Dave Donley

@grant_PD This looks like a bug if all the values for background, lighting, shaded options are the same between the design layer and viewport. Can you DM me the file so we can investigate it? I see some of the environment reflections on the walls in the VP. Object reflections are not showing on the floor in the VP.

@High_Viz Thanks for the details and sorry for the lack of info from me on this. The only AVX example I had before was when users would bypass Apple's installers to install macOS on unsupported Macs that were missing AVX. I will massage this part of the system requirements moving forward to mention your example as well: "Renderworks requires AVX support on AMD and Intel CPUs. Renderworks will not work on older Intel Macs that are missing AVX support, even if macOS 11 is installed on them by bypassing official Apple installers."

The K4200 began in 2014, also Renderworks requires AVX support on the processor and maybe this one doesn't have AVX support? Also it requires 64-bit OS. I haven't heard of these plugins not loading before like this. It means there is something missing from the system that these plugins rely on. We have had more issues when Cineware is trying to load or Redshift is being used, related to system requirements. I haven't heard of these plugins not loading before, until now. Maxon's requirements for Cineware 2023 (which is what Vectorworks 2024 uses) are here. Maybe the Windows 10 build version needs to be newer than what is on your computer. https://www.maxon.net/en/requirements/cinema-4d-2023-requirements

Hello @ratherfishing could you send me a file that shows this in a DM?

Shaded render mode limits image resolutions to 2k pixel resolution. Renderworks and Redshift should show full resolution.

Hello @Kevin K This is on the public roadmap as "in development". This is possible because Cineware is built-in to Vectorworks, and not a separate application anymore. We are working with Maxon to get this to you as soon as possible. EDIT: Redshift RT is a different Maxon technology still in beta I believe. Redshift IPR is a production-ready technology. https://www.vectorworks.net/en-US/public-roadmap?url=redshift-in-design-layers

I like the 3D plants and I want to try turning on some lit fog. 🙂

@Kevin K I would like the file please, thanks!

I agree with @EAlexander without much work you can try turning up the ambient light and turning on ambient occlusion to darken areas where surfaces meet.

Hello @line-weight and others: We are changing some of the settings we use for Redshift renderings, that will improve performance in a future update. The current Redshift performance in Vectorworks is often slower than the Renderworks render modes that are not using Redshift. This will change. Maxon is committed to Redshift as its built-in rendering for C4D, and we are committed to Redshift as the built-in presentation rendering for Vectorworks. This is a transition, where over time it will be more obvious that Redshift is the best choice for final rendering quality and speed. We are updating both Cineware and Redshift to the latest versions available to us for each Vectorworks release. This helps you get compatibility with Sonoma and M3 sooner. We have work to do in Redshift performance, texture data and UI, and lighting consistency of data and results between the various render modes. And landscape rendering workflows and results too as you mention here. Thanks for the information!

Hello @Elias B try going to NVIDIA's site and update your video drivers. This sounds like an issue with the drivers.

The texture thumbnail looking like that means that Cineware did not launch properly. It either timed out launching, or is missing a system component. This can happen if you copy Vectorworks to a new machine without running the installer, which installs required software components in the system. Or, on first launch, Cineware may take an unusual amount of time, and the second launch should be faster and successful. Or, if you recently updated the OS significantly (like going to a new major version); re-running the installer should help.

One detail that may be helpful for external renderer workflow would be to use referenced image objects. When you import an image into Vectorworks you can have it be done as a reference. Thereafter if you were to update the same image in the same location you would then just update the reference.

Vectorworks 2024 lifts this limitation, in Shaded render mode lit fog can show shadowed fog correctly.

https://enscape3d.com/enscape-for-mac/?utm_campaign=Enscape-Release-2023-h2-MacOS&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter2404&utm_source=hs_email Enscape for macOS is out now, compatible with Vectorworks 2023 SP6 and Vectorworks 2024.

We are using the Altus denoising, which works on all hardware. We will look into detecting that an NVIDIA card is being used and set to Optix on that. More info about Redshift's denoising here: https://help.maxon.net/r3d/katana/en-us/Content/html/Denoising.html

Regarding the Cineware launch times, on macOS the first time after an install the OS will check security on all the files in the Cineware folder. The "Loading Cineware" phase of launching will take awhile because there are many files to check, on my M1 Max 32GB it takes about 15-20 seconds. This happens for each new install location. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc launches should be much faster for the "Loading Cineware" step; for me 3-5 seconds. If you are seeing it always slow that is unexpected.

Yes the new ways are to use AI for upsampling/denoising. And some GPU-accelerated ones are very fast. AI image generation has a direct relationship to denoising. AI image generation is trained by running from a supplied image and adding noise to it to go to a noisy image, the evaluation of the trained model runs this in reverse to go from noise to something like a real image. Neat stuff. https://learnopencv.com/denoising-diffusion-probabilistic-models/

I agree I would turn off denoising. But Luis here and I disagree on use of denoising. I think the result is not noticeable enough to justify the 2x slower rendering. I don't mind the look of grain in the image. Redshift really doesn't like lights that are set to not cast shadows. So avoid that, lights should be set to cast shadows. Might turn down sampling quality to medium if you are trying to save time, but denoising will be the biggest speed improvement. To really see what the various light contributions are, set ambient to zero and turn off indirect lighting and render that. I often see models where almost nothing is coming from the lights and ambient is patching up the scene making it look flat.

@Mark Aceto I also don't understand how the lens is getting a texture in this file. The render pane says texture is set to None. I don't see any face overrides, but the object still acts as if it has the lens glow texture assigned. Turning ambient up and down has no effect on the lens geometry. I converted to group and ungrouped until I go to the generic solid lens.

I don't see FBX on our roadmap for import. We prefer open standards; I would imagine making the glTF support more official in a user-facing way might be something next.

@MGuilfoile 2024 is indeed very awesome, but I am a biased source 🙂

The latest fixes for USDZ import were in SP6. @MGuilfoile try SP6 or SP7 this is probably fixed there, can't tell without the file.

Haven't caught up with this energetic thread fully yet. Regarding the choice of the term "texture" instead of "material", when these were first added I tried to call them materials but was told by an experienced and well-respected architect the term "material" means something else to architects and something perhaps more important than the use for mere rendering. Hence using the term texture for this. In the source code these objects and dialog boxes were called "materialXXX" for many years despite the UI term being "texture". In rendering it really doesn't matter all that much, use of the term texture is not way incorrect despite the way the industry has coalesced around material as a standard term in the software, in the time since textures were added to MiniCad. I really like how Substance used that term, it's cool IMO. Now Vectorworks does have Materials and that term is fully occupied, and all the uses of "material" in the source code that previously meant "texture" were renamed. I like some of the suggestions, and you can know this thread is being read by responsible parties who can make these changes if that is decided.

Hello all: This is a known bug and is being investigated by Laubwerk. As far as I am aware, it happens only when plants are selected and is fixed when they are deselected and the view changes, it may be that deselecting the plants makes the scene show properly.