mclaugh

quote: Originally posted by Shaun: If quality and speed is what you after then C4D is the route. I haven't used Animation Works but I would think it uses the Lightworks rendering engine and if so, it will be slow for animations (especially with lots of lights). Can't say I've found AW to be noticably slower than C4D, but haven't used C4D much recently since I find it more efficient to do everything in VW rather than switching back and forth between programs. Should note that while both AW and C4D can be used to generate animations, they're two entirely different animals. AW is an VW plug-in designed to simplify the process of creating animations within VW; C4D is a dedicated, stand-alone rendering program: as such, it should be thought of as an alternative to Renderworks rather than to Animation Works. AW's more than capable if you can live with the limitations of Renderworks: if you want or need capabilities such as radiosity, morph targets, of a dedicated rendering program, such as radiosity, morph targets, etc., you'll have to look at a dedicated rendering program.

I heartily second the recommendation of OzCAD's Animation Works. I bought a license in January, and have used it to create animations that include everything you've mentioned and more. Best thing about it from a user's perspective is it's a VW plugin, so you're not wasting time trying to figure your way around in a new program. Plus, there's no export-from-VW-import-into-whatever rigamarole if you end up needing to tweak something in the source file. NOTE: I do NOT receive compensation of any kind for any product recommendation I might make.

quote: Originally posted by J Parkin: However we cannot seem to set default settings in the 'edit title block text...' dialogue box. we really need to be able to make these settings stick to encourage everyone in the office to adapt to the new system. any ideas on how to do this would be great. I suspect we might need to tweak the script? Not quite sure which default settings you're referring to: the specific project info (firm name, address, project mgr., project title, etc.) or the text attributes (font, font size, style, alignment, etc.) If you mean the project info, all of that can be entered in the Issues Manager (File > Issues Manager.

The only elements on the Stakes layer are stake objects, so there are no non-3d loci. Z values are all in the 6'-22' range, in 2' intervals.

quote: Originally posted by Robert Anderson: Try making your source data layer active. I'm not sure what you mean by this. All the stakes objects are on the same layer, and the layer is visible and active. Is the source data layer something different than the layer the stake objects are on?

quote: Originally posted by islandmon: You need to point the Create Site Model from existing DTM to the Layer with the necessary 3D Loci. The Procedure basically connects the 3D loci by TIN-ing ( Triangular Intergrated Network ) to create the surfaces and contours. I never get that far. I get the error message before the Site Model Dialog Box appears.

I'm trying to generate a site model. I've constructed a grid consisting of 618 stake objects. The stakes are all on a single, separate layer, and there are no DTMs in the file. When I select AEC > Site Model ..., I get the error message: "There is not enough valid data on the specified source layer to build a DTM." If I copy the stake objects and paste them into a new document, the model will generate. Why won't VW generate the site model in the original file? ---------- 2.0 G5 Dual, OS X 10.3.9, 2.5 Gb RAM, VW 11.5/Architect/RW

quote: Originally posted by danscully: Searching through the boards has shown that some people are successfully using their Logitech mouse on a mac and others (like me) are having trouble with the scroll wheel moving too much of the screen at a time. Have you tried reducing the scroll increment in the Logitech Control Center? Also, take a look at usb overdrive. It works with just about any USB pointing device (mice, trackballs, joysticks, game controllers, etc.), has many more options, and offers finer control than most bundled drivers. More importantly (at least to me). you can configure global and/or individual application preferences. [ 07-28-2005, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: mclaugh ]

quote: Originally posted by alanmac: Would you not say that despite the problems that happened during the various transitions from 680x0 to Power PC and from System 9 to OSX that these changes has advanced Apple and its operating systems? Where do you think Apple would be now if it had remained with using 680x0 processors or an operating system based around and up to OS9? That's simply an unanswerable question, because once Apple made the decision to jump from the 680x0 to the PowerPC and from System 9 to OS X, it slammed the door further developments along those lines. Who knows how System 9 would have evolved had Apple thrown all the money and resources it threw at OS X into modernizing System 9 instead of porting NeXTstep? (FWIW, the Commodore Amiga, which was also based on the 680x0 platform, had preemptive multitasking and protected memory in 1988?almost a full year before Apple came out with the SE/30?so it's not like implementing them was some great technical feat.) Where would the 680x0 architecture be today had Apple pushed Motorola to develop a RISC chip based on the 68k instruction set, much as Intel did in transitioning from the '486 to the P5, instead of building a new chip from the ground up? [ 06-13-2005, 09:06 PM: Message edited by: mclaugh ]

quote: Originally posted by alanmac: [QB] quote:Originally posted by fsung: No doubt, companies will continue to "support" the current version and squash a few minor bugs, but does anyone really think there'll be a G4/G5 version of VW 12 that's functionally equivalent to the Intel versions? The way my understanding of it is the programs will be written for one "platform" and "recomplied" for PPC with the tools provided, and as an example shown at the recent WWDC, easily and quickly. To me this does not mean twice the programming effort, merely ensuring the translation process works correctly. So the demo went smoothly: big deal. Does anyone really believe that Apple didn't spend hours tweaking the demo code to ensure that it compiled without a hitch? Pardon my cynicism, but as a former programmer who lived through the switch from the 680x0 platform to the PowerPC and from System 9 to OS X and heard the same BS about how quickly and easily programs could be recompiled using Apple's tools, I'll believe it when I see it happen with real-world code. (And don't get me started on the problems of code optimization.)

dcont, Please update us when you hear anything. I'm having the same issue with round top windows in an animated walkthrough I'm doing, and it's more than aggravating. If it were simply a set of stills, I could fake in the interior in Photoshop, but with an animation that's not an option.

I've been experimenting with Custom RW in preparation for for rendering a 5 min. animated walkthrough on a 2 GHz G5 Dual. According to the RW manual, shadow mapped shadows render faster than raytraced shadows, however, my timing experiments show that clips using raytraced shadows render 30-40% quicker than shadow mapped renders. Am I missing something here, or does raytracing take advantage of the second processor, making it faster than shadow mapping on multiprocessor setups?

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Is there a reliable way to stop an animation rendering besides force-quitting (VW 10.5 Mac)? I've tried nor , and neither work. 2 GHz G5 Dual, OS X 10.3.5

m2v is an mpeg format. The Adobe MPEG encoder will export to .m2v. The simplest way is to Import the MOV into Adobe Premier as a new project then export it to an m2v file.

What is up with the wild variation in animation rendering times? I'm rendering a series of 45 second QT animations. File #1 was rendered three times. Same sheets, same light sources, same textures, same frame size (720x480), same rendering quality, same video compression, quality, and frame rate. First render took 13+ hours, a second 3:24; a third 7:56. File #2, again, same sheets, same light sources, same textures, same frame size, same rendering quality, same video compression, quality, and frame rate. Four renders: 12:56, 10:13, 6:27, 7:31. SW: VW 10.5, Architect, RW, OS X 10.3.5 HW: 2.0 GHz G5 Dual, 512 Mb RAM, 160 GB HD. On the four longest rendering times (13+ hours, 7:56, 12:56, and 10:13), the computer was rebooted at the end of the day, and the render were run overnight (four consecutive nights). On the three shortest render times (3:24, 6:27, 7:31), the computer was NOT rebooted before starting the render, and I did other work in Photoshop and Office on the computer while the renders were taking place. Why the wild variation in rendering times, is this sort of unpredictability normal, and why were the times significantly longer when there was no other activity on the computer? (Note: the computer is not networked, and not connected to the Internet.)

Some OS X maintenance items that might help: repair permissions; rebuild prebindings; clean the Virtual Memory swapfiles; run the cron daily, weekly, and monthly scripts. If you don't want to muck around in Unix in Terminal, you can download a program like Panther Cache Cleaner (shareware) or OnyX (freeware). In VW itself, I noticed a marked improvement in screen redraw and rendering speed when I set "Retain Rendering Model" to "Never" in VW preferences (File > Preferences > VectorWorks Preferences > 3D > Retain Rendering Model). [NB: I'm running VW Architect 10.5.1 and OS X 1.3.5 on a 2 GHz G5 Dual, so YMMV.] You might also try purging unused objects (Edit > Purge unused objects) in the problem file(s).

I am trying to create a walk through presentation of an office. I've created the necessary sheets, but every time I place a sheet in the Edit Animation dialog box, I end up with a negative velocity between it and the previous view, which neither fiddling with the distance between the views or the bead height corrects. I'm sure there's a fairly simple way of getting a smooth slope, like the one shown in the VW manual, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Can someone explain the process to me or point me in the right direction? TIA.

> I also did some speed tests way back when: Andy, not trying to be argumentative, but July 2002 was a long time ago. From the results posted in the link by iboymatt above, it appears that NNA's testing found that dual processor G5s significantly outperform dual processor Xeons. Do you have results from real world tests on current generation equipment that contradict their findings? Also, it appears that the G5 dual results posted on the 3dfluff website are for beta software, so it's hard to judge how realistic the numbers are. Can you point me to performance comparisons using full release versions of the real, working (non-benchmarking) software? (Having written benchmarking software in the past, I tend to doubt the value of benchmarking as an indicator of real world results, not only because it is relatively trivial to tweak a testing setup to produce the outcome one wants, but also because something as simple as changing the compiler used to compile the benchmark program can skew the results by several orders of magnitude.)

> Both of these computers would be very nice to work with. There is no inherent advantage to using a mac with vectorworks and for RenderWorks tasks a 3.2 GHz PC will defininitely be faster than a 2 GHz mac. Andy, are you comparing apples to apples? The Sony has a single processor, while the Mac has dual processors. Are you saying that a 3.2 GHz single processor system will render faster than a 2 GHz dual processor system?

Hello. I work in a small architectural firm that uses a mix of Mac and Windows systems. Recently, a number of clients have asked whether we can provide animations (walk-throughs, flyovers, etc.), so we are planning to purchase a computer system that will be dedicated exclusively to producing high quality renderings and video animations (walk-throughs, flyovers, solar animations, etc.) We have narrowed our choices of hardware to a 2 Ghz PowerMac G5 Dual or a Sony VAIO PCV-RZ54G Pentium 4 3.2GHz. Both computers come with the ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card with 128 Mb VRAM, and will be upgraded to 2 Gb of system RAM. I am wondering which system will be better for its intended purpose. I recognize that Macs have a reputation for being better for graphic-intensive tasks than PCs, however, I'm wondering whether both lab testing and real world experience justify that reputation. Can anyone point me to test results comparing performance on the two platforms or provide anecdotal feedback? TIA.

Has anyone running VW 10 or VW 11 experience long delays when changing layers on a G5 Dual? I have been considering upgrading from a 500 MHz G3 iBook to either a G5 Dual or a 17" Powerbook. Yesterday, however, I swung by the local Apple Store with a copy of VW 11 Viewer and a project file (16.8 Mb), to get a feel for the relative rendering performance of the two machines. After installing the VW Viewer on a 2 GHz G5 Dual and opening up the project file, I rendered the model in Renderworks (no shadows). While the rendering speed did not blow me away, it was reasonably fast. After playing around with the rendered model (rotating, flyover, etc.), I attempted to switch to a different layer (2D view), a task which happens more-or-less instantaneously on my iBook. After 3-4 seconds, the Spinning Beachball of Death (SBOD) appeared, and it was another good 10 seconds before the screen refreshed and the new layer appeared. (Note: I had set Viewer to "Show Active Layer" only.) Needless to say, the delay stunned me, so I tried switching to yet another layer, only to have the SBOD appear again and experience another 5-8 sec delay before the new layer appeared. I repeated this experiment several times, and was confronted by the SBOD and a 5-10 second delay each time. Although the relatively small amout of RAM (512 Mb) may have contributed to the delays, I find it hard to believe that to be a significant factor since no other programs were running on the G5, and my iBook has 384 Mb and layer changes happen more-or-less instantaneously on it. Has anyone else experience these sorts of delays?

The likliest explanation for the performance difference between the EMac and Powerbook is the graphics card: EMacs use the ATI Radeon 9200 w/32 Mb VRAM (200 MHZ DDR), which is a budget card (both in terms of price and performance), while Powerbooks use a high(er) end card (12" = Nvidia GeForce GX Go5200 w/64 Mb VRAM (600 MHz DDR), 15" & 17" = ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 w/64 or 128 MB VRAM (540 MHZ DDR)).