propstuff
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Posts posted by propstuff
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Hello Ion,
I'm not an architect (and I don't know what a KallWall system is), and I have to say I'm having my own problems with RW and translucency at the moment -see my post on shadows and solid objects:-( , but I've been using translucent textures to represent perforated stainless recently with some similar issues to solve.
Have you tried applying a darker object attribute colour to the wall, turning up the transparency a bit to compensate for the darker shade and the light source up a bit to get it to penetrate the darker colour?
good luck
N.
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It seems a little unfair to compare to compare VW worksheets with Excel. Apart from being, by all accounts, an excelent piece of software (and by some accounts the only piece of decent software ever written by MS :-)), It's a specific, dedicated spreadsheet app and will always be "better" than an ancilliary function of a different software app.
By way of comparison, I suspect Excel's handling of 3D geometry and precision drafting is rather poor. :-0
(Apart from the necessity to purchase another, different application), saving the development effort on the worksheets and spending it on linkability might be money well spent????
Do users WANT to work spreadsheets INSIDE VW, or would they be happy to buy another product and gain more functionality?
Yes I know; the answer is they really want ALL of the functions of Excel INSIDE VW ;-))
Just my 2c
N.
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Hi Katie,
The file of this part of the job is nearly 9Mb and I'm on a dial-up :-(
I'll try to find something to compress it with.
On the attached image you can (hopefully) see what I mean.
The frame of the speaker is showing as a shadow on this side of the (solid) cone.
N??
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Hello, Tech,
I need to send out the rendering for this project and I can't print it how it is.
Is there any reason why I should be able to see through a solid object? Have I done something silly?
Is this a known issue?
N.
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Hi,
I installed the 10.1.2 update and tried the file again.
No probem at all, with all the default settings.
Problem solved. (?!)
:-)
cheers,
N.
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Greetings,
I had to send a simple laser cutting profile to someone on ACAD. It was one layer, one polyline (19 verticies), 36Kb file.
Exporting as a DXF and accepting the default settings resulted in the Spinning Beachball of Death; after 10-15 minutes I force quit VW and tried again.
This has happened on quite a number of occasions, but never with such a simple object. Conversly, I've successfully exported 8 and 10 Mb objects of fairly complex solid geometry. Huuh?
Can anyone shed some light on this?
Hanging VW with one polyine isn't right.
N.
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Greetings,
I have an object which contains a shelled cone with a thickness of 1mm. It is filled with a solid colour and rendered with a texture whose transparency is set to "none" and colour is "object attribute".
When rendered in either of the shadow casting modes and viewed from one side, lights on the OTHER side of the cone from me are casting visible shadows of other components on to the cone as if it were transcucent.
I can't do a final rendering like this.
How can this be fixed, or is it a Bug??
N
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Yes Kristen,I have tried it.
I downloaded the Demo and had a go for an hour or two. Like 90% of all computer manuals, the instructions were somewhat oblique, -but not nearly as bad as some ;-)
Making an animation is MUCH simpler than doing it in VW. The latter requires that you save "instances" along the animation path as Saved Sheets, and then manually stitch them together in a time-line, then save the result.
In AW, making the instances is done with Julian's Camera Tool, and the stringing together is done automaticaly with his programming.
It still took some time to get the hang of making a smooth animation, -and nutting out how the program works, but after that, the time saving is considerable.
It's well worth giving the Demo a run if you need, or can use animations.
Cheers,
N.
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BipLab,
I replied to your message, do you still want me to send it??
Also, When editing the lofts, sometimes VW gets stuck in Edit Group mode and neither of the commands to return to the top level (or even up one) will work.
Closing the file is the only way out.
N.
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Hmmm, something happened with the post there.
the error message I got was: "Identifier not declared"
Could you tell me what I SHOULD be doing :-O
cheers,
N
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Hi Katerina,
Thankyou for your work (and by the look of Vector depot- your generosity)
However, for the sake of Vectorscript Ludites like my self; how do I go about using it?? The Manual is as usual, light on for information ;-)
I put your script into the Plug-ins folder, but then I didn't know what to do next....
Then -in a spirit of enthusiastic ignorance- I opened your script in Text Edit, copied the contents and pasted it into a new script pallette through the Resource browser.
When I double clicked the new script I got the following error message
Line #1: MCVSM Extend to
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PRetondo, I changed the lights in my test from spots into directional, and still got "fuzzy" edges (but not as nice)
The problem seemed to be getting them the right distance to blur, but not to disintegrate into mush (the "shadow mapping size" problem)
If I understand Dave's comments, the problem is partly that the light "source" is small in relation to the size of the building (hence the shadow map is too large/ coarse to read close detail on the building)
I haven't tried this, but if you make an array (of multiples of the same directional light) which is large in comparison to your building (the photographic Soft Box thing) it might change the shadow mapping detail (???)
Of course; we could just use ray-tracing and adjust the blurr directly with the "Shadow edge fuzzy" preference control in RW 10.5
;-))
cheers,
N.
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Thanks Katie,
Another example from yesterday;
I was preparing a profile of a curvy strip of steel to be sent to the lazer cutters.
I made the curved line as a polyline; it had 5 verticies. In order to make it into a parrallel "strip" I used the Offset by Distance tool with the intention of "capping" the ends and Composing it into a whole.
The resulting parrallel line had 663 Verticies! Thats a few too many to be practical, and the Smoothing command made no impact on them at all -just moved them around.
Eventually I had to place Loci offset along my original line and manually fit a new polyline to them to get my parrallel strip. V time consuming.
Do you have any suggestions for simplifying polyline verticies?
cheers,
N.
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I've had some time to experiment more with the 3D PP tools recently, and the Loft tool is the latest problem child.
Attempting to loft a form from 6 profiles and a 3D locus,(basically a "wiggly" cone) worked.......sometimes.
E.G.; I'd try it, get a result I didn't like, attempt to edit it, wreck it, delete the loft and go back to the profiles to have another go.
After one or two lofts, the loft command would go through the process, momentarily display the loft, then DING; the loft failed (disappeared).
Going through the rigmarole of closing the file and reopening it, quitting VW and restarting, and even opening a new file and pasting in the profiles worked......sometimes, ....but about 2-3 lofts was the limit before it failed again.
It seems to me that something is wrong here. Having to restart the program (or the computer) after 2 modelling operations is , well, .....wrong. :-O
any ideas?
N.
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yes Katie, I've tried it, but the Smoothing command is erratic and unpredictable.
An example of what I'm talking about might be, say, if I was making the profile of a crank arm or bracket etc, described by arcs (see also the current post on dimensionis) tangents and other lines; when the profile is composed into a whole, the arcs and other curves frequently "degenerate" into a series of facets and the arcs lose their centres.
Another example is the freehand line tool which would be usefull for me if the smoothing of the 10,000,000 verticies it produces could actually be controlled. ;-O
N.
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Hi there,
In Vector Depot there is a script for VW8 which simplifies Polylines by deleting unwanted verticies. This would be useful for me.
I know the smoothing angle adjustment was incorporated into VW10 (much MUCH better!); does the "simplify" script exist in/for VW10?
TIA,
N.
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c.croft; "set the controls for the heart of the sun"? :-)
p.retondo; I repeated the above test with shadow mapped shadows set to maximum detail.
The near spot light produced a reasonable "soft-edged" shadow, but as before, the shadow on the sphere itself was not well defined.
The distant spotlight had good shading definition on the sphere, but the shadow cast looked like a piece of half finished Op-Art from the 60's. A fuzzy sort of checked pattern. (Imagine being very drunk and looking at a grey Tartan fabric )
It looks like you might be able to adjust the shadow definition by changing the distance of the light source/s
Most of my Drafting work involves designing furniture, so I'm looking to place furniture sized objects inside rooms with lights at appropriate distances away.
Whether this scheme will work with your (Architectural?) scale Drgs: ???
good luck
N.
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ccroft, I tried your suggestion to no effect.
I'm afraid Real light and computer simulation are not the same thing ;-)
anyway, I used a 200mm dia, hi-res sphere to cast a ray-traced shadow on a grey "wall" 2m away, and a spot light to light it.
Then I placed the light 1m away at a 45? elevation, then 2m, then 20m and adjusted the light up as it got further away and the ambient down so that the values of the sphere and background were approx equal.
The value of the shadow and the definition of the shadow around the sphere changed (up) as the brighter, further, light increased, but the "sharpness" of the shadow stayed the same at all times.
Perhaps a hugely distant light might work, but I suspect not.
Hmmmmmm......
N.
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.....or select the 2D tool. I use this all the time. Hold down the spacebar and then hit X with another finger gives you the 2D select, and letting go of the spacebar when you've selected returns you to where you were.
cheers,
N.
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......and, is there a way to soften the shadows in Ray Traced shadows??? These are too sharp and hard for my taste.
(some people are never satisfied ;-))
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Hi again Mike,
Thanks for that, and another question on the same theme:
When I'm changing the sun position manually (not animated) to check shade etc; SOMETIMES chosing a new time or month will generate a new light object instead of moving the existing one. (This had me puzzled for a bit ;-) )
Same question; is THIS a bug??
cheers,
N.
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Yep; processor speed.
See also my rant on the General board under :VW 10 on a brand new 800 mhz iBook? ;-)
I'd really be interested to see a tractor pull of a nice big render B/W a "Top spec" Mac and "equivalent" PC. But maybe that's just morbid.
quote:I tried the CPU monitor. Cool! And thanks! What do the two colors on the dynamic graph represent?Also, what is "Y.M.M.V."?There are three colours actually. The top (larger) one is the application allocation, the lower one is the system allocation, and the lowest (which doesn't appear much) is um, er, um, I've forgotten. (System maintenance I think???)
"Your Mileage May Vary"; another of the many Bulletin Board abbreviations FWIW (For What It's Worth)
I quite enjoy watching the development of this dialect.
There's a Sociology Thesis in it for sure if you were keen :-))
Your rendering times don't seem that excessive really (if they are A4 sheet, hi-res, print quality renders) A couple of minutes seems modest for that. IMHO (In My Humble Opinion)
I wonder when the SMS generation will start talking in abbreviations? ;-))
cheers,
N.
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I've been running some interior test solar animations with my new RW, and in each one the animation has functioned correctly but the initial sun/shadows have remained in the animation.
That is, the sun and shadows move, but throughout the whole "day" the original "morning" sun remains in the same place.
Am I doing something wrong here, or is this a bug??
TIA
N.
Casting shadows through a SOLID object :-?
in Rendering
Posted
Hi Erich, thanks for your reply
The Shell's attribute is "solid" and the texture's colour is "object attribute". I figure that's about as solid as I can make it ;-)
The cone was made by using the "shell" tool on a cone primitive. (I can't remember if I truncated it before or after the shelling operation) Consequently it should be "closed" by default (I think).
Reviewing the file, If the texture (transparency -none) is removed from the shell there is no problem. So it is the texture which is the problem it seems. Additionally, if the thickness is set to way-too-thick, it is also opaque.
Hmpff?
I have sent the file to Katie, so hopefully we should get some idea of what's going on soon.
cheers,
N.