jmanganelli

modo has integration with unreal engine now. And modo has excellent texturing and uv tools. would want to do as much lighting, texturing, entourage in modo as possible.

I agree. The geometry coming in well is the primary concern. Environment and lighting set up in modo and rhino are better. Materials in each are better. Modo opens many other opportunities, too. integration like you decribe with c4d would be ideal. Hopefully c4d decides to have a massive sale or cross grade promotion at some point. Or maybe nemetschek can buy modo from foundry. Modo would be very complementary to their offerings.

Ive just not gotten around to looking much into export from VA to modo, yet, zoomer. Since vectorworks exports to a *.3dm, I have explored that workflow. I've recently tried going from vectorworks to modo through fix and collada file formats. So far, I have a decent experience with geometry transfer but a poor experience with lighting and materials transfer.

Thanks for the replies. When I decided on modo, 9 years ago, c4d was my first choice but i could not justify the expense. Modo offers everything that i need and more for a reasonable price --- though it got a lot more expensive in the ensuing years --- but its price is still not anywhere near as much to buy or maintain as c4d. At this point, I am settled on modo and rhino for conceptual work with modo and maxwell as my two main render engines because they're very complementary. Though I think highly of c4d, I do not want to get into the expense or the learning curve if i can avoid it. I am experimenting with the best way to export from vectorworks to go straight into maxwell studio. The other option that I'm reviewing is exporting from vectorworks in the *.fbx and *.3dm formats, opening in rhino, and then setting up cameras, adjusting lighting and materials, and then exporting to maxwell. For some reason, so far, i've had some difficulty with the camera export from vectorworks to maxwell directly as a collada file type. fbx>rhino>maxwell seems to be the best workflow so far.

Luis' recent webinar tutorial on interior rendering is outstanding, not just with respect to use of Rendeworks, but also just for his excellent presentation and summary of a good rendering workflow. The results are also very, very good.

Thanks, redesign. That makes sense. It is unfortunate. Renderworks is a pleasant surprise and better than I expected, but it is not best in class. Plus, one of the nice things with many of the major render engines is that the plugins are available for multiple apps. So I can have the same renderer in sketchup, rhino, archicad , and modo. Easier to learn, master, and maintain, and therefore a value to the customer. vectorworks is very good about making user driven improvements. It is a point of pride. Hopefully enough people will speak up that they'll open up to other render engines.

Thanks, Rumelplatz. Does Vectorworks restrict 3rd-party render app development?

Hi Jim and Dinga. I'm somewhat new to Vectorworks and this forum. If I've missed the answer to my question, I'll apologize in advance.......but why are there no mainstream third-party render engines for Vectorworks? For me, I use several DCC apps, and it is a convenience to standardize on a render engine across apps.

Thanks for the responses. That is unfortunate. Not having constraints is a big issue for me.

Hello, I am trying out VW right now. My background is architecture but I work with mechatronic systems. So I am interested in VW in part b/c it looks like VW Designer provides one platform supporting both an architectural BIM package and a mechanical/mech. systems modeler. There are lots of videos, reviews, etc about VW Architect & Designer. But I have found very little on VW Machine - really practically nothing. No current reviews, no current training videos. My only experience with a MCAD/CAE tool is Autodesk Inventor. Does anyone have experience with both Inventor (or similar) and VW Machine? How does VW Machine compare? Thanks.