Jeff Prince

You didn't quote the part about the hardscape tool looking like a shoe from an old Atari game. That was the essence of my rant 🙂 @drelARCH glad you enjoyed, it was writing therapy for me 🙂

@Phil hunt thanks for the reply and information. I admittedly have done no research into how or if this would work. It just seems like something software would have an easy time understanding since real light definitions in industry have mathematical definitions for their characteristics and seem to transfer between BIM applications fairly well. I hope others will weigh in with their experiences as well.

I was resisting installing 2020, but had to do it today in order to work with a client. I am a mac user and big fan of dark mode since I do a bit of video editing and other graphic pursuits. I am impressed with the initial appearance change in the dark scheme. It puts the focus on the drawing and makes the tools pop on the black background. I had found that the previous versions of vectorworks had this workspace that blended together without clear delineation between drawing area and the tools when subjected to the squint test. It wasn't a problem, just something you notice when using other programs. Overall, I still feel VW is aesthetically pleasing compared to other CAD/BIM software I have used when it comes to the drawing area and what I put there. That being said, I do have some criticism, even if the language is a bit harsh. I've never been enthusiastic towards VW icons and these new ones, other than most of the basic tool pallet, are not good. It is a philosophical problem where the designer of these graphics has forgotten their purpose. The icons are simply too detailed, regardless of one's aesthetic preferences. I believe icons should be minimalistic, strongly symbolic, and easily recognized. Isn't that the purpose of an icon or symbol after all 🙂 These fuzzy 3D looking cartoons are a massive distraction and initially confusing. One should not have to run their icons with text descriptions to determine what they do, kind of defeats the purpose of using icons and symbols doesn't it? The irrigation toolset is particularly bad. When I draw an irrigation plan, I use industry recognized symbols which clearly help identify components to the person reading the plans. My icons to access those components should not have more graphic detail than my drawing! Further, wouldn't it make logical sense that my valve tool's icon look like what I will put on the drawing and not what is sitting in the box? And I'm pretty sure most of us doing irrigation do not use 1/4 turn gate valves in place of solenoid activated valves for the item placed in the aforementioned box in the ground 🙂 I mean if you are going to get all literal with your iconography, shouldn't it be a fancy rendering of a nice solenoid valve? That is not a suggestion, please don't do that, please don't. The planting tools are equally bad, just some green blobs that largely share the same colors. Why not make the existing tree a center marked circle with a uniform darker olive fill and the planting tool a circle with a brighter uniform green? That clump of 3 plants with different edge graphics and colors is a big miss. The pile of leaves? Really? Oh, poor hardscape tool, what have they done to you? You used to be this pretty little field of pavers surrounded by a border presented in plan view, now you look like an isometric version of a shoe from an old Atari game. Massing model, with your confusing second level line and edge highlight, you look like a spy that has infiltrated us from Autodesk. This brief experience makes me long for the days of the autocad command line and no icons, shed a tear for me. Okay, I'm getting silly now, but laughter is the only productive way to really cope with these icons. I thought people were over reacting when I read this thread, but I get it now. You guys make nice software. Focus on making our tools work and avoid unnecessary changes to our visual language for accessing them. Revisit graphic design 101 and have some candid conversations with your customers who actually understand their industry to find the way forward. This is salvageable, but don't think you have to emulate a smartphone game to impress us. Less is more as they say.

Strange, I'm interested in the solution as well.

The problem remains unresolved and I hope to hear an explanation. Until it is resolved, I developed a work around involving a bit of unnecessary labor that I hope is eliminated. I have to go into the texture folder that Vectorworks creates during C4D export and manually look at each texture to figure out which ones VW decided to modify by adding a black background. I then take a copy of my master texture image used to create the plants, rename it to match the VW exported texture name, and replace the VW generated texture with my master. This automatically loads in Twinmotion and I can then get to work. Sure would be nice to know why VW is doing this in order to eliminate this unnecessary step. Here's a test of the 3D plants I have been working on with the texture replacement work around I just described. It's effective, but takes unnecessary time that the computer should do automatically. I'm really just trying to develop a successful workflow to add fairly realistic 3D representation of my plants into Vectorworks Plant Objects and fulfill the promises of landscape BIM. For this to be effective, the assets need to survive export to other rendering engines and then survive inevitable updates to the VW model exported back to Twinmotion.

You could: 1. make a copy of your nurbs area 2. select the copy and modify->convert to polygons 3. use the polyline paintbucket to create a clean polygon inside the group that was created in step 2 (delete that group now, you are done with it) 4. select the polygon created in step 3, right click, "create objects from shapes" and select landscape area. Not sure if it is the most efficient method, but I hope it helps. I try to avoid drawing with Nurbs for landscape structures that need to be built. It's unlikely anyone building what you design would be able to lay them out effectively and they can be problematic to dimension compared to standard arc and line geometry.

@grant_PD thanks for the reply. I have also gone that route during testing using my source png files with built in transparency within Twinmotion. It's easy enough when it is one or two object, but... I'm hoping the folks at Vectorworks can suggest a method to avoid this since their default plant imageprops do not exhibit this behavior. It just seems so odd that their plants will make the trip with the alpha intact, but my user created ones won't. I hope to understand why and apapt my workflow accordingly because remapping all those plants in Twinmotion is a deal breaker when you have 100 of them to do 😞

@sync1b did you ever figure out how to take care of this? If not, I can give you some pointers.

@jpccrodrigues Nice results! I'm a landscape architect trying to work between VW & Twinmotion. I have been making a bunch of custom imageprops and have been running into problems. Check out this thread and let me know if you have had these problems.

@jpccrodrigues I saw your Twinmotion example here on the forum. Have you run into this problem? Have any solutions?

@Dave Donley I'm at a total loss here. It seems that VW export to C4D is doing something here. In the example below, the plant with the black box is imported from VW->C4D export. The two plants w/o the black box have been retextured in Twinmotion using my original png with transparency. I don't know what goes into the programming of these tools, but it seems like it is a simple switch that is being flipped without my permission 🙂

@Dave Donley Why does Vectorworks add a black background to an image that originally had a transparent background? This seems to be the source of the issue. Here is the source files I used for the imageprop. Note, it has a transparent background and an alpha channel.

@Dave Donley Not sure what you did there, but here is the result.

@Andy Broomell Yes, I agree. Check out my latest frustration if you have a chance. Issues with imageprops, textures, and 3D models using alpha channels potentially.

@Dave Donley Thanks for looking into this. The image prop I created automatically set Glow the same as the VW stock plant. I also turned it off as a test, same result. So Glow does not seem to be a factor. I don't think it has to do with how Twinmotion imports the C4D based upon the test I did with my plants and a default Vectorworks plant. In that example, the VW plant was fine in Twinmotion, but my plants are not. Vectorworks seems to be changing my image file's alpha channel when exporting to C4D format. I'm fine with changing the way I make my plant images and textures, I just need to know the best practices before doing so. Here is another example. I purchased a textured 3D model of a plant in OBJ format. It uses texture files, a base image and an alpha channel image. When directly imported into Twinmotion, it looks fine. When the same model is imported into VW with the same texture references, it too looks fine. I hope to create a design in VW using this and many similar models. However, when I export that same model from VW to C4D format and import it into Twinmotion, welcome back black boxes 😞 I think this further strengthens the argument that something is happening during the Vectorworks export process. Here is the OBJ model loaded into Vectorworks, looks fine. Note the use of alpha channels for the thorns and flowers Here is the same OBJ model directly imported into Twinmotion. Note how the thorns look fine and are using the alpha channel correctly. And here is the OBJ imported into VW earlier and then exported to C4D format. Note how the thorns and flowers now have black where they should be transparent. The only thing I did was export it from VW....

I would like to know how we can print the plant sheets based on the plants found in a drawing. Looking each one up individually and manually generating the PDFs is getting pretty old. Would be nice if there was a hyperlink in the plant list that just pulled those plant info sheets up for us.

I'm curious if there is a workflow for taking lights objects specified and placed in Vectorwroks to other rendering software such as Twin Motion.

@Dave Donley Hey Dave, Here are the attachments you requested. The procedure I used to create that imageprop of the hesperaloe is as follows: 1. start new VW document 2. "Create Image Prop" command 3. use the file imageprop-source.png as the basis for the prop 4. use default settings to create the imageprop and select "Use Mask" option - create mask 5. create mask from "reuse image from another resource - this prop's color 6. Source for mask = alpha channel 7. prop created I created an all new test with a brand new image prop made from scratch using the imageprop-source.png file attached. The other images were generated by Vectorworks during export to C4D. You will note the source file has alpha channel and a clear background while the images created for the same plant has a black background in the exported texture. That seems to be where the problem is. It is also noteworthy that the default Vectorworks plant did not create this black background for the texture file. I have 100s of custom plant images with alpha channels created like this sample which I hope to make custom plant object from. Additionally, I am building a library of around 30 3D modeled plants that use images like this for textures that I hope to use for a custom library. While most of these work fine within the Vectorworks environment, exporting to C4D is where the trouble starts. My goal is to identify how to solve this issue so I can have a productive workflow to TwinMotion using my native and custom Vectorworks plants. Thanks for any insights on how to fix this, including flaws in my process or source images. thanks, Jeff Untitled 2.c4d Untitled 2.vwx

Yeah, I’m past that. I followed the directions in the help menu to a tee in creating the examples on the other thread. I have been using either an Alpha Channel OR a Color to be transparent in these tests illustrated in the other thread. I’m sure it’s something simple, but not outwardly apparent, with the alpha channel or image format. How else can I explain the VW material for a plant behaving correctly, but the images shaders I have created misbehaving so badly. I just wish I knew where to look and what to fix. All this works in every other program I use, except VW 😞

@Andy Broomell No problem. I have had good luck with CG Trader. I had bad luck with Sketchfab and ArtStation so far. I have contacted their respective customer supports and hope to get a refund. Fortunately, the prices paid were small... the time lost is far more valuable to me.

@Travis.Designer I stumbled upon your post while researching a similar need on my part. Here is something I figured out today that may help you with your original problem if it is unresolved. Keep in mind, I am no expert in the "why did this happen", but I am pretty good at running experiments to solve problems 🙂 I have purchased some plants in .obj and .dae formats. Sometimes textures get screwed up based upon how the artist has constructed the model textures. In a particular case I was fighting last night, the artist provided both .obj and .dae formats. I usually use .obj since I can't figure out how to directly import .dae. The OBJ came in and looked like this: The white stuff is a collection of faces that are supposed to be mapped with a thorn that has an alpha channel. Unfortunately, VW only imported a single texture for the cactus flesh and didn't bring in an entry for the thorns. On other models I have imported, sometimes multiple material definitions come in and I just have to reassign via the OIP interface after editing the materials (oftentimes everything comes in black because the image location is lost during translation). So, I tried importing the DAE into Sketchup, this was the result: Note, the solid faces are the backfaces, something you get used to in Sketchup. The front facing faces are mapped correctly with a thorn and transparent background. Not being an expert in Sketchup and not wanting to dig through this model to map the backfaces, I just saved this file as a sketchup file. I save in Sketchup 2017 format for importing into Vectorworks 2019. I then imported the file to Vectorworks, here is the result: Hey, there's that desired look I was after. Front and backfaces showing up with the correct transparency and mapping. All I had to do was this crazy import/export scheme to get it to work without having to dig too deep. When it comes to final touches, exporting the Vectorworks file to C4D and importing the scene into TwinMotion worked great as well, hurray! One final tip, be careful when buying plant collections with multiple plants in a single file. They oftentimes import right ontop of each other without the ability to separate them. Also, watch out for "gamer plants" where they include multiple LODs in a single file for a single plant. I made those mistakes yesterday and had to ask the artists to separate out the details I needed. It ended up taking a lot of communication and wasted time to get to where I needed to be. Some artists are quick and helpful, others must be teenagers living in their parents' basement and can't be bothered to clean up their sloppy work. There are so many subtle differences in the softwares and techniques used to make plants, crazy stuff can happen. Once you find a few artists that are professional and good modelers, keep their contact information and develop a good working relationship as they will help you work thru these issues and usually have easy solutions... this could save you lots of frustration in the future. Anyhow, hope it helps someone here. I killed far too many hours and brain cells before I was able to get this workflow.

still looking for some help...

looking for help still...

so I did yet another experiment... I compared the textures exported by VW to C4D, looking at both the composite alpha and background alpha channels. In the image I prepared with a transparent background, the composite and background alpha channels both indicate the cutout for a plant. When I look at the same image generated by VW upon C4D export, the same alpha channels appear totally white, thereby generating the black boxes seen. In the example below, I opened up the exported image for its texture, added the mask back in, resaved the PNG, and then reloaded the TwinMotion scene. Magically, that plant now works (the other two plants with the black boxes are using different textures even though they look identical. I think this gives a little weight to my theory that VW is doing something strange when exporting the textures. That, or my process for creating images is flawed. So here is my workflow for creating plant images. take a photo of a real plant with my camera. start with a blank psd file with a transparent background paste in the photo I took remove the unwanted pixles by erasing them, revealing the transparent backgound save the psd and export a png file with its built in alpha channel create an image prop in vw using the png file I just saved, using the mask from Alpha option. export the model to C4D import the C4D file into TwinMotion The textures VW exports does not look like my source png files used to create the imageprop. Confusion reigns.

Thanks for the idea. I have been using png with no background and an alpha channel Here is a test with using the transparent color method, same result 😞 This is driving me mad... Everything works as expected in vw. I attached my test file below. Imported into Twin Motion via C4D.... The image props I made in VW have issues, the VW plant does not. transparency test.vwx