Kurt Magness

Quotes from the Lightworks web pages. "Achieve a faster time-to-market for your new products and product upgrades. You can create a rendering application using the LightWorks AEC Pack in just 5 days, including a full drag-and-drop GUI that is completely integrated into your application, without sacrificing quality. The LightWorks API is structured so that it is very easy to upgrade to newer versions of LightWorks as they are released, giving you immediate access to our latest technology. " and: "Realize shorter development cycles and lower maintenance and enhancement costs. Once you have integrated LightWorks into your application, our powerful software architecture allows you to easily upgrade to new functionality when we release a new version of LightWorks or even to include additional LightWorks products as and when you require. The LightWorks AEC Pack lets you add new LightWorks functionality just by linking in the updated or additional LightWorks libraries, and is a very cost-effective way of expanding your application's functionality into other areas. " So I guess I can't let go of this issue, at the risk of being obnoxious, I will mention it a third time, how hard would it be....

Sean; yes the textures and a Raydiosity render engine too, I think it is called the AEC pack from Lightworks. What pack does NNA use ? And by the way, I apologize to anybody at NNA that may have been offended by my posts. This was not my intention. I wanted to bring up these issues to spark interest and show my disapointment in getting a mosaic filter instead of Raydiosity in R11. Thanks for QTVR finally. And I think this is the forum to be in. Now that I know some other opinions on this subject I will post in the wish list forum too. By the way, I was just at the Strata 3DCX web site users forum and they post a tip about importing VWks files http://www.stratacafe.com/tips/showtip.asp?tipid=120. Does anybody use this solution ? I have seen Strata 3DCX at Macmall for around $300, upgrade $169 at the web. And their renderings are beautiful. So you have all these choices. Do you get one of the alternate software rendering & animation packages discussed here in this forum to work with VWKS and for go Renderworks 11 ? If it's base on software costs, if it based on user learnig curve, if it's based on seamless integration into VWKS, if is based on Raydiosity. To be continued...

All right Tom ! Got you going here ! This is getting good. Yes, I have installed a 4 and 8, not much difference. And no I do not write C code but I posed the question to Andrew Bell at NNA before: "How much more time does it take to write in renderwrks versus Lightworks LWA ?" And yes I know many architects that do not give a about rendering and they do not buy renderworks and they stick with just the VWKS program or Autocad and are happy as clams. I also know alot of Architects that use ACAD 12 with a tablet and some that still use pencils too. And of course a contractor would not care about radiosity? I am not contesting that. But I do care! And it seems like alot of us here in this forum do care. And hopefully VWs is listening. And my personal market surveys show that most of the Architects and Illustrators that do care about high quality renderings do not even consider Vwks/ Rndrwks because of the short commings discussed here in. They go to other programs like Maya, 3Dstudio, Vray, turbocad as posted herein, etc. Which you may say is fine, let them go. But I like VWKS and I want to stay. I have been a user since Minicad 3. The point is I/we do not want to go to another program. I personally have done that before and spent alot of money. I bought Strata 3D when it was the only export rendering solution for Minicad, and I bought Artlantis when it was the only rendering solution for VWKs. And now Nemetschek says C4D is the lastest rendering solution beyond renderworks. So buy that program now if you want more. And I have to say they all had/ have their problems. Exporting to another program has inherent problems that just do not go away. Is it wrong to want more from your CAD/ rendering program ? You obviously do not understand my and the others frustration here. We all had high hopes for R11. We are not a bunch of wankers. And statements like "go somewhere else" are lame. Obviously, we care enough about the program to spend the time to write in this forum and tell somebody. And hopefully NNA is listening about what we think are shortcomings to the "renderworks" program. No I do not know how much light works charges for a license. That is why I asked the question. Does anybody out there know? What is the difference between what we have and what we could have ? Is it $50, 100, 200 ? Reach for the stars or shut up and be happy with what you have. I personally will keep on reaching.

Great rant propstuff. It seems like the latest bells & whistles now in the CAD market is trying to make the drawings look like they are handdrawn by an artist (or a three year old ). To me this is effect is better done and quicker too in photoshop with their filters versus rendering engines. Additonally, Doodle! seems to work great interfacing with VWKS without "reprograming" VWKS. I thought the lastest trend in software was "plug in architecture". I cannot believe it takes more time for a programmer to implement the LWA enabled rendering engine over the basic renderworks engine. Like it takes more time to put a 4 cylinder engine in a car versus a V8 ? I do not thing so. So you can buy renderworks alone for $400 dollars. You can buy turbo cad, the full program with it's radiosity engine for $695 dollars. You can buy Artlantis for around $550 ? Or you can buy C4D according to Andy M for around $900 dollars. How much does VWKS pay lightworks to license their product ? Could it be that much more to license the LWA enabled render engine ?

what is the difference between a user and a power user ?

If you go to the lightworks web page there are many cad programs that use the more advanced lightworks LWA render engine and LWA enabled textures. There really is no mention of the render engine vwks chose to use. I myself cannot see how it would so dificult or take up so much programing time to implement the more advanced lightworks render engine as aposed to the "basic" renderworks engine. Plus there are all those free bitchen textures for the LWA enabled renderer. And in regards to AndyM's comment about the lightworks engine being so slow, this is true, but perhaps the LWA advanced renderer is much faster than the "basic" render engine we are stuck with. i would think this would be true since it appears to me to be a newer superior product that lightworks seems to promote and showcase as their best. Seems like VWKS chose the wrong path to go down.

see the panther and gimprint post below

I have been told by my Mac guru that verify disk permissions is for programers only. And if you read the notes just above the verify and repair disk permissions in disk utilities it says that you cannot repair the start up disk. So you must boot from the install CD. And under the apple menu there is disk utilities from which you "repair permissions". So if you do this there cannot be other apps running.

The best would be if they had the viewer program. However some print service companies are weird about what programs they want to load onto their computers. Alternately, the PDF format will be the best. However I have seen some weirdness with symbols, text blocks, etc. Tiff and Jpegs are bitmap formats and as such pixelate close up depending on file size and resolution. PDF format is objects although these files can become pretty big too.

Dave Donley or BaRa: Just to chip in on the bitchin here but radiosity or lack there of has been a subject on the renderworks forum for quite sometime. And it appears that lightworks has all the goodies most power users want but Vectorworks still will not incorperate them I guess because of " cost issues ". So my question is this. Why can't Vectorworks offer different renderworks packages like a basic one and a deluxe one with radiosity, HDRI, a decent animation system, etc. ? I for one would pay hundreds of dollars for a deluxe version way before going to C4D which costs, last time I looked at it +/_ $1,800.00 dollars with the advanced rendering package which has radiosity. And it still is not a fluid solution to what we all want. It seems like the Vectorworks marketing guys are missing a golden oportunity here to make even moe money instead of having their users go to another software program. Are they not not looking at these message boards? Who are they talking too? The sketchy/ artsy renderers in R11 are nice but I would much rather have the elusive Radiosity.

P.S. If you are getting poor print quality it may be as simple as a bad cartridge. Even though the cartridge looks like it has ink in it, it might not or it might be just funky. I had one that looked fine, showed green in the level indicator box, but was really empty. Also be sure to go in and adjust the black density up to 1.7 versus 1.00 the default, in printer settings, expert 2. there are other settings to fiddle with also. The paper you use also affects print quality

If you do not want to waste paper, don't use the roll feed and instead load 8.5 x 11 sheets manually. A friend of mine had a hell of a time getting gimp to work, could not get a correct IP address. Turns out he thought he had a router when he really had a switch. he got a router and felt like a fool. I have been holding off switching to panther on my main machines because of the thicker diagonal lines problem described above. The machine with panther does make the diagonal lines slightly thicker but not that bad to bum out the owner. I even had to point out the difference to her because she did not notice.

Dave: Is renderworks 11 LWA-enabled ?

Panther (OSX10.3) has the gimprint/ghostscript print drivers already installed as part of the system. it couldn't be much easier. Just go to the printer utility and under ip printing, select the HP 455 driver and put in the ip address of the jet direct. You get that by holding down the test button on the jet direct for 5 seconds to get the configuration print out. It should be on the 2nd page. It is a number like 168.124.155.128

more info on your setup would be helpful. make sure you have the latest drivers. if you are running panther, give the gimprint drivers a try if the plotter is supported.

get the epson, the inks do not fade, better software, better tech support. whats to think about ?

ther is a free program called "Stonecad" by Owens Corning. They make the "cultured stone" products and the Stonecad program has textures and hatches of all their products. I bet they have a similar pattern. Check it out on the web.

maybe it's a vwks 10 thing, you should get the upgrade to 10.5.1 it is free if you have vwks10, just download it off the web.

You shouldn't be missing any info. if you are maybe you shouldn't do edge to edge printing and have a margin. I like having a margin because it helps with pasting the sheets together. Just cut off one side after printing then aligning is much easier with an overlap than trying to butt the sheets together.

You might want to check out www.gardenhose.com Dennis there uses painter image sprayers to make trees, bushes, etc. He has examples and tutorials on how to do exactly what you discribe. But basically you make a texture map of the forest canopy with an associated invisible mask above the ground plane (+/- 20'), that has another texture map of the forest soil on the ground. He also uses a technique of mapping leaves onto cones with a invisible mask for pine trees. Then he puts them on a terrian model. Very realistic. You could try mapping leaves onto hemispheres. He uses the image hose to make trees instead of photos of trees but the technique is still the same.

has anybody noticed that when you have more than 3 image props overlaping it will cause one of the transparency masks not to work ? it will either create a black rectangle in the overlap area or if you have a background image it will render that in the overlap area.

Plotters always print in portrait by default for some reason. On a mac to print landscape on my HP455, I had to rotate the files into landscape within the printer options menu part of HP's software, not by just choosing landscape in the page setup. I am sure if you call HP they can tell you how to do it. It should not have anything to do with VWKS although if you do upgrade to VWKS 10.5 you will injoy many new features.

gimprint comes with ghostscript which is a postscript interpreter. Give it a try.

I would stay away from any fill pattern beyond the first row. They caused my hp 455 rip software to crash in OS9 VWKS 9 and since then I have avoided them and used hatches only. The fills come out thick and funky anyway.

Photoshop works great because it is not postscript and it is a raster image program verus vector base so it's files process rather quickly. Ilustrator and indesign I do not know about but if their postscript then the output would be jaggy ? I gimprint, the free open source print driver supports the 7600 and it comes with ghostscript, a postscript immulator which seems to work well.