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AndyM

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Posts posted by AndyM

    RenderWorks 11

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Radiosity is very slow on even the fastest rendering engines. If they added radiosity I bet a lot of the same users that have been yelling for it would come back screaming about 14 hour render times. The majority of users don't have dual G5s or dual xeons and radiosity rendering isn't something to be done casually on a 1GHz G4. Radiosity isn't a magic feature that will make renderings look great. You can get very good results with and without it. Radiosity will make it possible to make the jump from "absolutely great quality" to "absolutely unbelievable" but there is a huge price to pay in rendering time. If you must have it, it is already there via Cinema 4D along with much more advanced shading and lighting tools.

    3d Spiral

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yup. As I suspected, the root of the problem is in 2d. If you can stand to wait long enough while your computer chews on it(I read a book) convert the extrude to 3d polys and it is fine. It makes about a jillion polys, but it works and looks fine. Is there a good way to reduce the poly count for just one object? I don't want to turn down the global setting.

    Many thanks.

    3d Spiral

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hmmmm. I make complicated 3d stuff all the time but this is not that complicated. It is slow to the point of being completely unusable. I'll try and do a sweep or something else. I suspect that this has something to do with offsetting and composing a spiral in 2D because I now realize that it slows doen even before extruding. Many thanks.

    My system:

    P4 3.0 GHz

    1.5 GB RAM

    XP Pro

    3d Spiral

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hello,

    I need to make a 3d model of a chandalier with spiral thingies on it. Everything is working fine until I make the spiral. I use the spiral tool, ungroup it, offset, fill in the ends, compose and extrude. It looks fine but everything gets REALLY SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW. It takes 5 - 10 seconds to even pan the screen. Anybody know why this is happening and if there is a workaround???? Many thanks!

    rendering air

    in Rendering

    Posted

    It can be done quite easily in fact there was even a tutorial somewhere. Just do a multiple extrude of a couple of circles (one is the beginning of beam and the other is the end) and apply a mostly transparent shader. The BIG hang up is that the beam itself will cast a slight shadow.

    RenderWorks 11

    in Rendering

    Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

    C4D which costs, last time I looked at it +/_ $1,800.00 dollars with the advanced rendering package which has radiosity. [/QB]

    You can get it for half that with the plug in. It is not perfect but it does work VERY well. If you make the money commitment and have a few days to get up to speed you will be producing much better renderings in much less time and time=money. I agree with NNA. I think ther programmers time is much better spent in improving and adding features that the vast majority of users will use. VectorWorks/RenderWorks is a great CAD package with good rendering capabilities for a CAD package. If you need advanced rendering or animation capabilities you should consider a package that is designed to do that. Plus the lightworks engine is so slow without GI I can't imagine what it would be like with it.

    RW 11 New Features

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Hi Dave,

    I see what you are saying about scale of the light being an issue. Maybe it could come in at the size it does now but once you adjust the cone it adopts that real geometric size. Having a 'show cone' option in the OIP would be very important because you can quickly get a cluttered scene with light cones all over the place. It would still be a huge improvement. With the current tools it is very hard to tell where a light is pointing and virtually impossible to predict what the spread will look like without rendering over and over again.

    -

    In this example it is very easy to predict what the light will do and you can adjust the spread, falloff and visibility interactively with the orange handles.

    -

    You get a very good idea of what the light will do without rendering. Another lighting feature C4D has that you might consider is that you can select 'link active object' from the view menu and one of the viewports will give you the point of view of the light and you can move it around and adjust the parameters from that perspective. Very slick! This makes focusing lights very fast and intuitive.

    -

    RW 11 New Features

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for the response. I am excited about some of the new features. I will elaborate on my wishes for lighting tools:

    1. It drives me crazy that you can't zoom in on a light. No matter what your zoom is set to the lights appear the same size. If you have a lot of lights in the scene and zoom way out your entire screen can be covered in lights.

    2. I would also like the cones to be usefull. Right now they give you an idea where the (spot) light is pointing but it would be better if you could grab the cone and extend it to meet the object you are trying to light. They should also have handles to allow you to adjust the spread and falloff. This would allow us to work with lights much more efficiently. I'm sure your sick of hearing this, but look at how the lighting tools in 3DS or C4D work.

    3. Visible light beams are another biggie with me. (I do lighting and set design.) Doesn't have to volumetric, just visible where you can adjust the density and color would do it.

    4. I would LOVE to get a plug in to extract the image files used for the textures. There have been so many times when I wanted to get one of these in photoshop and make a change.

    5. Camera objects!

    6. How about the ability to apply more than one texture to an object? Picture a brick wall with a logo painted onto it that follows the bump of the bricks.

    7. Include/exclude - Isn't some version of this already present with the gobo projector tool? That is a physical object only visible to the light it is attached to. Just a thought.

    Thanks!

    [ 04-23-2004, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: AndyM ]

    Spotlight Update?

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    I am excited about viewports and some of the new renderworks features but it appears that other that adding a few new symbols that the spotlight plugin is the same as it was in 9.0. This is a worthy upgrade for other reasons but have any of these items been addressed?

    1. When using the number instruments command can you dictate which field it places the number? I often want to number all instruments from left to right and number similar instruments in another field.

    2. The position summary is completely useless. You can't move it in relation to the lighting position and the text can't be formatted. Changing the text attributes only changes the text on the name of the position - not any of the other fields.

    3. Worksheets are not updatable. This makes them all but worthless. I make an inventory report, format it, add in some additional information and it can't be updated without starting over. You can't even make your own inventory report using the "=count(symbolname)" function in the worksheet.

    4. Lights don't move with the position.

    5. Label Legend Manager is functional but could be MUCH easier to use. On the OIP there should be a little tick mark that allows you to display that particular feild or not. Then you could just edit the symbol to dictate where the data is displyed.

    6. When you convert a truss into a light position it loses it's truss parameters without finding it in the resource browser and editing it. You can't change the parameters interactively anymore.

    7. When you add an accessory to an instrument it doesn't 'stick' to that instrument.

    A lot of these are bugs that have been present since spotlight was released. Is anyone working on the spotlight code anymore? I love VectorWorks and think that it is a great CAD package but I am going to be greatly disapointed if none of these obvious issues are being addressed. Someone please correct me.

    RW 11 New Features

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Being able to turn off shadow casting is a very good thing, but is there an include/exclude feature for lights? Do the lights have cones that you can edit and that don't change size when you zoom? Any visible light options?Cameras that you can move around? Obviously radiosity didn't make it or it would be on the front page of the documentation. The multi-layer paint shader sounds cool and I'm also really glad that you can now mirror textures.

    My BIGGEST wish is still access to the images used in the color channel of the textures. We could do so much more if we could edit those on our own!

    Overall it sounds like a worthy upgrade.

    C4D Export Scale

    in Rendering

    Posted

    I know this has been discussed bofore but I can't find or remember a solution. If I set the units in VW and C4D both to inches, draw a 12' extruded circle in VW and export it to C4D it is MUCH larger than 12' in C4D. I need to be able to export some things from VW and add them into a scene. I know that I can just scale everything once in C4D but I will need to go back and forth and need this to be very precise.

    Any ideas? BaRa?

    Instrument numbering

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    I have been using VectorWorks for years mostly for event floorplans and renderings (now with C4d)but am just now digging into the spotlight tools.

    The more I get into it the more I get frustrated and can't believe that this is the second release of Spotlight.

    Major frustrations:

    1. Worksheets are nut updatable. This makes them all but worthless. I make an inventory report, format it, add in some additional information and it can't be updated without starting over. You can't even make your own inventory report using the "=count(symbolname)" function in the worksheet.

    2. Position summary is completely useless. Text can't be formated and you can't place the summary where you want. It moves with the position. Which brings me to my next point:

    3. Lights don't move with the position. Easy to work around I know, but still should not be that way.

    4. Label Legend Manager is functional but could be MUCH easier to use. On the OIP there should be a little tick mark that allows you to display that particular feild or not. Then you could just edit the symbol to dictate where the data is displyed.

    5. When you convert a truss into a light position it loses it's truss parameters without finding it in the resource browser and etiting it. You can't change the parameters interactively anymore.

    6. When you add an accessory to an instrument it doesn't 'stick' to that instrument. You have to group it.

    The symbol library is great though.

    Please correct me if I am mistaken about any of these things.

    Worksheets

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    It appears that after having spotlight generate all those nice worksheets and then formating them the way I want them that you can't recalculate them without generating a new worksheet and re-formating.

    SAY IT AINT SO!!!

    Instrument numbering

    in Entertainment

    Posted

    2 questions:

    When using the 'number instruments' command is it possible to dictate which field it places the number? I want to number every fixture on the position from left to right in one field and number similar instruments in another.

    Is there a way to change the orientation of the position summary? It appears that the summary always appears perpendicular to the position. If I move one the other moves as well.

    Also the text doesn't format like it should. Changing the text attributes only changes the text on the name of the position - not any of the other fields.

    Thanks for your help!

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