Jump to content

trashcan

Member
  • Posts

    546
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by trashcan

  1. For sure, moments after posting this, I was looking the render tab and there are some very basic organizational things happening. Mapping collapses for example. Open- Collapsed:
  2. Great details! If you use that script to create a new plug-in menu command script, you can add to menus and then it'll show up in quick search: This means that virtually anything you can script you can add as a menu item, which then you can add a hotkey if you want, or just use it in quick search. Amazing. Figured this out by reading this post:
  3. My pleasure. There are so many mysteries to VWX and hard to find answers so happy to share.
  4. Ok so trip off this. Here's a good work-in-progress workflow using ProjectionViz to emulate some kind of projection blend. I realize this is very much how-the-sauce-gets-made, but oh boy is it useful and hope it can be useful to you. This also shows you how to mask directly in VWX. If you make the blend object a solid instead! I created a quick raster w/ 50% blend on a 2x 1920x1080 projector setup in after effects: I then created a RWorx Texture that has a gradient and transparency: This is what it looks like applied to a 1x1' extruded .1" box: The area on the left is a gradient blend where the far left is 0% transparency, and the center is 100% transparency. that grey vertical line in the center is opaque and is a marker for the center line of blend. I can use that to line things up manually in Vectorworks if I need to. In other words if I place this correctly it will look like this: I placed the projectors so they have a 50% blend overlap: I put the mask / blend object in the projection throw in a position where the box takes up 100% of the projector coverage, and then I moved it over to the edge. That way I know the projection is blend starts at the edge and takes up exactly half of the image to go from transparent to opaque. Blend object turned off (brighter in the middle): Blend turned on (matched in the center): Just one projector on to show you it matches with the intention: Now if only there was a way to turn off those boxes so they aren't visible in the render but still effected the projection beam!
  5. Not sure if this is already a thing (don't think it is) but it would be so great to have hierarchical items in the OIP. I ask because some objects have a ton of data in the OIP and it's sometimes hard to digest. This would free up much needed real estate and allow you to focus on the things you need to focus on more quickly. I liken the OIP to After Effect's "Effect Controls" Panel - here's an example of what I mean: Consolidated: Open:
  6. Everybody loves the new Quick Search in VWX 2022. It's my favorite new feature. After Effects has a similar plugin from Video Co-Pilot called "FX Console" and it's a game changer when you start using it. So really happy the devs over at VWX have started implementing. Ok guys imagine a world where you could use Quick Search to do simple actions. Simply adding menu options for some of these would enable them in quick search. I was surprised there wasn't a menu bar item for "New Class", for example. I am always trying to spend less time on the mouse and more on the keyboard! Some examples: Type "create class" --> the new class window opens up Type "sheet name" --> you would navigate to that sheet layer Type "design layer name" --> you would navigate to that design layer More complex examples with multiple steps: Type "edit class" --> quick search prompts you for class name --> type class --> editor opens up on selection Hundreds of ways this could be used. I'll keep the thinking cap on and add more examples as they come up, and I encourage you to, too!
  7. woah @Boh - I haven't made my own scripts for VWX yet but that seems like a promising solve. I am talking about classes I use and reuse from file to file so this could be the solution here. Am I correct in assuming that's a custom tool pallet you've added to your workspace and filled with your scripts? Do they come up in Quick Search? Trying to spend less time on the mouse and more on the keyboard 🤑.
  8. @P Retondo 🎆 absolutely agree
  9. I forgot how convoluted this process is lolol. But putting it up here in case someone else is trying to figure this out. Now playing with aperture and even with high quality it looks pretty nasty for stuff out of focus: Vs. Low quality, no aperture: So the camera effects are definitely working. When I open ip to f/1 the background is even more out of focus. But what's up with the noise on the glass, that only occurs when I turn on aperture... I wonder... 🤔 Could it be the texture? I don't think so because the renderworks settings are the same except the aperture setting being on... What about turning on Textures-->Blurriness: I understand why the grain is here (low-quality render) but where'd the reflections go!? Ok let's do an override of the mirror texture here and see what happens. Maybe add reflection to the clear coat? That didn't change anything either... hmmm. Turning the roughness off brought the reflections back and the grain is behaving properly. Let's see about turning the aperture back on to f/1: Huh. Could it have something to do with mirror bounce? Turned off all the walls except the one behind the columns: Could it have something to do with the properties of the mirror? Here's I've duplicated my columns and put them behind the main columns instead of reflecting them: The grain is only in the things out of focus. so the background isn't effected, so it's less noticeable. Let me put a solid in there: Wow that looks correct. So it's the way that Vectorworks handles reflective surfaces plus aperture camera effects. I'd love to use both aperture camera effects and reflections... Turning on anti-aliasing helps with the general noise, but that aperture noise is still there. Turning up all the settings to very high solves it. Should've led with that: It just takes 100x as long. That's as far into the render as I was willing to go (40 minutes). Ok, let's figure out which setting specifically improves the aperture blur: That looks pretty good, but still some noise in the highlights: Anti-alias high:, all else medium: Anti alias VERY high, all else medium: Still a little noise in the highlights. Turning up blurriness quality to very high (it's on as render setting) changes were perceptually mild and the render took 5 minutes instead of a minute. So that doesn't seem to be the offender. Have gone through one at a time to figure out who the offender is and haven't found anything. No idea what tricks to try next. First one to figure out what's on the pedestals gets a prize. I'm also curious why the difference between HIGH and VERY HIGH is so significant on impacting rendering times - specifically for anti-aliasing. I wish there was a slider so I could pick the quality. There's got to be something between the two that doesn't take so long to render.
  10. Brutal, but good work around @danm01
  11. Anyone else find it odd that you need to edit the camera through the viewport in order to change the camera settings? Is there another way to do this? Right now you have to right-click the viewport-->Edit Camera-->Change settings-->Exit Viewport-->Update Viewport. I have a vague memory of not have doing this but maybe that's just some Mandela Effect stuff.
  12. THIS ⬆️ Doing the same thing right now. I came here because I am trying to figure out how to control the camera settings more intuitively. 😞
  13. @Tom W. lol you mean the setting I've had there since I did my first Vectorworks course? 🤦‍♂️ thx
  14. Duh, thanks @Kevin Allen - is there a quick pref for this?
  15. I'm looking at my design layer - and I want to keep those lights on but I don't want to display them in my rendered view. One of the lights is blocking something I'm trying to see! Anyway to turn those off? Display settings maybe?
  16. Yeah I'm curious about that too re: windows or additional driver. Those buttons are effectively dead in VWX. I went down this path because I've set up Command+Num1, Num2, Num3 as shortcuts in other programs before and found it very useful (presets in InDesign). It's a two handed keystroke but it's right next to the mouse so it's pretty snappy. Recommended if it worked 😞
  17. @Neil Barman thanks for thorough answer here. I'm active on the wishlist forum as well and that isn't going that great either. I love this idea of the distant warning system. Would be helpful, I'm sure - for both users and for analytics for you guys, too. I think you are absolutely right re: choking. Often the crash is probably VWX working hard and I'm impatient, but that's my point exactly, there are so many things that in previous versions it didn't choke or didn't choke as hard (and as evidenced by some contributors above). The onus of tech support shouldn't be on the consumer, and I'm afraid to say, that with VWX, it often is. I've never received an update on a bug after going through the submit process other than that it's being looked into. And then radio silence. Forever. Maybe that's a change that can be made on their side of things... Trying to be constructive and honest here! How did you figure out what component of the DWG was the culprit? Sounds like some kind of bad-export, but how did you figure out it was the distance thing? When I've had buggy exports before I've usually had to diagnose it myself and then go back to my colleagues. Sometimes "bad export" isn't enough info, you know? I've imported DWGs in the past that have taken many many minutes so it being slow isn't a massive surprise to me. The progress bar is helpful for diagnosis, is that how you figured it out?
  18. Came here because I was looking if this was something I could toggle in quick prefs. I used to use it when I first started VWX and was wondering where it ended up. Ah it's moved. You have to enable Legacy 2D and then it will appear and then you can toggle it on or off. It gives you a warning that things might not work right. And well: It works: In a QA bug that should surprise no one, you need to deactivate Perspective Crop before you disable Legacy 2D or you'll have no way to turn it off. To turn on Perspective Crop in VWX 2022: Turn on legacy 2D in Document Prefs-->Legacy 2D Heed the warning Close the window Turn on perspective crop in Document Prefs-->Display To turn off Perspective CROP in VWX 2022 (you have to do it in this order): Turn off perspective crop Close the window. Turn off Legacy 2D
  19. Got a Mac. Have a full size Mac keyboard as is necessary. I'd like to set up some shortcut keys as renderworks styles so I can quickly preview in the design layer. Obvious thought was to use Modifier + Numpad Number. Doesn't seem possible? Stock keyboard shortcuts: Regular 2 = Line tool Num-pad 2 = Front Command+regular 2 = orthogonal Command+Numpad 1 = orthogonal While the numpad without modifier is it's own shortcut, any modifier key used with a numb-pad key isn't treated as unique. So you can't reassign Command+Numpad 5 to be your own shortcut. So in this example, if I try to assign Command+Numpad 5 to "Custom Renderworks" it says there's a conflict with the 2D plan shortcut. Hmm. Stranger still, if I go to find that shortcut to reassign it, here's what I get: So maybe I should try using a different modifier, like fN for example. Oh there's no way to add additional options for modifier keys. So that won't work. So maybe I should try to use unassigned function keys, like F16 for example. Vectorworks doesn't even recognize when I press it. Or if I press FN+F16. woo boy found a thread about in 2008 with some unfortunate news from Pat Guess I gotta go the extra mile and press an additional modifier key lol Unless it's changed in 13 years?
  20. this option doesn't seem to exist anymore - closest thing? (I'm trying to figure out how to use the numpad as shortcut keys + modifiers and trying to find out how to do that has led me down this rabbit hole) Yeah I have this selected in VWX 2022 and numeric keypad still works as view selection: I have also tried this:
  21. I wrote this up and put in the wrong forum, can an admin move it to the rendering forum? Experimenting with reflectivity. Was trying to find some answers on this but just figuring it out myself and posting my results for the next person who has similar questions. I have a room with three columns in it. The room's walls and ceiling are mirrors. I am experimenting with textures to get the best reflections. These quick renders are in the design layer and I turned off one of the walls to make it easier to see inside. The PURE mirror texture: Color shader is solid black - That doesn't look quite right because we should see some sort of sheen on the surface of the glass. After some experimenting, using Reflectivity-->Metallic and having some roughness give the surface some sheen. This still isn't quite right so looking for a better material choice here? The SILVER texture (fast quality): Custom renderworks: Settings: Closing up the box, still using custom renderworks, adding ambient occlusion and increasing the max reflect to 5. Cool, cool, cool
  22. @Neil Barman - thanks for weighing in and all due respect - every bug report I've filed or request I've made (which I don't think is that many, but it is a few) has more or less led to nothing or I make the effort to explain the bug and it goes in the memory hole. Could be wrong. Just how it feels. Usually I just figure out a workaround. What is the point of the KNOWN issues forum if it's not for you guys? Does anyone at Vectorworks move bugs from other forums to known issues? It seems like this is a massively useful resource for team Vectorworks. I will legit will make the project files and make a video to show you guys the problem. So it feels like a wasted effort. I find that it's more useful to take the temp of the users on the forums to see if others are experiencing similar things and then one of you guys tends to take it somewhere... I am down to contribute to that part of the community and I don't draw the "it should just work" line or "we are paying customers" line, but sometimes it feels like you guys don't do enough QA TBH. The community is going to help with work-arounds when I talk about a bug or a problem or workflow issue which in an effort-to-action ratio is considerably lower than logging a bug with you guys. I, for one, use a ton of AV+Design+Tech programs and the Vectorworks' forums and community is by-and-large the best one (GarageCube is really good too, IMHO). I recognize the way I use Vectorworks could be problematic, but how many programs are designed with this degree of qualifiers for problems (I.e., "remember not to press tab twice or it'll crash!!"). I can't remember which thread I said this in, but it reminds me of setting up FCP files in the early 00s. That was a special hell-scape of what-not-to-do to aggravate a program. Your example of the buggy DWG is a great one! You have to know WHAT is causing a crash in VWX, and that can be a lot of effort. Then you have to figure out a work around. You still need that Civil Engineer's data - so are you going to ask them to repair it? Or are you going to redraw it? Can you repair the file yourself? And there are a lot of things that could be causing the crash. Where do you start? Or a messed up plug-in object, or symbol! You have to put the time in to figure out all those problems. If VWX is aware that certain things can cause crashes, perhaps it should warn you after some kind of programmatic audit (I.e. "the DWG you imported has bad geometry and could cause Vectorworks to crash, would you still like to import the file?"). There are other programs that do this kind of thing. So far here are some of the hiccups I've noticed: VWX 2022 crashes consistently when adjusting Plug-In Objects' lights' brightness in the viz panel when you are using certain draw modes. Known bug getting hit w/ SP2 thanks to Josh B VWX 2022 crashes often when ungrouping a PDF (so you can steal that hott geometry) and moving around the layers. Can't consistently recreate. VWX 2022 crashes often when moving more "complex" imported objects. Ditto on recreate. VWX 2022 Redshift performance on Mac is absolute trash - it should be called an experimental feature or prompt you with a warning "this might not work in a reasonable amount of time" VWX 2022 is a massive CPU vampire. fans going crazy all the time even when just in Shaded or Wireframe. So something is going on there for sure. Full disclosure that in some cases, it's totally possible that VWX is just taking longer and I'm being impatient... but comparatively to the same actions, on the same computer, using VWX 2021, it's noticeably sluggish. I'm also posting this here because my experience going from 2020 to 2021 was not nearly this whacky. It was a more seamless transition without much fuss. In my experience anyway! (Also, Neil, not meaning to be prickly here, I appreciate the work you do and the effort you're making!!)
  23. There's no real roadmap to engineering projectors in Vectorworks, and I was surprised that there wasn't a workflow ready to go for projection design other than using the Vectorworks built in objects - while useful, are woefully inadequate. I don't even use them to be honest. I have a workflow I've cobbled together that feels half way decent for engineering without using any plugins (as well as enhanced workflows using plugins). I have some serious industry experience that is informative and helpful outside of strictly-Vectorworks methods. I was thinking it might be useful to throw some tutorials up somewhere. It might not be the right process, but it's been working pretty well for me. I've taken many of the Vectorworks University courses and nothing was totally correct. Though very informative and I'm glad I did it because it was the only way to figure things out. Also Don Ward is the man. So wanted to take the forum's temperature on the following: Simple projection design: How to choose a projector, what information is important, what everything means! Vectorworks: setting up your project file, simple classing, building the room, drawing a primitive projector, drawing a projector beam and cone More complex stuff: Proper classing, Creating your own record formats for projectors, Designing data tags Presentation: Sheet layers and viewports Beyond that: Using Vectorworks data to: Set up After Effects files Set up MadMapper files Creating Grids Even Beyond that: Making mounts, pipes More complex projector modeling Designing a system flow without using ConnectCad ProjectionViz, setting it up, integrating into your existing workflow, rendering and viewports ProjectionViz, masking, blending I have been designing, producing, and engineering projection projects since 2012. Point being wanted to take the temperature of my fellow nerds in here and see if this is something people would find value in / interest in. And also - should this be free? I have virtually zero teaching experience.
  24. I've got a workaround! It's just an extra 30 steps! 🤯
×
×
  • Create New...