Jeff Prince
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Posts posted by Jeff Prince
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45 minutes ago, MartinFahrer said:
True but if clients are looking at the software we use and think it's less than autocad, then the job will go to the person who is perceived to have the more professional program. It is about efficiency true but also about perception. Throwing the bathwater out for 1/3 at the most of the users is a mistake.
That might be a valid concern for some I suppose. Maybe they need better clients 🙂
My clients hire me for my expertise and the final product, not the tools I use to get there.
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Thanks for the icons, they look great!
I gave it my ghost treatment that I use for folders on my desktop.
Wish I knew hot to get rid of those pesky alias arrow like the one on my Twinmotion icon.
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40 minutes ago, DBrown said:
The UI needs to improve, but there are more pressing issues, that's my humble opinion...
True.
If we don't have the tools to do our work in an efficient and profitable way, it doesn't matter how pretty the program looks.
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@Hanna N glad it worked for you 🙂 That used to drive me crazy when I was learning.
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I can't open it, was created in the student version 😞
Make sure your plant is inserted on a class that is turned on.
Make sure the plant is on a design layer that is visible.
On your layer options, make sure it is set to "show, snap, modify others"
Those are the big 3 when it comes to seeming invisible stuff.
There might be other object settings you have set that come into play, but I bet it is one of those.
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the vectorworks file, not a screen shot 🙂
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post the file.
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1 hour ago, E|FA said:
Everything the VW developers need to read from this thread, courtesy of @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 🙂
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@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.
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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.
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Strange, I'm interested in the solution as well.
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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.
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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.
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@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 😞
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@sync1b did you ever figure out how to take care of this? If not, I can give you some pointers.
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@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.
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@jpccrodrigues I saw your Twinmotion example here on the forum. Have you run into this problem? Have any solutions?
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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 🙂
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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.
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Yes, I agree. Check out my latest frustration if you have a chance.
Issues with imageprops, textures, and 3D models using alpha channels potentially.
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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....
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On 5/29/2020 at 6:29 PM, JLO said:
So I Figured out a "workaround". If you go to File>Print and print as a PDF, that works. I guess you could batch print all of the plants that you wanted if you made a plant catalog. Only other thing is that it does not look at the plants you have in the drawing. You have to search for each plant or pull up/ create a catalog.
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.
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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.
Custom Icons for 2019 and 2020
in General Discussion
Posted
@MAD-LD Thanks for the tip! Turns out I dragged an alias over instead of the main program as you noted.
I might have to check out that icon workflow you have sometime, the results are very good.
I just copy/pasted a few PNGs I hacked together one day in an effort to keep those blue folders from cluttering up things 🙂