Dave Donley

Well if it helps, my operating framework now and into the next releases is to assume Maxon CineRender is the built-in render engine for Vectorworks. Even if the company structure changes again (which I haven't heard) there would be agreements that we can use the engine continuing for years without switching to something else. So stability is the word of the day. Having the company owned 100% clarifies to us that we can rely on this engine for our needs.

Hello lgoodkind: Try using the Physical Sky background and putting a Heliodon in the drawing (the Heliodon is in the Visualization tool set). When they are both in the scene the sky will respond to the lat-long and time of day settings in the Heliodon. The sky color and sun light will change based on the heliodon too. The sky dome included I think pre-dates our support of the Physical Sky background. These were created by using the same physical sky feature in CINEMA 4D and exporting the background so Vectorworks could use it. Now you have dynamic control with the Physical Sky background. In order to use Panoramic Image backgrounds you need a source of these image files. Many 3D content companies distribute high dynamic range sky images for rendering purposes, but it is up to the user to find them. Try Googling "free hdri sky" to get some samples. The upside is that the clouds may look more realistic than the simulated Physical Sky ones. The downside is that the sky image is fixed. Both Physical Sky and Panoramic Image backgrounds can be shown in the rendering as a background, as a light source when Indirect Lighting is used, and/or a source for environment reflections like in the windows of buildings or water or metals. Through Renderworks Styles you can have a plain white background but still show a sky relfecting in the windows, by adjusting these settings in the Renderworks Style dialog. Hope this helps.

Hello Fiona: There is a VBvisual Plant tool in the Visualization tool palette that places low-poly textured plants in the drawing. You can buy more VBvisual plants and add them to that tool. Or like you have tried, importing Sketchup models into VW should work fine as well. If you need to simplify the imported models you can try using the Modify->Simplify Mesh command on the selected imported object.

Hello mattryan: Is that an OpenGL rendering or a Renderworks rendering? For OpenGL and the Bricks shader you will see copies of the thumbnail shown in the Resource Manager, because Renderworks render the Bricks shader and OpenGL can only show an approximation of it. If that's not it is may be aliasing artifacts but I doubt that.

Hi David S: For your interior rendering your glass looks milky. If that's what you want that's fine, but if you set the texture's color to black (it might be Obj Attribute which is the default) (or a really dark blue) then the glass will look more clear. Jim has a video all about glass maybe he can post that @JimW

Thank you!

Hello Pg: Can you attach the VWX file here?

Hello Mike: Can you attach the VWX file so we can create a bug for this? Thanks!

Hello RJR: Vectorworks 2018 has a new Cloth shader in the Edit Texture (Reflectivity) dialog. It can do a pattern just like that. There are several default textures that use the Cloth shader, take a look in the default textures for a starting point. You should just have to adjust the scale and colors.

Hello Ethan: That is a good question, go to cloud.vectorworks.net and next to the .vgx file there should be a chain link icon. Click that to get the link address later.

Web View was updated yesterday to go along with the Vectorworks 2018 SP3 release. Please notice these new features: 1. Directional light and shadows, click on the settings button and you can drag the sun around in the control (red dot) 2. Interactive Clip Cube - Click this button to clip the model interactively ala Clip Cube in Vectorworks 3. Immersive VR support on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Daydream browsers 4. Performance improvements Enjoy!

Aha thanks that worked for me too!

Hi _c_: The link above ^ is broken.

Heliodon and Physical Sky will change color automatically with time of day, for natural lighting. All light object light colors can be set to Kelvin color temperature in the Obj Info palette. I believe some of the lighting objects in the symbol libraries have color set using Kelvin already.

Make sure your video drivers are the latest (from NVIDIA or AMD). Oftentimes weird video issues are due to stale video drivers.