Bart Rammeloo

September 21, 2003

this exists already: opens 4, 5 or 6 and saves as 7. 7 can be opened in 10.

September 21, 2003

Yes Mike, it works on all sides. Although I did use metric values, but that shouldn't change anything.

September 18, 2003

Hello Mike,

I just went through the tutorial, and I didn't encounter a single problem - and that's with version 10.1 ...

September 18, 2003

Hi Mike,

Which tutorial is that? Is it online? or can only find it in the manual?

Cheers,

BaRa

September 17, 2003

try updating from other software ... and then reconsider what "expensive" means ... [Wink]

September 13, 2003

Thanks for the kind replies.

About the trees and plants: most of them come from libraries that can be bought at the Maxon online shop. In this render, there's only one XFrog library tree (last image, bottom left). The other trees and plants come from the VBvisual series.

Making a scene like this one - once you made all the design decissions - doesn't take long. It's really a matter of drag and drop: choose the object from the library, drop it in the scene, and position it correctly. The only thing that took some time to configure were the hedges.

You can of course make your own trees, but my computer is too slow to make it feasable. Luckily it won't be too long before our G5's arrive.

Although my computer is only a P3 1.2 GHz, rendering a scene took around 5 minutes ... with radiosity.

Kurt: the prices for C4D, the VW-C4D plugin and Xfrog can be found at the Maxonshop: www.maxonshop.com. I am flattered you would even consider me for doing renderings, but I am afraid that, even if I would find the time to do them, I still would not be allowed to. I work for a software distributor in the Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxemburg), and my contract doesn't allow me to work for others. As an extra, all of my licences are NFR - not for resale. Which means that none of my applications can be used for commercial purposes. But it's very kind of you to ask.

Kind regards,

BaRa

September 11, 2003

Originally, this thread focused on the limited vegatation rendering in VW. The author of the original post wondered whether he should switch to C4D to do this. I came accross a couple of renders on my HD, so I decided to post a couple of teasers ... basic geometry made in VW, finished in C4D (added trees, plants, furniture and materials). And rendered with radiosity, of course (skydome and distant light)

Cheers,

BaRa

September 11, 2003

Hi Paolo,

(a) place a sky-object in your scene

(b) make a new material, and activate only the luminance channel.

(d) apply that material to your sky-object.

(e) activate radiosity in your render settings and render your image. Done.

You can download an example here

Cheers,

BaRa

P.S.: if you want to know more about C4D, there's an Italian C4D user forum at www.c4dzone.com and at www.c4dhotline.it

September 10, 2003

quote:

Originally posted by propstuff:

In 10.1 I've had it work on an object, and a duplicate, but not on a third identical duplicate. How does that work??

I honestly haven't got a clue what you're talking about. I have none of the described problems. Running VW 10.1.0 on win2000 with a P3 1.2 GHz and 512MB ram, so it's not the fastest machine on the face on the earth. So if it's running fine on my machine, but not on yours, then it's perhaps a configuration problem? Just guessing, of course.

Cheers,

BaRa

[ 09-10-2003, 05:31 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

September 9, 2003

thumbs up for biplab! He (and others) did a great job on the new 3D possibilities. This will make it significantly easier to do solid modeling.

Cheers,

BaRa

September 4, 2003

Hello Cloudhidden,

In the last issue of 3DWorld magazine (number 42), you will find a very good (and short) introduction to NURBS terminology. If they sell it in your neighbourhood, I suggest you get a copy [smile]

Cheers,

BaRa

September 3, 2003

message removed due to redundancy

[ 09-03-2003, 08:29 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 29, 2003

This could actually work if VW used the processing power of today's graphic cards - like so many other applications.

August 28, 2003

quote:

Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

I checked out the VBVisuals.com catalog and they have 15 different grass textures! Too bad they do not work in Vectorworks.

You can still use their textures - they're on the CD as plain bitmaps as well.

August 26, 2003

About the conversion to Mesh: I just learned from Biplab (moderator) that this command doesn't support more than 3000 control points, which is why I couln't export the lamp model mentioned before. If you want to export complex NURBS geometry to C4D you can either (1) convert the geometry to separate NURBS surfaces, and convert them one by one or in different groups to meshes, or (2) convert it to 3D polygons. I'll be posting an update to the lamp model tutorial that covers exporting to C4D and making a final visual.

Cheers,

BaRa

August 25, 2003

There are currently only 2 routes: either you do your presentation IN VW, using RenderWorks. Or you export your data to another software solution.

The former is rather limited. It's not a matter of good vs. bad, it's only a matter of fitting your needs or not. If RenderMan doesn't fit your needs, you should consider the latter: using a second (third, fourth, ...) application for presentational purposes. There are lots of applications that can do the trick, but I think you can organize them in 2 types: those who maintain your NURBS geometry, and those who don't.

If you want to maintain your NURBS surfaces, you've got the following applications: Maya (Alias), 3DMax (Discreet), XSI (SoftImage), Universe (Electric Image), Alias Image Studio (Alias). There are others, without a doubt, but I think I mentioned the most important ones.

The ones I can advise are Alias Image Studio and Universe. They're not too expensive, and they produce very good results. Max and Maya are very good as well, but rather expensive and difficult to master. XSI is very expensive.

The downside of this route is that, once you completed a scene in your visualization application, updating it by using modified VectorWorks geometry can be a hassle. A second problem is that IGES (the file format you will have to use to maintain your geometry) doesn't support your object hierarchy: if you used classes or layers in VectorWorks to differentiate between materials or object types, you will not get separated pieces of geometry in your visualization package.

If maintaining your NURBS geometry is not that important to you, you can use whatever application you want, as long as it reads DXF and produces results you like. There are, however, two exceptions: Artlantis and Cinema 4D. Both applications make use of a plugin, which adds one very important thing to the DXF functionality: the abbility to update your geometry.

In both cases - DXF or plugin - your geometry will be tesselated. In some applications you will be able to "clean" your tesselated geometry. This is for instance the case in Cinema 4D or LightWave. Artlantis will not offer you this possibility, nor will Strata Studio Pro (or whatever it is called nowadays) and a couple of other applications.

In my opinion, if you take the tesselation for granted, you can choose between two professional applications: Cinema 4D and Lightwave. Cinema 4D has a modular system, which gives you a price advantage over LightWave. And Cinema 4D has a plugin, which allows geometry update.

In the end, it all depends on the complexity of your model. If you have tons of fillets and bevels, you will run into problems with tesselated geometry - especially at corners. You can solve this by removing unwanted edges and edge breaks, but this takes time (and experience). In that case I would simply sacrifice the advantage of the plugin and use an IGES-enabled application.

Unfortunately, the world keeps on spinning. In this specific case, this means that the C4D plugin will continue to be improved. The current version is the first version, and I know that Maxon is examining lots of different options (I know because I'm one of their betatesters), but they have not yet been implemented.

You are the one who has to make a choice, but I know that in my specific case, C4D fits my needs. The VectorWorks objects on my website can be exported to C4D without too much tesselation issues. You have to construct your geometry carefully, and have to use a couple of tricks from time to time, but this doesn't consume too much of my time.

I hope this helps a bit [smile]

Kind regards,

BaRa

P.S.: about the trees and the grass in C4D: there's a fantastic (free) plugin that can make real-life grass geometry. And when it comes to trees, you can either use library elements (take a look at www.vbvisual.com) or use a dedicated application like Tree or XFrog. I personally prefer the library solutions: they're well detailed and refined and not too expensive.

[ 08-25-2003, 06:21 PM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 25, 2003

This doesn't "solve" your problem, but Cinema 4D has tubular light sources, as well as area lights, and a couple of other types.

Cheers,

BaRa

August 25, 2003

It depends on the model, of course, but there are 2 usefull tools: You can make 2D and 3D sections of models, and you can use the Contours tool. Personnaly I prefer the Contours tool, but that's a matter of taste, I guess.

Cheers,

BaRa

August 22, 2003

If those trees are symbols, you should either convert the symbol to a group and rescale the group, or edit the symbol and scale the geometry while you're in edit mode.

Cheers,

BaRa

August 21, 2003

Did I read "in the future"? [smile]

Hehe, Biplab is making unofficial statements about future possibilities. Guess it's rumor time [Wink]

Thanks for the tip!

Kind regards,

BaRa

[ 08-21-2003, 09:05 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 20, 2003

Thanks for the suggestion, Biplab. I didn't know that (or never tried). But this is really limited, because you cannot choose WHERE you want to split the surface: you can only use the isoparms that VW shows, and you are not able to "add" your own isoparms (or make them visible).

And B.T.W.: the result of this operation is not 4 separate surfaces with new CV's (rebuilt surfaces), but 4 clipped surfaces - which means you have a lot of CV's OUTSIDE of the surface boundaries. When you use the detach-command in Maya, it gives you 2 rebuilt surfaces, which is far more handy when you're modeling.

Thanks for replying [smile]

Kind regards,

BaRa

[ 08-20-2003, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 19, 2003

Hi all,

I was wondering if VectorWorks has (or will have) a tool which would allow me to select an isoparm on a surface, and to use it to add CV's to the surface. Complementary, I'm looking for a tool with which I can select an isoparm and use it to split the surface. I'm not talking about clipping the surface, which only hides part of the geometry. I'm really talking about making two different surfaces out of one.

In addition, it would be handy if we could define the amount of isoparms shown. Right now, it's VW who takes care of this, but very often VW doesn't show enough isoparms to get a good indication of how the surface "flows".

Thanks in advance and kind regards,

BaRa

[ 08-19-2003, 05:40 AM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 18, 2003

Thanks Petri, you kinda confirmed what I suspected. Pitty though that there's no option to use other interpolation types. I know this would have nothing to do with the real site situation, but it would make nicer 3D-models [smile]

Cheers,

BaRa

August 17, 2003

Perhaps a strange question, but I have the impression that VW interpolates in a rather linear way between 3D loci. Is this the case, or is it reality a cubic interpolation type? The reason I ask this, is because, when I use a higher polycount, this doesn't result in curving slopes between 3D-loci, while I would expect to have at least some kind of more visible smoothing effect between sampling points? Can anyone clarify?

Thanks in advance. Kind regards,

BaRa.

[ 08-17-2003, 06:54 PM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

August 17, 2003

quote:

Originally posted by Cloud Hidden:

All of my models are NURBS-heavy. Without NURBS, I would not have bought VW. Seems like that will help make my decision...

VectorWorks can export to IGES, and you may or may not know that, but Maya is capable of reading IGES. It's not the most straightforward rendering solution (far from it), but it won't be a problem to keep your model the way you modeled it.

Another solution would be Alias Image Studio, which costs less than Maya (it's about 60% of the Maya Complete price), but will only allow you to render out your image (or make an animation). It reads IGES.

Kind regards,

BaRa

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