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MikeB

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Posts posted by MikeB

    Line preferences

    in Architecture

    Posted

    I remember a thread about this from along time ago. It's been this way for as long as I've been using VW(MC 7ish). It has to do with how the OS renders vector information. Mac's and PC's just handle this information differently.

    Even stranger, if you print from a Mac using a postscript printer you will get round ends. Or at least it used to be this way.

    frosted glass

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Under VW 10 you can apply a constant shader to your ceiling material and it will look like it glows, you will have to add lights distributed around the room to fake the illumination from the ceiling.

    Under VW 11 I heard there was a new shader for translucent materials, but I haven't upgraded yet.

    Good Luck

    rendering air

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Well, things have changed a lot in VW/RW in the 4 years since I first replied to this [Wink]

    I suppose with RW it is possible to creat a geometry to mimic a light cone, and then create a texture for it. With the new shaders introduced over the last few versions I think you could get a convincing result.

    Good Luck

    Animating a File

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Also, Try to reinstall Quicktime, but use the custom installation and select all the components. There has been a problem that if you choose the normal installation of quick time, it leaves out critical files that VW/RW needs.

    Good Luck

    Animation

    in Rendering

    Posted

    No, RW cannot display movies on screens in an animation. Julian Carr developed some advanced animation tools for VW/RW, but I dont think even his tools included this.

    Good Luck

    Vectorworks 10 updates?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    While I don't work for NNA, I've been using VW long enough to know once a new release is issued there is no further development on the previous release.

    Although I do remember one exception, right after 10 came out , Apple updatd OS X and broke several core functions of VW. NNA update VW 9 but like I said that was an exception.

    Good Luck

    New Work if anyones interested

    in Rendering

    Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    Hi Mike:

    Have you tried using Image Props for the trees?

    HTH,

    I have used them, there's something about the abstraction of these that I like right now, I'll eventually replace them

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    You may want to try adding point lights below the ground plane that don't cast shadows to brighten up the darker parts of the building, or maybe increase the ambient light a little.

    HTH,

    I'm hesitant to add any more lights, with the sky dome I've got 61, It renders slow as it is, more ambient may be a better way to go, these are really just tests at this point.

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    The skydome and sun can be thought of as primary lights, and if you have time to tweak it further (I know it takes a long time to render this) you can look for brightly-lit patches and put secondary lights to account for these patches lighting the other surfaces around them. (I am currently trying to work out a method to do this reliably, and am wondering if in the absence of true radiosity it would be worth it to try automating these "fakeiosity" techniques. The idea would be to use point or spot lights with distance falloff to localize the effect of the secondary lights.) A grid of point lights (that don't cast shadows) under the building could be one way of adding this secondary lighting. The color of each light could be chosen by rendering a top view with the Render Bitmap Tool and choosing the light colors from the nearest image pixel colors. The lights under the grass would be green, for example.

    HTH,

    Sounds like a good possibility, but again, all those lights really slow you down

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    The darkness of the darker shadows makes the building look kind of drab. Also there is a lot of gray, maybe increasing the saturation in the grass and trees just a little might offset that. Another way to add more colors would be to use the background colors as a guidline for the skydome light colors. For example, a two color orange and purple background could be used for a sunset, and the skydome lights near the horizon can be set to orange and the top to purple, with the intermediate colors used for the in-between angles.

    HTH,

    I haven't tried that yet, sounds interesting

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    Also I think the background might look better with a gradient or a high resolution sky image rather than the clouds background.

    HTH,

    The gradients work well, but the image backgrounds are limited because they dont create a reflective environment the way the clouds and the gradients do.

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    Another idea could be to use a Plain Transparency shader on the roofs, with a very small opacity if you still want to see into each room.

    HTH,

    Once we get the plans nailed down, I'm going to add the roof plans and more detail, skylight ect.

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    The sun would reflect off of the front windows, you could put spot lights near each window aiming in the reflected direction to show this light hitting the front walk.

    HTH,

    Again more lights [Eek!][big Grin]

    quote:
    Originally posted by Dave Donley:

    Fun image!

    HTH,

    Thanks, again I was really just experimenting with what VW can produce with a minimum of actual modeling effort. The building is all walls and plugins, the site and trees and surrounding building are modeled. I was really suprised at what came out.

    New Work if anyones interested

    in Rendering

    Posted

    Well, here's an update, I added alot of info and textures and site. I used the same rendering technique with the sky dome object. I changed the sky dome color to white, the blue was shifting the colors too much.

    -

    As far as a WIP forum, I personally think thats a little too much. The renderworks forum doesent have much traffic anyway, so I don't see why we don't just post here.

    Thanks for the comments on the image

    [ 04-15-2004, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

    New Work if anyones interested

    in Rendering

    Posted

    I've been working on a new project in the office, a 145000 sf Student Union. I layed out the plans only using plug ins. For this model I didn't model anything except the floors, everything else is VW Plugins. For lighting I used the skydome available on Vector Depot, and one sun. It took about 2 hours to render.

    Enjoy

    -

    Survey won't import

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Thanks Katie, we didn't have enough time to wait, so I used a copy of acad to explode the objects. It seems the proxies in Acad are something like plug-ins in VW and the surveyor was using one of these to make his contour lines, which were all 3-D. Once I exploded everything the file imported fine, but each contour line was made up of tens of thousands of line segments. The file ended up with 200,000 objects in it. Once I composed all the contours back into polygons the file is now relatively useful.

    Survey won't import

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    We're having a problem.

    Mac G4 Dual 1.25

    OS 10.2.8

    VW 10.5.1

    I'm trying to import a survey file from our surveyor. I open a blank file, then import the DWG. The dialogue says "Loading File" then it says "Converting proxies to groups" at this point the application hangs and the status bar does not advance no matter how long we wait. I've gotten other files from this surveyor and not had any problems.

    The DWG is 22.2 MB

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks

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