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EAlexander

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Everything posted by EAlexander

  1. One of my students sent me this and it made me chuckle - thought others around here might appreciate this: https://deadspin.com/the-7-laws-of-vaportecture-stadium-arts-fever-dream-1833445857 e.
  2. I assume you mean dynamically, like a node system in other 3D programs. The short answer is no - VW is not set up for that kind of live data. You can group the boxes and the line and move the whole thing as an assembly, but if you want to move one box, then you'll have to update the connector line manually.
  3. Usually this indicates overlapping geometry. Check if you have intersecting objects or doubled up objects. When two solids occupy the same x, y, z space, VW struggles to know which to show, so you get that look in open GL.
  4. I don't know that this is a bug - I'm not upset about it, I just think it isn't something that it was engineered to do. Our job as users to is raise these case points with the developers and have a discussion. Hopefully, some of these these things can improve moving forward.
  5. Agreed - sidearmed units aren't the issue. For me it's more like X-bars along pipes in a radial array pattern or strips along the curved edge of a round pasarelle catwalk. This is where it gets you. Fortunely, Cinema lets you select a group of objects and rotate them around their own center, but I'd like it to import correctly instead.
  6. Also look at exporting .3ds or .obj out of Sketchup and importing that way.
  7. This issue also exists when exporting to Cinema 4D. If you export lighting instruments to Cinema you get the correct rotation, but then the Symbol/instance relationship is broken i.e. each light is it's own piece of raw geometry as if using Groups, instead of Symbols. If you Command + K the Lighting instrument back into just symbols - you get the correct symbol/instance parent child relationship you expect (and need) - but rotation is lost. It's maddening! Anything that can be done to improve this - not just for DWG export - would be amazing. Thank you. CC: @Dave Donley
  8. Dude..... This is awesome! Insta buy for sure.
  9. Jim, Thank you for being the face and voice of a big company and product while listening to users and trying to help both sides move forward positively. Best of luck with your next adventures. e.
  10. I've bought some from AXYZ before but for use in Cinema.4d. Never used them in VW, but worth a look. Look in ready posed and you can filter by age range. Come in a few different formats, uv'd with textures. https://secure.axyz-design.com/en/metropoly
  11. Is the skylight a symbol? If so, you'll have to edit the symbol and change it to solid within the symbol. Symbol attributes can't be changed outside the symbol wrapper. You can double click on it in the drawing, or right click on it from the resource manager to go into editing mode.
  12. So, are you making these of set designs? Any examples you can share?
  13. I'm with Mark - I use them (for everything) in Top Plan view - not a hidden line render of the plan view. So you can have complicated 3D and control the simplicity or graphic nature of the 2D in a more useful way. See attached. Plan section and elevation all made from the same model. Everything is a hybrid.
  14. No worries, I'm in the weeds myself. Late spring early summer when things slow down a bit.
  15. Thank you! Happy to discuss workflow and pitfalls, feel free to ask questions. I teach all this stuff (formerly at NYU and for the 829 union). Maybe we should set up a online session to talk about stage renders. Let me know if there is interest and we'll set something up.
  16. Hey, take a look at Corona. The Volumetrics aren't as cool, but over all its an amazing render engine. In fact, I think the best and its My go to render engine for most of the work you see on my site. It's CPU based so works a treat on a Mac.
  17. Hey - I don't want to derail this thread with more info outside of the original posts intent, but if you want to see some work I've been doing on volumtrics with Redshift, you can see some examples on my blog: http://www.evanalexander.com/blog/2019/3/1/volumetric-lighting It's pretty great and renders super fast. All images are under 30 seconds to render and no photoshop.
  18. Does this still happen if you turn off snapping when moving?
  19. There is no stand alone converter that I know of since the export functionality lives inside of VW already.
  20. Great work Wes and Simon! Thanks for sharing - and thank you for the kind words Simon. I think the take away from this is that there isn't a one stop solution for these kinds of renders, so you have to find the right toolkit that works for you and works for the specific project. Like Simon says - every project is different in scope and approach. I also agree that time spent learning more Photoshop is one of the more important things to focus on. I did rock and roll renders for years without any volumtrics and did it all in photoshop. You can get big looks quickly and they can be fast to change or modify as there is no rendering in that part of the process. I'll report back more when I've had a chance to dig into Redshift more. e.
  21. OBJ or 3DS will get you in the door on Importing, but you are going to have Mesh items, so the geometry will be dense and not easy to edit. I recommend importing the object(s) into a fresh clean file first. Clean it up if needed and then copy and paste it into your larger working file.
  22. Here's some examples of what I'm talking about. The beam shot is from a set with an array of sharpy lights around screens. This is made using the native renderer in Cinema4D (Physical) with Volumetric Spotlights. In this example, I turned off all of the scenery and just rendered the beams. On more complicated sets, I'll apply a black texture to everything and render it that way (so I have obstructions and light reacting to audio arrays or truss). The spotlight is just one of many isolated beams that I made in Optical Flares with After effects. Either of these methods are then SCREENED layers in Photoshop and then color adjustments are added. This Sam Smith render is an example of doing all the beamage in post - but this is a pretty simple look. It gets more complicated for larger rigs but can be done. The latest testing is using Redshift render engine in Cinema which looks promising so far. The idea there would be to actually light it all and do the volumtrics "live" in render and cut down on the post processing and up the realism.
  23. Hi Henry, A few more random thoughts from my side. I've been chasing a good volumetric system for a few years now. I don't think there is a one software solution for this - be it CAD or 3D. As for VW working on this over the next few months - I don't know. There are so many other things on the radar it would seem, but I don't want to speak for the company. 1. You can do the volumetrics in vanilla Cinema without the STAGE plug in. Yes - the plug in makes it easier and more like a Grand MA Board control, but it's not necessary. In the past, I have put a Cinema Spotlight right at the barrel of my movers (you can control the start point of the beam to make it look like it is starting from a lens and not a point). If your fixture is a symbol and you have instances all around your stage, you can just add this Spotlight once and it will populate to all instances - the problem there, of course, is focus. So you'll have to do a fair amount of focusing to get the look you want (again, this is where Stage probably saves tons of time). Usually I will do my render without volumetrics and then do a separate render of just the volumetric lights with a matte black material applied to all objects and then comp those together in Photoshop. Not great, but gets it done. 2. There are other render engines for Cinema that would handle this better - Redshift comes to mind - where you can control volumetrics per light as well as overall atmospheric haze. But this is, another software plugin to buy and learn. Unreal Engine seems to do a nice job of volumetrics as well, but that is a whole other workflow. 3. Video Copilot makes a add on plug in for After Effects call Optical Flares and it is possible to simulate volumetrics there as well. https://www.videocopilot.net/products/opticalflares/ In action: I have also used opticals flares to make myself a library of hi res cones and flares against a black background that I can just screen into a comp in Photoshop to add lights in - though for big rigs, this can be tedious and labor intensive. I think at this time - the path of least resistance for you is going to be upgrading your Cinema (you should anyway now that you are doing commercial work) and try the STAGE plug in. It's designed for just what you are talking about - though it's not perfect - full disclosure - I have never used it myself. Hopefully NNA will address this in the future, but these things take time and I assume there are higher priorities on the list. Hope that helps some - following this thread with interest. e.
  24. Also make sure that SAVE VIEWPORT CACHE is on in Document Preference, though I suspect Andy has found the issue.
  25. I work the same way as Wesley basically. I do think that there is part of the conversation missing: Unreal Engine 4 I think even dedicated render engines like VRAY, Corona, Octane, etc. should be on the look out for real time game engines. Already making headway in Games and a lot of Archviz is moving towards this. Have you guys looked at Unreal Studio: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/studio Pretty impressive.
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