LJ TMS

I've run into this when setting up a new Vision computer but never had a chance to work back on it to file a bug report. I believe if you install Vision before installing the MA connectivity driver, grandma is removed from the provider list. If you install connectivity driver before Vision, no problems. The fix as Mark pointed out is to reinstall Vision again. I assume something has changed with Vision over the years and the connectivity driver hasn't been updated by MA to reflect it. The driver hasn't been updated in a long time (5 years?) and is still called ESP Vision connection. The driver is available on MA Lighting website, click Software + Release Notes, scroll to the bottom and find "grandMA ESP Vision connection 1.220"

Awesome, thank you very much! Updated OP attachment to include Rigging & Event Design toolset icons.

Yearly thread to please add the Spotlight menu items & toolsets to the Designer workspace. Or create an 'Everything' workspace. This doesn't require any engineering since users can create it themselves (but shouldn't have to). Previous threads... 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015, 2014, 2010 Also bumping last years JIRA Enhancement Requests... VE-99189 - Add Spotlight menus & tools to Designer workspace VE-99190 - Allow selecting built-in Tool Set icons for custom Tool Sets in the Workspace Editor  How to build a Designer + Spotlight workspace in VW 2020 1. Create a duplicate of the default Designer workspace and name it. 2. Add the Spotlight menus & commands. Here is a compare of the Designer vs Spotlight workspaces in VW2020. Add the green highlighted commands on the right side of the compare window to your workspace (except the Architectural submenu in Spotlight is already included under AEC in Designer). 3. Go to the Tools>Palettes and add the Dimension tools to your Basic toolset. The list of tools to add are on lines 941-947. 4. Add new tool sets for Lighting, Rigging, & Event Design. The list of tools to add are on lines 951-997. 5. Download the Lighting toolset icon here. Download the Rigging & Event Design icons here. Attached is a Designer+Spotlight_2020.vww workspace with all the above changes. Windows users, navigate to and place the file in C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Nemetschek\Vectorworks\2020\Workspaces. Re-open VW and select it under Tools>Workspaces. Designer+Spotlight_2020.vww

Prior to Vision being owned by Vectorworks, ESP Vision was it's own thing from a company based in Vegas. If I were to guess the reason for the rock musicians, it was mainly marketed more to that side of the entertainment industry. People are about the only objects I don't import from VW and manually add on the Vision side. Since they are low-polygon, they won't slow rendering to a crawl like that old VW human figure tool that used about a billion polygons. I definitely agree, VW+Vision should have a better selection of people to drop in.

Yep, deleting the textures folder will remove all textures from the geometry (obviously backup the vwx first so you can always get back the original library w/ textures). After viewing the 3D components of some of the symbols after removing textures, it looks like many of them have colors set (amps dark gray, cymbals yellow, etc). This script by Pat Stanford (Convert Objects in Symbol to ByClass) would help you achieve your all white look. Since everything is on the "None" class, running that would convert the symbol contents to "By Class" with a white fill. You would just need to place an instance of each symbol on the Design Layer to run the script against (still much faster than editing each symbol individually).

@gmulder You can also add a dropdown to the top toolbar to quickly toggle the setting.

There's a field at the bottom of the Object Info palette where you can type a name in for any object.

No problem, glad to help!

I actually recently encountered the same issue with a lighting plot originally drawn in VW2017 and exported to Vision via MVR in VW2019. Exporting MVR showed all the fixtures in the MVR export dialog, but only the geometry came through on Vision import (and ESC worked as expected). I stumbled on a solution while prepping to file a bug report... copy/paste everything to a new file. Turn on all your classes (if you have multiple layers, you'll need to do each individually), Select All (Ctrl+A), Copy (Ctrl+C), start a new file in 2019, and Paste in Place (Ctrl+Alt+V). Export MVR and everything came through for me.

Individual fixture geometry can be turned off without doing so globally. In the Scene Graph, if you expand the dropdown of the fixture one level below it's name (called "base"), select it, then uncheck "Visible" in the Properties window, the fixture geometry will no longer appear.

So if I understand correctly, you could use whatever controls you wanted to map the main texture properly to the object in VW (map type, scale, H offset, V offset, rotation), send to Vision, then replace out the bump/reflectivity/alpha/normal textures and they will match up to however the main texture is mapped?

Can you explain the process to do this? I can give this a shot if @scottmoore wants to send me a few of the images used? @bbudzon I see where to assign textures in the Materials dropdown of Properties but how would you go about mapping correctly on the object (map type, scale, H offset, V offset, rotation) that you have in the VW Render tab?

Just dropped a few random symbols into a VW file and sent to Vision via MVR and everything looks great!

@scottmoore Hey Scott, one item for clean up I noticed. In the 2D component of your 5' Grand Piano (Glossy & Matte) symbols, there are 900 polygons that can be removed from the curved portion of the frame.

@scottmoore These are awesome symbols Scott! The modeling strikes a nice balance of complex enough to look good while simple enough to maintain speed and the textures look great!

Well that would explain it. No red astrick indicating a required field next to Phone, and I know I didn't fill that in last time I tried to submit. @Rob Books Did you fill this field when you tested the form?

@nickvaphiadis If you can't find any objects nearby, it may be the rear surface of your video panels if they have very little depth. You could try giving them more depth so the rear surface isn't as close to the front surface. Or give them an extrusion of 0 so there is no rear surface. The further distance you have the camera away from two surfaces Z-fighting, the further apart they need to be from each other to prevent it.

Hey Rob, can you clarify... does this mean you found no problems with the form, or that you found problems and it is now fixed?

I had this issue as well when I last tried to make a fixture request. I ended up putting a fixture request in the VSS area and specifying I needed Vision profiles. https://serviceselect.vectorworks.net/support/fixturerequestform

Love this thread and definitely count me in!

@hbeach Thanks for sharing! Looks like the results are really good, but duplicating of work is something I try to minimize at all costs. The interoperability of VW & Vision is pretty good (with the notable exception of DLVP's). I might have to give Capture a test run someday.

Oops missed the multicircuit bit, my bad!

To me the problem is both VW & Vision excel at what the other is not very good at. Vision for volumetric rendering. VW for the rest (environmental & indirect lighting, textures with reflectivity and transparency, etc). While some might say that makes them complementary, I'd argue it makes it impossible to produce a great entertainment lighting render from either software. Ideally I'd love for VW to make some huge strides in volumetric lighting so VW is the solution for concept renders & lighting plots. Vision should stay focused on real-time rendering for previz where performance is the most important aspect (although I'd love texture transparency & reflectivity). I've considered adding C4D to my arsenal, but like Scott, I rarely have enough time to incorporate yet another software into my workflow for most shows. @hbeach How's your experience working with Capture? Can you export your VW model w/ fixtures into it? Or are you recreating everything from scratch? Your renders look great!

Yup, unfortunately my experience mirrors Scott, and it's been a problem for way too long. I remember seeing a couple forum posts that nicely illustrated the problems with rendering beams within VW, and after searching of course they were both written by @scottmoore. @hbeach Those Capture renders look great! Nice job!

You can accomplish this by making it a blue symbol (or group symbol) during symbol creation. This will allow you to include plug-in objects (Lighting Instruments) within the symbol. 1. Draw your 4 Lighting Devices and bar 2. Select them, Create Symbol, and check "Convert to Group" in Other Options Now if you look at the symbol you created in the Resource Browser, the symbol name will be blue. When you insert a new instance of this symbol in the file, it will insert as a group. Ungroup it and you'll have four Lighting Instruments and a bar! test-4-bar-2.vwx