Dave Donley

Hello Ian, is this a Piranesi question or an export from VW to Piranesi question?

Hi again Glen: I forgot one. Set the cell amplitude to 0 also. The only amplitude that should have a value is the fold amplitude. Set the texture size to something like 4". HTH,

You can just create an area light, turn the Show Geometry checkbox on, and texture the area light, but area lights take a much longer time to render.

Hello JLS5150: Is the texture created from an image with a width >4096 pixels? If so there is a width limitation for image-based textures that may be causing the behavior you describe. The workaround is to use an image <4096 pixels wide or use VW 2008. HTH,

Hello Downtown: You might put spot lights behind the screens as Benson says, using an image transparency shader will project the image on the screen, like a slide projector. You might also use colored spot lights with smooth or sharp distance falloffs, with cast shadows turned off, so that the light goes unimpeded through the screens and lights up the floor etc. Or set the screen textures to not cast shadows. You might get a lot of stripey shadows rather than a smooth glow if the screen is set to cast shadows. BTW, the translucency reflectivity shader will get brighter if a light is shining behind it, you might try that shader too. It requires shadows to be cast though. I have been trying a combination of image color, translucent reflectivity, and color filter transparency to accomplish something like lit window curtains, you might also try that combination. The color filter transparency color usually has to be desaturated to work well. Cast shadows has to be on for this to work too. HTH,

Hello ghunter: Try the Wrapped Leather bump shader. Set the Curve and Rough Amplitudes to zero. The fold amplitude is what you want, it produces a nice slow wave on the surface. Good for terrain as well. HTH,

Hello Kirk: 12.5 and previous versions had a width limit to image-based textures of 4096 pixels. OpenGL was slightly immune to this limitation. You can export the images out to a photo-editing program and re-scale them to less than 4000 pixels by right-clicking on the texture resource in the Resource Browser and choosing "Extract Images...". HTH,

Hello Kirk: Which version are you running?

Hello: Artistic RW is having trouble with rendering the sills as NURBS surfaces. The workaround for this problem is to either turn off the sills or not use ArtRW mode to do the rendering. Final Quality RW will also show this problem because it renders with NURBS. There is a workaround for regular RW modes though because you can use Custom RW mode and turn off NURBS, in the Geometry pane of the Custom RW Options dialog. There isn't a workaround for ArtRW because you can't turn off its use of NURBS surfaces. To get a look similar to ArtRW Cartoon you can create a viewport with CustomRW as the background render mode (with Use NURBS turned off) and Hidden Line as the foreground render mode. I've noticed that if I remove the plug-in window from the wall, create a symbol from it, then re-insert the symbol that the sill renders correctly. It might work for you to convert the plug-in windows to symbols and insert them that way. There is a more involved workaround as well: Create a new texture resource that uses the Brick bump shader (don't change anything but the bump shader). Edit the Brick bump shader and set the Amplitude and Brick Amplitude fields to zero. Set the plug-in window's texture to this bricks bump texture. Then edit the plug-in window's Settings and set the Parts->Sill->Stool Lip field to zero. The horizontal plane should disappear from the rendering. We will try to fix this for some future release. Sorry for the trouble.

Hello Jhaceun: The OpenGL render mode will show interactive rendering with the flyover tool if the model renders fast enough to be interactive. The VW Preferences->3D->3D Rotation preference sets the threshold. Also make sure the Retain Rendering Model preference (in the same location) is not set to "Never" - this would disable interactive rendering during flyover. OpenGL can show edges like hidden line, enabled in the View->Rendering->OpenGL Options. These will be shown during flyover if they can be rendered fast enough to be interactive.

Hello ejpen: If you edit the batch job and look at the image export optios for the job, are the pixel values very large or negative? What happens if you re-create the batch job from scratch using ArtRW mode? Also like Katie said, can you render the same layer using ArtRW outside of a batch render? Some ArtRW modes generate edges like hidden line rendering, which can take more memory than a regular rendering like Final Quality RW mode. HTH,

Hello Scupper: Can you post an image of what you're seeing? Firstly, does the image prop object have a solid fill - it's not showing as just a wireframe 3D polygon is it?

Hi Petri: Can you send me a file?

Hello again James: I have seen this with another file once, but the reason the plant image props weren't rendering was because the texture resources for the props were not in the file. If you convert one of the bad ones to a group then look at the 3D polygon to see what texture is assigned, does that look OK?

Hello domer1322: Can you attach an image of this to your post?

Hello jdldesign: Is it certain image prop symbols that are not rendering, or is it more random which ones show and which do not? Do they have a solid fill? If they show as a red outline in a RenderWorks mode then they are set to have no fill - maybe the ones that aren't rendering are set to no fill? HTH,

Hello jcooper: Raytracing in RW modes and final gather make use of all cores. Radiosity processing and non-raytraced render modes don't. Some operations cannot be easily multi-threaded because some data is dependent on other data and so you can't split up the processing into independent parts easily. The OS will limit how much RAM VW can utilize. On the Mac the memory used will go up to about 2.5GB before it will start reporting that it ran out of memory. On Windows you are limited to about 1.5GB. It doesn't matter how much real RAM you have - the OSes reserve some memory out of the application's area that cannot be used by VW. You can use all 4GB spread out over multiple applications, though. HTH,

Done!

Hello again timpower: I think it's great that you have a solution that is working for you. I just think it's annoying to post a question, not wait for a response from the other forum members, then start a new thread asking the question again 1/2 hour later. Katie, maybe we could use a third-party renderers section to the forum?

Download the attached file. It includes three HDRI backgrounds and instructions on how you can generate your own gradient sky backgrounds. Edit: Fixed overbrightness and added V12 .mcd file. Note that HDRI lighting is rendered dozens of times faster in 2008 on multi-core machines than version 12 did. HTH,

http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com/ Register for free and try downloading some of these materials. Most involve color, reflectivity, transparency mask, and bump image files that can be imported into VW/RW for image color, image reflectivity, mask transparency, and image bump shaders. Most are very nice quality images! HTH,

Hello timpower: As Katie said on your other thread about this question, contact Maxon about the VW->C4D plugin. NNA does not produce this plugin, Maxon does. HTH,

Katie is right up to 2008. The pixel width limit should no longer exist in 2008.

This limit no longer exists in 2008. chrisskeens, are you running version 12 or 2008? If 12 then yes the image needs to be below 4096 pixels wide. HTH,

This is a bug. Mike is right about the open polylines causing the problem. The workaround is to use Custom RenderWorks mode with Use NURBS turned off. This bug is fixed for the next maintenance release.