scottmoore

8 months later and a new version of VW and still having issues with Final Quality Renderworks "caching" information. Is there something that fixes this? I make changes to something after it has been rendered in Final Quality, those changes often do not show up. They appear in wireframe and other rendering options, but Final Quality just runs home to whatever it rendered last.

Any word on fixing this? It is a horrible time inefficiency headache, especially when you go through a long render and realize you needed to reset the cache.

It will be interesting to see if someone has ideas for you. From what I know about VW, this is probably well beyond the applications capabilities, but you just never know. I have created pyro and smoke gags using image props with varying degrees of success. I would say they have never looked fantastic, but you can create some passable looks.

Thanks Jim.

I have a small project that I am working on that includes six columns that are hybrid symbols that I created. Originally I had them laid out with three on the left side of the scene and three on the right side. All was well. I eventually decided to move them equidistant across the screen. All seemed well and the columns showed up correctly in plan view and perspective view using wireframe, Open GL and hidden line rendering. Once I rendered in final quality the columns moved back to their original locations. I would assume there is some sort of cache memory going on, but I have no idea why this is a feature anyone would want. The only solution was to close and then re-open the app.

Bump

The Alert window also pos up with the extraordinarily helpful; How to choose "Scale to fit paper size:. 1. Choose Paper Handling from the print option pop-up menu. 2. Select "scale to fit paper size", and choose the size of the paper which you want to print on from the Destination Paper Size pop-menu. I suppose I would love to try that if I had some idea where those items were located. What I would like better is to print a PDF at 34" x 44" like pretty much every other project I have done over the past 15-20 years. Any idea what is causing this?????? I am on a deadline which I have now missed.

Anyone?

bump

Greetings. I have run into an issue with printing large format PDF documents. I have received the following error: Invalid Paper Size Change the Custom Paper Size tot he correct value, or choose "Scale to fit paper size". I am printing 44" x 34" and have printed from this document previously with no issues. The document was created by another user and, to be fair, the first time I printed I had to go in and select the correct paper size, but no big deal. Now, I constantly get this error message. I have changed paper sizes and changed it back, it have extended the margins to 0" all around. If one views the page boundary it sits correctly within the context of the drawing. I have restarted VW and restarted my computer. I did try to export as PDF which then locked up the application. Any ideas?

Dave and Jim, I tried a more recently created document and unified view was turned on and it worked as expected several times. Looking at the document with the issue, Unified View was disabled. Once enabled, everything worked as expected, including jumping immediately to another view thus stopping the render. I had no idea that Unified View impacted that functionality. Thanks for the help!

Copy that. I will run a test and check on Unified View.

Jim, I just tried deselecting "Always do..." and that did not solve the issue. Art, on a Mac, Command 5 is plan view. It is the same as 0 on a keypad though my laptop does not have a numeric keypad. Command 5 is kind of a habit of mine going back to MiniCad 4. To be clear, what just happened, I set my view to a perspective and began rendering final quality renderworks. I then stopped it with "Command ." Once the rendering stopped, I reset for plan view (Command 5) and the drawing began re-rendering in final quality from the original perspective. The view did not change, it just started re-rendering which is a bit inexplicable to me. This file was started in an older version of VW but seems as though this should be a simple process and I have had similar issues with other files. In this case I have been paying attention to what it is actually doing and not doing since the scale of this project is so large.

Tried the bitmap render and it does work very well. Thanks! (still think the other is an issue that might need to be addressed.)

Interesting. I recall seeing that feature when it came out, but did;t think too much about it. I will certainly try that and I appreciate the response Alan. Since this particular drawing has been a little difficult in this regard, I have been paying closer attention to letting he render process stop before moving on. What I have encountered are the following situations: 1) I stopped a rendering using ESCAPE, waited for the computer to stop completely, then pressed Command 5 to return to plan mode and instead the computer started re-rendering. No way to stop until it finished. 2) I ran the same process and then pressed Command Shift W to return to wireframe and then command 5 to return to plan. Worked fine. 3) I just ran the same process as in #2 above and as soon as I typed Command Shift W, it started rendering again. Seems like an issue. Could just be me.

And to that point, I am hopping on the forum currently while I am waiting for my computer to complete a render that I do not need.

Greetings. I find that I often want to start a render to see how a specific aspect is going to look and once I see that particular part of the rendered image, I then stop the render. I use either "Command ." or the "ESCAPE" key. Where I run into problems is when I type one of those commands and then another command to continue drawing such as "Command 5". While this usually works, occasionally (or frankly, fairly often) I apparently move too quickly to the second command while the first has not executed. When this happens, the computer seems doomed to complete an entire render unless I should choose to force quit. Is there another way to force a render to quit? Is there a better approach for what I am doing? Thank you

This is an issue that has been pondered regarding Spotlight since its inception. The best way to do this currently is with design layer viewports. (DLVP) any item that has to be rotated such as a truss or ladder, is drawn on it's own unique layer and drawn in plan view only. Once drawn, one create a viewport of that layer into your master drawing layer. It can then be rotated any way you might like. This allows you quite a bit of flexibility in how one views items and in fact, how those items are manipulated in 3D space. Just know that sometimes these DLVPs can be a bit buggy and frustrating. Hopefully this is being addressed.

I should also note that I had to raise the output level of the two PAR fixtures depicted to 400% to make them look like that. Again, totally unusable about 5' down beam.

Bronski, I think you may find VectorWorks a little limited in it's ability to correctly handle fixtures like this from a presentation standpoint. A single fixture with multiple light sources is definitely a conundrum for Spotlight type symbols. That said, here is a thought: Create your version of the fixture and use an actual "lens" image texture for each of the LED "pixels". Make sure the texture is set to "Glow" and that the image will receive it's color from the class color. Make sure the lens part of your fixture is assigned to the Spotlight "lens" class. Also, Make sure you have your Spotlight preferences set to allow the lens color to change color based on the selected color in the fixture. I have added a clip denoting those preferences. Note that the class name for mine is specific to my company's template file. Yours will be different. Attached is an image of a pair of Source Four PAR fixtures from our library; one Narrow and one Medium. The lenses add a touch of realism without slowing down the render process, or at least, not to a point where I can tell. As to atmospherics, this will be a problem and this is the drum I bang all the time regarding Vectorworks. There is really no useful control of the light output. There is no way to set the origination size of the beam (in the case of the S4 PARs, the beam should start approximately 8" in diameter and instead, they both start, like all VW light objects, at a pin point). Secondly, there is no way to control any sort of realistic fall-off. There are settings for realistic fall off, but they are mostly useless as the diameter of the beam defines it's brightness (apparently like it is a solid piece of geometry) as opposed to it's origination point. We could create realistic fall off prior to 2011....but I digress. What I have done here is take a Magic Panel symbol and use six light objects (3 across the top and three cross the bottom) set to SPOT. I reduced their BEAM to 10% and SPREAD to 30% and increased their intensity to 300% (more on this in a bit). Also, to fake the origination beam size, I have moved the lighting objects to where they are behind the actual fixture and focus through it as seen in the wireframe attachment. This works because the fixture default texture does not cast shadows. This gives the impression that light is outputting at the full width of the face of the fixture. By using 6 light objects, I can simulate light output of 25 pixels without bogging the processor down too much. Just keep in mind that this takes six times as long to render as a single fixture more or less. As to setting the intensity to 300%.... this is the big downfall of the current rendering options in Vectorworks. To create something that approaches realistic light emanating from the fixture itself, I boosted the light output as noted. As the beams of light get wider, they intensify and therefore, just a few scant feet in front of the lighting fixture, you end up with a "blob" of light that will completely obliterate anything else in your scene in a completely unrealistic and unable fashion. As we all know, lighting output increases with distance and spread.... If that were the case we could replace all those Strong Gladiators with flashlights. Again, I am getting snarky, but that is because I have been complaining about this for four years. My point to you is that you would have to spend a bit of time with each scene render to get the effect you are hoping to achieve based on the position of the fixture, it's particular focus and where your camera is located. Hopefully this helps and I apologize in advance for the rant.

I would really like VW to include an onboard "console" the way WYSIWYG works which is SOOOOO much simpler than the very time intensive process of creating focus points, assigning focuses to fixtures, turning them on, selecting lit fog if necessary, assigning color, etc. Since that is not happening anytime soon if ever, I do have a quick workaround for you. You have already discovered the default focus angle in Spotlight. If that is not working for you, I generally create 3 focus points that are huge time savers: 1 focus point that is about 2000' straight out downstage and roughly 15' high. This would be an "Audience Straight" focus. 1 focus point that is following an angled line from an average upstage lighting position to the stage apron and then extended off about 2000' (which is now a very negative Z coordinate) and this would be an "Apron Straight" focus. 1 focus point that is kind of the opposite of the previous that is up high and this would be an "Arial Straight" focus. By placing the focus points that far out, the fixture pan is not discernible. Hopefully that is a useable work around for you.

Thanks Jim. It would be great to know what might be in the pipeline before I dive off into the time and expense involved with a new program. It's been five years of MISERABLE lighting effects.

Have you tried the Design Layer Viewport (DLVP) workflow? It does solve this problem, though perhaps not as easily as you might like. That said, there are several advantages to this. The only disadvantage I have with the process at all is: a.) I cannot export directly to a visualization program b.) Vectorworks has some bug issues in seeing the DLVPs in wireframe 3D views from time to time which should be addressed, but is thus far still an issue.

Thanks Jim. Any thoughts on possible integration of ESP Vision with Vectorworks? If I could get ESP Vision quality volumetrics with Vectoworks texturing I would be a pretty happy guy. If emitting lenses were added to vision symbols I would be happier still. If I could manipulate lights via a DMX/Artnet control scenario I would be very happy and if VW included a simple yet useful lighting control feature, I would be extatic. Setting focus points, fcusing Spotlight symbols, turning them on, enabling the extraordinarily disappointing and highly unrealistic lit fog option is very clunky and time consuming. But, as always, my main complaint is the quality of light beams in lit fog. Terrible, and have been since 2011.

No movement on this issue as far as I can see. It looks like I may be switching to WYSIWYG as the quality of presentations from Vectorworks are completely unacceptable. Very, very disappointing. I am holding out a bit of hope for ESP Vision integration but not much.