trashcan
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Here it goes-
I know that both Landru & Projection Viz plug-ins cover a lot of this, but not all.
And there are hacky ways to achieve a lot of this stuff, but nothing as simple as the other tools that VW Spotlight has.
I would love to speak with the VW development team to help get this stuff going. VW would be the #1 tool for projection design and engineering if they were able to achieve even half of these requests. There are other apps that can achieve some of this, but nothing close to all of it.
Library that rivals the lighting library, which would mean:
- Many more projectors
- Many more lenses
Tool:
- The big one for me is the ability to focus on surfaces, not limited to screens. Many projection and video designs don't use screens. Right now the tool caters to trade show executions / simple design. Currently, the work around is that you can project on to any surface with Josh's excellent Projection Viz tool - but the focus point has to be behind the object which is great for previz but not accurate for engineering purposes (you can double up and achieve this with class visibility).
- Obstructions. If something is in front of a projector, shouldn't the image be clipped?
- Projector beams. Because: Fog etc. And projection surfaces emitting light!
- Projector focus points! This would be amazing. Just like the lighting focus points, it would angle the projector to match the target focus point.
- Accurate projection shift (set limits based on projector + projector lens combination).
- Projectors at odd angles to fit in the nook and crannies that are in real world situations.
- Projectors on other types of hang points. Right now you can hack this to make it happen (just using a projector symbol and not the plugin object). But: attaching a projector to a truss or a ceiling? The plug in should be able to handle that.
- Lumens studies.
- 2D and 3D class options for beam, projector, projected image.
- True representations of pixel math, aspect, and resolution.
- Simpler portrait mode (or any other angle other than straight on)
- Projector arrays! As in: pick a target surface and a dialog comes up with the ability for an AxB array with C% blending. Similar to the roof tool, you can pick an array configuration, and the desired blend and single projector height, and it will give you the overall image size OR, you pick the total surface area and a single projector width and it will give you the projector count and the blend percentage. Fairly simple stuff...
- Raster calculation. An array of projectors creates a multi-screen image. What's the total raster image in pixels?
- Linking Projector Symbols to Projector Lenses - ideally the plugin object would allow you to select lenses that are available for that projector. Much like the lighting tools and gobo options, lens options, shutters, etc. New lenses come out all the time so having the ability to add new lenses on your own.
- Ability to use Spotlight Numbering / Label Legends on Projectors. Show things like: PRJ number, lumens, lens type, signal type, signal source (media server ID) etc. I'm doing all of that manually and it's maddening when I've seen what Label Legends and Numbering can do for lighting.
- Basic geometry correction (I.e., corner-pinning within the projected image). I'd rather have spout / syphon capabilities but this would help in the interim as well.
- Complex geometry correction (grids + pins). Ditto re: spout / syphon.
- Spout / Syphon per projector would be killer. This would mean the ability to show animated / video content on any projected surface or traditional LED screen. Would also allow you test more complex projection mapping techniques: complex geometry, corner pinning, bezier mesh, masking. The capabilities are endless when Spout / Syphon are in the mix. Being able to hook Vectorworks up to MadMapper, Isadora, TouchDesigner, QLab for previz would change the game. There are previz tools out there but they are not engineering tools. An engineering tool that can also show previz - a dream come true. If Vectorworks is the go to for previz for lighting design, they would own the market if they could do it for video design as well. This can be achieved (partially) using Vision and NDI streams but because the functionality is super limited it's not very helpful unless you are using traditional screens. Obviously, supporting this would have a whole bunch of implications for system requirements, but video nerds out there can help you figure it out 🙂
More to come.
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@MHouston highly recommend you do the Spotlight Essentials training. It's about three hours and is a good crash course for sure. They do it every week and it'll get you up to speed especially if you've used VW in the past:
https://www.vectorworks.net/events
Though I agree. Some database of example files that are easily searchable would be great. If you dig into some of the Vectorworks University tutorials, there are some example files that will show you the kind of thing you're looking for, but it will take... time to find what you're looking for.
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I'd love to see counts work for other type of "Count" devices - like Speakers, Projectors. Seems like an obvious need to me.
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Learning Spotlight now and seeing that you can't do complex stairways (easily anyway) seems kind of bonkers. You can do whatever you want with windows and doors. Seems to me scenic designers may have some complex stairways in their designs. Wonder what the thinking is here for separating out this specific tool?
So far it's the only tool not included in Spotlight that seems odd to me and it goes without saying that it's silly to buy a designer license just so you can have... stairs?
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Once you Create A Similar Object, the only way to refer to the default style of that tool is to open a new project, copy in the default and then Create A Similar Object from that pasted object. Why not just have a button simply called "Revert to Tool Default"?
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Would be great to have more places where you can "Auto Class" - a great example is an unstyled door. Rather than creating your own symbol that you've gone ahead and created classes for all the door elements, it would be great to simply click an Auto Class or Default Class button so you don't have to manually create classes for everything. In this example, ideally, you'd be able to set a prefix for these default classes so you can separate out door types.
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For Create Objects From Shapes - the method for the offset is incredibly counter-intuitive. You have to think if the object is created clockwise around the polygon, and I want the object to be created on the INSIDE edge of the polygon, then I need to select Offset-->Right. If I want it create on the OUTSIDE edge of polygon, I need to select Offset-->Left. So I have to think about it like this: the created object will be on the right side of the polygon. Great! But... kind of unnecessarily confused?
Wouldn't it make more sense to simply call the offsets literally "Inside" and "Outside"?
Barring that, having a tool tip explaining what each Offset type is (I.e., "Selecting an offset of Right will put your created object to the right of the polygon edge, or on the inside edge of the polygon")
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For anyone else who hasn't figured this out yet: I've noticed that the File Name in project data (for Title Blocks) doesn't always refresh or populate properly. If you go into Title Block Border Settings --> Project Data and then cycle the "Include file path in File Name" button, it will refresh and show the proper name.
Seeing this as a problem in all files... so I imagine this is a bug?
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I've noticed that VW2020 sometimes hangs up when switching render modes, and the expected results are inconsistent. Sometimes, I get the spinning Mac OS ball (VW is unresponsive / hung up), and there's a long delay before the tea kettle displays and then begins to show progress. Since it works this way, it's hard to tell if VW is hanging up (freezing) or just taking its sweet time. I have a decent CPU/GPU and plenty of RAM. Finding these inconsistencies make the tutorial process really difficult because it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong or the program is behaving badly.
At the end of this trial and error process, I took Jim's render styles and followed the same debug example below with a very simple file (4x4x4 cube on a small slab and a single light). Everything behaved as expected. So either VW has issues with rendering bigger, complex files, or Jim's tutorial file is bugged somehow.
For file consistency and to make sure I'm testing the same situation, I am using an exercise file from the "Rendering in Vectorworks" tutorial, filename "02-renderworks-camera-effects-v01.vwx". The Renderworks styles I refer to (I.e., "Quick" and "High Quality Render" are styles that Jim is using in the tutorial).
I am going through the Renderworks modes in Design Layers (not sheet layer viewports).
For Fast Renderworks, this doesn't seem to be an issue, but for Final Renderworks, Artistic Renderworks, Hidden Line, Dashed Hidden Line or any of the Polygon settings, there is an issue for render progress and render behavior.
If I select "Fast" and then switch to "Final", the tea kettle displays for a moment and then nothing changes. Similarly, if I go from "Artistic" to "Fast" or "Final" nothing changes. If I go from Fast --> High Quality --> Final it works as expected, even if I interrupt High Quality and force a switch to Final. If I work this way, the Final render only takes 30 seconds.
Switching to or from hidden line always seems to hang up VW. Other modes hang up based on what mode is currently active.
Debug Example:
- I'm in Open GL and I switch to Renderworks Style --> Quick Render - it works as expected, immediate tea kettle and it takes 43 seconds. Correct!
- I'm in Quick Render and I switch to Hidden Line - it hangs up for a couple minutes and the render doesn't tell me how long it took. But crazy that it takes longer than Quick Render. Doesn't display "Rendering Complete" text.
- I'm in Hidden Line and I switch to Renderworks Style --> Quick Render - it hangs up for a couple of minutes and then the render says that it takes 44 seconds. Hmm.
- I'm in Quick Render and I switch to Fast - it works as expected, immediate tea kettle and it takes 04 seconds
- I'm in Fast and I switch to Final - it just stays in "Fast" even though "Final" is selected
- I'm in Final (but it's displaying as Fast) and I switch to Renderworks Style --> Quick Preview - it works as expected, immediate tea kettle and it takes 51 seconds.
- I'm in Quick and I switch to Final - it works as expected and it takes 45 seconds. Correct!
It seems that depending on the file I'm working in, the Final setting has different behaviors and different results. An update tutorial to how the different modes function in VW2020 would be extremely useful. For now, I'm going to use my really really basic file and try to go through Jim's tutorials that way.
I sort of expect that there would be some kind of render cache somewhere that needs occasional cleaning for optimization purposes. Could that be it? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding how rendering works in VW? QA issue? I don't know.
It's great that there's a time / progress bar as well, but like the hang up issue, whether or not it functions as expected is inconsistent. Would be great if it showed "Time Remaining" as well...
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Worth noting that "Remarkable Renderworks" has been added to Vectorworks University. "Rendering for Success" doesn't seem to have been added, but it looks like a lot of those topics are covered by Jim in the "Rendering for Vectorworks" course.
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It seems that the exercise files for the Renderworks tutorials were saved after they were completed in the tutorial. So you can't really follow along because the work has already been changed and saved. You can see how things were done watching the videos, but you can't easily do it yourself without thinking "Hey this looks totally different than the video." Very confusing. I'm struck by how thorough Don Ward's tutorials + exercise files are in Service Select versus the other tutorial videos and exercise files. To be clear, Jim's tutorials are great - just that I'm often lost in the difference between the files and the tutorials. Could also be that the exercise files are older versions of VW, and I'm working in VW2020. Has anyone else run into this? @PVA - Jim would love to get some clarity here!
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Trying to find an answer to this- 2013 Mac Pro with Dual D700s. It looks like VW just uses a single card. Not sure if there's a setting or anything I can toggle to take advantage of both. Digging through the forums, it seems like historically VW only can use one card, whereas Vision can use multiple cards. Is that still correct?
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thanks @Pat Stanford exactly what I was looking for
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@bekpalmer Fully agree. I moved on to other tutorials and put this on the back burner because I was so lost.
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How does one assign Gradient Settings (I.e., rotation, type) to a gradient class style? Can't seem to find an answer to that in the Help documentation.
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Is it possible to reorganize the columns in the navigation palette?
For example, the design layer names can be long, but I always want to see the stacking order column. Intuitively, it would make sense to move the stacking order column to be between the visibility column(s) and the design layer name column. Is this possible?
Similarly, would be great to have the same functionality in the Organization menu. A good example is: with a Designer license where I'm primarily using Spotlight, I will almost never use the "Story" column, but Elevation and Wall Height are important (looking at the Design Layers tab). Would be great to move Story over to the right, or simply turn that column off.
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@scottmoore ah that makes sense.
So if I'm creating a Projector, rather than putting it in class "None" I should create "Projector-Instruments" as a sub-class for all projectors, then within my symbol, I can assign the lens to "Projector-Lenses", the body to "Projector-Bodies" etc. Once baked into the symbol, I can then use that symbol in a different document and it will automatically bring in those classes, yeah?
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Similar thing happened to me in VW2020, angled Vector Locks weren't working. Re-enabled snap to angle, problem solved. And now it always works. @Jim Smith I was holding my mouth wrong too... I think you were on to something!
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@JustinVH great tip, thanks Justin
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I'm sure this has been mentioned before - but some tools include shortcut keys in their hover text (I.e., all the tools in the Basic tools palette), whereas other tools / functions like "Fit To Page Area" do not. Is there a way to show all shortcuts when hovering? To be clear I'm talking about the hover text that shows right above the tool, not the tool tips at the bottom (which don't seem to show shortcuts at all). For the noobs out there who are trying to get those shortcuts down quickly, this would be awesome to have available.
Noting that, obviously you can find all the shortcuts here
And if you can find that function / tool in the menus, it will display the shortcut. Oddly, this shows a tool tip on some function, where as hovering over the palette does not (again using "Fit To Page Area" as a reference).
Another good example are all the standard views (I.e., front, top, left iso, etc). Those were the first hotkeys I learned. These hot keys don't show up in the main panel drop down OR the menu bar drop down. I learned this via a tutorial. There isn't any hover / tool-tip for these views in the main panel, but there is in the menu bar. Neither gives you the shortcut.
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Re: Class changing. Woah that's crazy! Design layers seem to inherit within a symbol, so at least there's that.
Re: Symbol insertion point origin. Figured it out. In the 3D edit, it was correct - but it was offset in the 2D edit. I was looking at the 2D edit before without the XYZ red green blue on. I thought the object center was aligned to the XYZ zero, but in fact, it was aligned to itself. Ha! Silly. Thanks.
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I have my object (a video projector) built in 3D. Class is set to "None".
Then I built my 2D plan layout for the symbol. Class is set to "None" for that content.
When finished, I save it as a Symbol. When I bring it in to another document and the symbol to a new class, the symbol correctly moves, but the objects within the symbol (previously set to "None") stay as none. How can I make them auto-inherit the class selected from the main symbol?
Second to that. While I set my origin properly, it's not inserting properly, offset by an inch or two. I've double checked the 2D and 3D symbol by clicking edit in the resource browser, and it looks good there. Any thought as to what I might be missing?
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@BSeigel that's exactly what I was looking for, thanks
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@C. Andrew Dunning - VS4 / VS4 plus looks great. I took a quick look through your tutorial for creating projector models. Is creating custom models the same for both using just VW and placing the resource in the right directory vs. using the VS4 tool? Dug into that little UST demo you made as well. Super helpful, thanks for sending along. I imagine all the prefs are locked because I need VS4? Can you do projector arrays with your tool (I.e., a 4x2 on a curved screen)?
@JBenghiat Here's hoping! Projector Central and I go way back 😉 - I've had a few bumps using their calc over the years so I always cross check with the manufacturer's calc and the manual! If there are any massive discrepancies I give them a call.
@Rob Books Thanks for pointing that out. I've taken a look by searching for specific brands. Epson (and Pana) is super thorough and extensive, but from what I can see there are only a few Christie, Barco. Are there any UST / non-traditional optics projectors that I could tinker with? Is there a way to take a look at the service select library to see what's in there? I'd love to see a VW tutorial on "how to create your own projector symbol". Would be very very helpful for a noob like myself.
@Mark Aceto MappingMatter is excellent for PreViz, for sure. I've been in touch with the creator a few times - and it seems that it's great for quickly creating a good PreViz but not exactly right for engineering needs. I haven't used it yet, but it's on my hit list during this excessive down time. Some kind of dynamic link between MM and VW would be awesome (where projector objects are recognized). Ultimately though, it would be ideal to have those features right inside VW.
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Sample scenic design file
in Entertainment
Posted
@MHouston I did it last week and it helped immensely to re-learn the basics. I hadn't touched VW in over ten years!