the platform. I stayed with 2010 until my hardware and OS forced me to change and that was 2015 w/ Service Select. It’s been worse every year. 2018 has been abysmal in my opinion. I am still on SP2 and have heard enough grumbling about updates that I’ll just sit back and watch the stupid beach ball spin. One thing the folks at VW are good at is sending those renewal notices.

That has been an ongoing bug since at least 2017. Exceptionally annoying. “Refresh Instruments” generally solves it. I believe the initial intent of that command was to update symbols when you did things like swap instruments or whatnot. That is perhaps understandable, however, it has become a constant workaround for this issue. Command / is the keyboard shortcut. Did I already say exceptionally annoying?

I think there comes a point when one reaches the end of what you can do with plug in objects and frankly, there is limitation with using Vectorworks to produce really organic shapes in general. You can certainly do it, but not as easily and with less satisfying results than a stand alone modeling program. No harm in trying of course. MarkD, that is pretty fascinating. I’ve been a “subtract solids” guy for a very, very long time. Your approach is fresh indeed.

Upvoted

NURBS curves rendering as a 2D object is pretty ridiculous. I unfortunately found that out AFTER drawing thousands of feet of railings for a very large job. Seemed like a great way to go about doing that quickly and looked very appropriate when rendering without haze. Once I added volumetrics, it was a disaster. Keep that in mind if using NURBS for festoons.

I agree with J above. Image props generally look more realistic for applications such as this and require far less rendering time assuming that a presentation is a high priority. Creating a hybrid symbol that had classes for both an image prop and actual 3D geometry would be ideal as then you could do whatever you needed simply by toggling a couple of classes. Simply using a NURBS curve can cause real issues with renderings. I am not sure I can describe the issue, however, it really causes havoc with volumetric renderings. The best way I can explain it is that a NURBS surface always presents to the front of an image even when behind a beam of light. Extrude along path is a good solution but if you require faster rendering performance, you will find using the Double Line Polygon tool and making your arc out of short, straight sections will speed up performance just like using square tubing for truss chords. I suppose it depends on how many festoons you have, how close they are to your cameras and how prominent they are in the design.

As Wesley said, I hardly ever use the seating tool. I find it too time consuming to get exactly what I want. I can quickly get something that may be really close, but seldom something I would want to present to a fire marshal. It’s just not that difficult to direct model the exact seating one needs. Duplicate Array, Copy / Paste the Mirror Tool and Working Planes are your friends.

You could just build the wall with .5m tiles which should then give you accurate pixel counts and functionality in the video screen tool. Otherwise, this is an instance where you would either need to draw it yourself if you need accurate shop drawings, a simple extrude if you just need a presentation, or both.

Absolutely agreed.

Wow!

Number 2 has been an issue at least back to 2017. My issue is pretty consistent and and when I mentioned that on the Facebook forum I received a response that it was a bug of some sort. I would hazard to guess that it happens 80% of the time on both my laptop and desktop units.

I believe someone said there was a bug with SP2 the result of which is almost everytime you render something with the CineRender engine, the wireframe model turns white basically and nothing more happens. You set to render again, you get an alert asking if you want to re-render (to which one often mumbles something along the lines of “I don’t believe I would consider this rendered currently” or something much less restrained) you press enter and THEN it starts the render. Is this a “thing”?

Agreed!

Mark, that is an I terstjng workaround. Thanks. Hendrik, While a fresnel clearly does not use gobos, a Spotlight Fresnel certainly can. Therefore you can create a soft edge circle in either a graphics program or just use VW, chop off the appropriate segment (as in a barn door) and then use that to create a custom gobo. Insert that into the fresnel, adjust beam and field to approximate the zoom and rotate the gobo as you would your barn door. Voila’.

There have been several threads regarding this particular issue. It seems like OpenGL can produce shutter cuts as evidenced by this ability in Vision, though we cannot get that functionality in VW. It would be nice to have a really simplified “console” available in VW that allowed for pan, tilt, and shutter cuts. The fact that you have to use high level rendering to visualize a shutter cut is a little disappointing.

I certainly agree. The render cache issue you mentioned has been on-going since at least VW2017. Same with cancelling renders though I do seem to find that works pretty consistently now. I do all of my final renders from SLVPs as well, however, I always end up saving one or two “quick render” views for my design layer. That view is set up to not recall class or layer visibility so it is a really quick way to check anything I am working on from a particular perspective. I usually use Final Quality Renderworks as the keyboard shortcut makes things very quick. Of course now there is the bug where you have to render it twice to get a render.....

Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps an explanation as to my usage and workflow is in order. - I do understand that most production designers utilize programs like C4D, Studio Max, etc. I do not because my workflow typically has me moving from the presentation phase to the shop fabrication drawing / lighting shop drawing immediately. Therefore, having to translate from one program to another to accomplish those tasks is a serious time drain that I often cannot afford. To that point, if I design something in the presentation phase that may require CNC machining, I start that on it’s own class so that it is ready to export when the time comes without having to “re-draw” it later. - I find that texturing while I go will often inform my decision making as I go. Therefore, the idea of modeling in VW and texturing in another program impedes my work flow. - so.....it would be really nice to be able to produce some reasonable volumetrics in VW. I would pay extra for that. In fact, if that was the only new improvement in 2019, I could not imagine I could possibly be happier.

I am bumping this back up for the sake of attention.

I’ve wondered about IES files as well. I’ve not worked with them before so there would be a bit of a learning curve for me.

Nice Steve! If you want to gain some more control from your glow texture, you could try creating your light fixture as a hollow object and a texture that DOES cast shadows. Place a lens on it that does not cast shadows and then move your glow texture in/out of the light fixture “trough” until you get the effect you want. That will allow the fixture to act as barn doors. Really nice work and dedication to the result!!

I assign my lenses to their own class for that very purpose. No lens flares but at least they glow and change color appropriately.

It is generally a good practice to create your fixtures with a body texture and lens texture that do not cast shadows. That’s how the Spotlight symbols work without having to create a hollow piece of geometry for your fixture body. Nice work Steve.

I would add that linear lights can add significantly to render times as I believe the tool adds a number of lighting object along the linear path. Unfortunately the solution to your issue is Maxon allowing VW users to have reasonable and useful control over lighting objects. How infuriating is it to go through all of that work only to end up with a beam of light that gets brighter the further away it is from it’s source. Not the BEAUTIFUL work on that rendering of the Svoboda fixtures (extra props if you know who Josef Svoboda was and why he is SO important to modern day lighting design and video projection....) It really is a beautiful render, but in what universe (to quote Sheldon Cooper) do beams of light get brighter the further they travel? That should be a brilliant hot spot at the fixture falling off in an exponential way as the beam travels in the air. Having to compensate with something like a linear lighting element is just a resource hog, but serious kudos to you to try and get that going Steve. Well done sir.

Steve, That is some nice work. I’ll be very interested to see how this impacts render times. If you haven’t already, check out the wishlist item for imrproving volumetric rendering and up-vote it. This applies to what you are working on currently. One trick I use a lot is to light walls, drapes and similar scenic items on their own. Work in as much detail as you like. When it looks like you want it, export as an image file or take a screen shot. Turn that into a texture including a GLOW component and apply it to an appropriate sized extruded polygon and you get that exact look without any discernible hit to your processor. If you want to be able to change colors, render your initial image in white and have your texture allow for color filtering. I then have the object respond to class color for quick scene changes between renders. Just sayin’