Mattheng

I am trying to create some trees from the Xfrog libraries and save them as plant objects. The textures are all saved with the "glow" qualifier selected which makes them look pretty naff so I turned this off and then added various lights to make the scene look more realistic. I them noticed that the 3D element of the trees was casting a strange shadow over itself due to it being an Image prop saved with crossed planes. I proved this by setting up another image prop that did not have this option checked and you can see the results below. When I went back to the plant object, selected the 3D part and unselected the cross planes option it made no difference, the tree still used crossed planes. I have tried creating new plant objects, replacing old plant objects and every other combination I can think of but the plant object remains doggedly crossed planes which patently doesn't work. Do I have to create a 2D/3D object that is NOT a plant to achieve this and do away with all the niceties of the plant database or am I missing something? Matt Edit : I cannot add any files! for some reason it just routes you to a random web page. Any ideas?

Not sure if I should start a new thread with this but I have also found that the classes settings when performing an animation all seem to be set by the view that you have open when you start the animation. e.g. if I have lights turned off in the view on screen, when I start the animation, if they are turned on in the saved views used in the animation, they stay turned off?. And as a final point, how many point lights can you have on at any one time? I have a total of 14 in the model and above about seven on at once they start turning themselves off as the graphics card can no longer cope. Or at least that's what it appears?? Matt

Aha! I ran a test on an old White Macbook with no discrete graphics card and it flew through a couple of thousand frames without blinking. After much head scratching I have worked out why. The animation in Vectorworks creates the video at exactly the screen resolution and size of the open window in Vectorworks. i.e. if I shrink the Vectorworks window down and then create an animation I get a small video on playback. I was working on a 27inch iMac, running the Vectorworks window to fill up the screen and 2560 * 1440 was just too big. I could either: a) manually shrink the screen but that would just be guesswork and could take a while each time OR b) change the resolution of my screen. After much tinkering it seems 1600 * 900 with the VW window maximised for a landscape A3 (Ledger for my American friends) is the best you can get before the memory death spiral begins It doesn't seem to have much to do with render quality or even shadows but I haven't done too much experimenting yet. So I have an answer but would it be possible to just input something to say you would like 1080p output regardless of the screen resolution? Matt

This is starting to be pretty annoying? VW 2014 is a lot better at OpenGL than all previous versions, as the official feature list says. I am a bit of a fan of animations and always used to use OpenGL because it was so fast, even though the quality suffered compared to Renderworks. I have tried on numerous occasions to put together an animation in VW 2014 and after, at most, 200 frames I get the dreaded out of memory warning and a big crash after which the file will not save. Why? It doesn't happen on any Renderworks mode or Wireframe and would make an enormous difference to my workflow. Fast Renderworks vs OpenGL is something like a factor of 20 - 40 times faster. Meaning hours rather than days for an animation. Can anyone help? Matt

I'm with Monadoc on this. If you stick a 3D plant model into a plant object and try to resize it the problem shown in the (rather nice) Hosta above happens. Meaning you have to create lots of differently sized plants plus you can't even use the random size option to make groups look more natural or the renders start to tear. Very very annoying....

Bruce, How do I do that? Matt

I think this is because I am using Landmark and not Architect/Designer. I think I am missing some commands. I can't find the command you mention, DWorks, for example. I have, however, found one problem! The 2D representation doesn't tie in with the 3D in my example above. The 3D stair IS correct. Bug? But, and this is where everyone probably goes off and does something more interesting, the 3D stairs in the sections of some of my models have had the same unintuitive size issues as the 2D above. Some of the sections I have done have been so weird that I have had to draw in new stairs. Kind of defeats the point of having the sections generated automatically. I will try and dig them out and do another post / stick them under here but the 2D / 3D is definitely a problem. Anyone else seen it? Plus can is there an easy way to put bull nosed treads onto stairs? Matt

Bruce, it's pretty much as my last two attachments showed. I get nothing....? Matt ps I'm running Landmark 2013

I think this is specific to Landmark as we don't get the standard Stair tool. The precise problem is that I had two steps that were 4m wide, a total of 500mm high and 800mm deep. Worked fine. I then added that the treads were 40mm thick and had 25 mm of nosing. I suddenly have a 25mm gap between my top stair and the paving around it..? Vectorworks had kept the overall depth at 800mm and shrank the top stair by 25mm to allow for the nosing...(?) So the top step is now actually 375 deep and the nosing is 400mm deep, not 425mm, which is what I actually wanted. Most importantly, the steps are now different sizes! Top one is 375 with 25mm nosing but the bottom one is 400 with 25mm nosing...?!?!? How do I get two 400mm steps with 25mm nosing or is the stair tool (or the custom stair tool) just not capable of doing it...? Matt

Bruce, thanks for this but I have pressed all the buttons endlessly and just get blank screens. Seems like the Door Hardware.vwx file is in the wrong place. Do you see these screens or do you actually see some hardware?

Tamsin, I did turn it on but it seemed to be saying that it only applied to the 3d contours. It certainly didn't make any difference to the mesh object. At least, not immediately. It seemed to work after a few more updates. And then stayed smooth after I turned it off again. I must say I don't understand quite what happened... Matt

Maybe I should clarify, I do use hardware unless the building is not much more than a massing model which is a fair part of my work. In that case the basic figure is enough. I am, unfortunately, doing more detailed building work and this is becoming a problem because everything in the door hardware is a separate object that needs lining up. Could anyone tell me at least what is supposed to happen? Do all the parts magically put themselves on the door in the right place or do you still have to spend a while lining them up? Thanks. Matt

Ever since VW 2010 I have never once got the door hardware to appear in the door settings sub pane. I have had to manually open the Door Hardware.vwx file and then line up whatever handles etc etc I wanted by hand. Massive time waster so I just don't bother but people have started commenting on the lack of handles etc. I have put the Door Hardware.vwx file in 3 places, 1) the default under Applications where it installs. 2) In my User Data and Preferences location file Library/Application Support/Vectorworks/2013 location 3)My Workgroup and Project folders location. Nothing. Not even a sniff. Any ideas why it doesn't work. Matt

Basically it looked like a piece of paper someone had folded and then unfolded. There were sharp steps up where the changes in gradient occurred. Basically it was going to have to be camouflaged to get away with it.. But now it isn't and I still haven't got a clue why...

Sorry, my DTM now looks passably smooth and I'm not sure when it happened. I was working on some texture beds and I suddenly noticed the creases had gone. Maybe it takes a few "updates" to make it happen, maybe the "smoothing" did work. Sorry I can't be more helpful. I'm baffled but happy with the result. Matt

I am creating a DTM from a third party survey. It seems accurate enough and there are plenty of points but the resulting DTM is "creased" and looks awful. There is a "smoothing" section under the properties of the DTM but this only seems to effect the 3d contours. How do I smooth out the mesh object? Matt

I am doing some fairly chunky renders with several viewports updating at the same time. The model us a bit shaky but will normally get through to the end. The big problem is that when it's finished rendering it won't save. It says that I have run out of memory. If I use terminal and purge the menory and then file>save as and save over the top it will sometimes work but after the first failed save attempt I get a TMP file saved. If things go really badly wrong and the program crashes without being able to file>save as, is the TMP file the one I should open or the normal one because it does seem to save something under the normal name even though it says it hasn't...? And is there a limit to the number of viewports you can render simultaneously? By that I mean I hit the "render all viewports" command. thanks, Matt

I have Cameramatch 2011 which I used with VW 2012 but I now have VW 2013. Is Camermatch 2013 a free upgrade or do I have to pay...? Matt

got it. It's just like the walls..... thanks

barkest, One final point. I noticed that the mapping type was perimeter and that the "align selected mappings" doesn't work unless it is a plane, sphere or cylinder mapping. So I changed the type and... nothing happened. Still greyed out and still smeared down one side. @sigh@ Matt

barkest, just tried it on 2012. Same result. See below. What am I doing wrong? Matt

barkest, I really appreciate you posting this but I just opened it up and this is what happened.....? Align Selected Mappings is still greyed out and the mappings are smeared down the sides. Looks like you used VW 2012 and I am on 2013. I have some older versions, I will dig 2012 out and try on that but I would not have thought changing from 2012 to 2013 would cause this sort of trouble...? Thanks again, Matt

Ok I am getting there... The wall idea works but try as I might I still can't get the "align selected mappings" to work even though I have now found it in the help file. Hooray. How did you set up your textures in the alignSelected picture above (e.g. were they set to "plane") and was it two walls or two other types of object? Thanks, Matt

Looks great but I don't understand. On a wall you have left, right and overall textures. The overall texture goes along the top and down the "start/end" as you put it. You seem to have a different texture on top and down the start/end which is impossible? How? Matt ps Anyone know why "Align Selected Mappings" is greyed out? Why is it there if you can't use it...?

Ok, thanks. But that doesn't really work. Your picture is of the part that you have lined up the textures on. If you look at the corners then it will be out and I can't see how you fix it. See below. Also the Attribute mapping tool doesn't like auto aligned plane textures and just seems to smear the texture when it moves it. See below again. So, as I still can't get them all to align properly, why is "Align Selected Mappings" greyed out? What should it do? Why isn't it in the help file? Anyone? Matt