Jump to content

frv

Member
  • Posts

    121
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by frv

  1. Thanks Zoomer, for the tip checking out German forums. @shorter, maybe a workflow issue but only someone with good Archicad knowledge would know. I have 35 years experience with VW and at the office there are some who have a workflow going that is hard to beat but still frustrating. Too many BIM related maintenance and work-arounds in the workflow compared to Revit (which we work with as well) and Archicad ( as we assume) .
  2. Hi, I have a small office and work often for a larger architectural firm as well. I am looking into switching to Archicad. I need a smoother workflow to IFC and BIM related projects. I have plenty years experience with VW. We have reached the limits of what you can achieve with VW and IFC exchange. But still, unacceptable long refresh times (hours !) of viewports and a number of rather serious IFC problems. Is there anybody out there who has done big projects with Archicad can give some advise. Is IFC exchange as cumbersome as VW. Does Archicad also take for ever to update a set of viewports. Does Archicad geometry also easily loose data and settings. Does Archicad also misses important geometry when exporting to IFC. In other words, are VW problems basically the way to is for all BIM CAD software or is VW really so far behind.
  3. Just tried https://www.ilovepdf.com. Its free actually. That's how I will work from now on. Had a 129Mb pdf file for a permit just reduced to 8,7Mb with ilovepdf. Could not find any difference really even looking closely at both files. Thanks for the tip Christiaan, this is going to make things really easy being able to just mail rather large VW pdf's with dozens of pages compressed to under 10Mb.
  4. I do all building modelling in VW and all terrain, vegetation and so on in C4D Updating a building model from VW to C4D is very easy. I do understand that for those that don't have the workload to provide for the extra costs of having to subscribe to C4D and Corona render it's probably best to get as much done in VW as possible. But its very frustrating to know that all that VW provides in terms of rendering is just an enormous hassle and set back. If I had to cut back on costs I would go the Unreal Engine route. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmzWP6o2cw73moEF7LO_KvA has great video's/tutorials. He did mostly C4D and moved on to Unreal.
  5. Just a little movie to show at what speed C4D and Corona (CPU render engine) renders in the C4D preview window. Imagine that Redshift which is a GPU renderengine should even be much faster and imagine than what the speed is in VW. The movie is downsampled to reduce file size. Actual size is about a quarter of a 5k monitor. test render v3.mov
  6. Thanks Virtualenviron, great animation on an iMac. Chaos Scatter is basicly the same as Mograph. But then with some functionality without the need for effectors. Chaos Scatter just scatters assets along a spline, within a volume or on a surface with all sorts of parameters, If your interest is animation go or Unreal Engine. Incredible what you can do these days with a 4000€ PC and free software : https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/depicting-dogfights-how-real-time-rendering-helped-an-indian-fighter-jet-series-take-off
  7. Yes, Mograph is a great tool and is part of C4D 2024. C4D is now a Allin package and no longer available without Mograph. I think Chaos Scatter is basicly Mograph with a UI geared to rendering with Corona. Chaos Scatter is easier and more straight forward to use than Mograph.
  8. You can do a merge in C4D with only the polygon and things will be automatic from there on. If you planted the shrub in relation to the polygon the hight is automatically adjust. I would say that import / export stuff and updating iterations from VW to C4D is a non-issue and a negligable part of the workflow. I would say however there is a little learning curve before you know where menu's and commands are located. But it's never difficult if you use C4D just to render VW models with Redshift or Coronarender. Something else is mastering image making in general in terms of lighting, composite and materials. If that does not have your deep interest then even with the best tools the image will never be captivating.
  9. And the final render. Straight from C4D/Coronarender without any postprocing. If I want this field of grass again in a VW project all I have to do is draw a 3D polygon in Vectorworks and export it along with a model of a building and import it in C4D. Then in C4D I just assign the 3D polygon to the Chaos Scatter elements. You can do that in one click. That's it. Chaos Scatter takes care of the rest. I can still switch off leaves or flowers at will. Even better would be to draw all fields, roads and so on in C4D since it's so much easier to do so in C4D than in VW. Especially curved surfaces in VW can become messy and a hassle where in C4D its super easy. I think I stole the thread. I hope though for those wondering how to upgrade your work with great images you will experiment outside Vectorworks, an application wholly unsuitable for rendering but great for engineering and design. In the near future things will become even much more interactive, have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7tp4eg0ax8
  10. Just have to show off a little. First is a 10 min. render. Second image 50 sec. render. 636064 placed symbols or as they are named in C4D instances for grass, flowers, leaves, daisy's, clover etc. I can actually render this more or less in real time in C4D using a Mac Studio. File is about 15Mb. All assets Graswald. All ground cover is generated by Chaos Scatter based on noise patterns set by me. Size of the terrain is 15x15m. The size does not matter all that much though. 50x50m would render in about the same time. I also tested Redshift but I think its not really faster or maybe slower to set up the way I would like an image or render to look.
  11. Thanks Dave. Great to read that Redshift will be updated in the near future and so much faster. In general though I think that for rendering VW will most likely never be the ultimate solution. It's an engineering application. Geometry in VW carries far more (BIM) data than for example C4D. So I doubt it is a good plan to add millions of polygons for vegetation inside VW. Even with proxies things become slow to work with.
  12. Thanks Kevin, I did use Frog for a while as well. Maxtree has fantastic vegetation. Only their libraries are a bit messy. Often assets found in one volume are the same as in other volumes. Wish Maxtree would gather types of vegetation instead of all these weird mixes. Maxtree is very high polygon though. With Redshift most likely not a huge problem. If VW rendered as fast as C4D/Redshift it would still be hard since VW can't handle lots of high poly geometry. The sedum roof image above is 1.24Gb in C4D. VW would crash. I hope Unreal will be an option in the near future. All Maxtree libraries are already converted to Unreal (and Redshift). So my investment in Maxtree will be good for a while. Here are the links for vegetation I mentioned.: https://maxtree.org https://www.graswald3d.com
  13. @Kevin K I use Chaos Scatter that comes Coronarender. Works a bit like Spreadsheet. I have all Laubwerk libraries and Surface Spread 2. But since Graswald and Maxtree trees/assets are so much better I have acquired many of their libraries and scatter their assets with Chaos Scatter now. A lot easier. Grass with Graswald assets. For vegetation I think Maxtree and Graswald are the best if you want the ultimate photoreal images. One of the reasons for me to use Coronarender is all the assets you get as well with a Coronarender subscription through Chaos Cosmos like cars, people, vegetation etc. and a lot of materials/textures. Redshift is going the same way now so I might switch to Redshift which is faster in C4D. I have no clue why redshift is so slow in a VW viewport. In C4D it's really fast. Renders in seconds really. I just got the sedum library from Maxtree (for vegetation roofs) and did a quick test, see attachment. Scatter assets with Chaos Scatter using noise maps to create patterns with the different colours and hight.
  14. Also have a look at this survey: https://www.cgarchitect.com/features/articles/450b3b68-2022-architectural-visualization-rendering-engine-survey-results
  15. I am lucky to see Twinmotion, Lumion and C4D side by side at a busy architectural office. They ask me for C4Dcorona renders to work with on websites and plan presentations. They go for Lumion and Twinmotion for all animations. Interesting maybe is that most animations and renders are made in less than a day. I work on a Mac Studio Ultra 128Gb. So Twinmotion and Lumion are not really an option. I am contemplating a move to PC and do all my presentations in Lumion or invest some time in Unreal Engine.
  16. @VIRTUALENVIRONS I am an architect but also a part time illustrator. My illustrator-clients are architects and developers and they for sure see the difference and are willing to pay for it. Its seems to come down to the idea that taking a VW model to another dedicated render application is a major bottleneck. Export problems and all. Here at the office 15 architects all working in VW, none of them renders in VW. We use Twinmotion, Lumion and C4D/Corona or Redshift. Exports take a few seconds. Updating models is a none-issue, fantastic animations in Lumion and Twinmotion and high end renders in C4D. All these apps have great tutorials by the developers and by users on the countless YouTube channels. I am rendering 5mb VW models in 4Gb C4D models with millions of instances for vegatation, people, cars and what not. With a few clicks I can assign countless plants to grow in generated patterns from a simple VW surface. I am not advertising Chaos or have some interest in any render app. but for those interested Creative Lighting has a free webinar on rendering and the quality of light: https://www.chaos.com/archviz-masterclass?utm_campaign=Chaos-2023-H2-Creative-Lighting-Masterclass&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter2491&utm_source=hs_email
  17. Thanks Line-Weight True, there will be a certain group of users who are happy to use VW for their A to Z workflow. It will save some money as well. A large group of clients do not care or would not like to pay extra if you would provide a higher level of illustration or animations. But for me in-app rendering has the disadvantage though that you have to add a lot of geometry inside a VW file (surroundings and vegetation) just to render. I rather keep my VW files as simple as possible, focused on engineering and BIM and with as few rendered viewports as possible.
  18. @Lineweight The process you describe for updating a set of window frames would take far less than a minute to export and merge the update in C4D. That's not the problem or a timesaver in VW. The amount of vegetation I usually have for VW projects to render in C4D exceeds what can properly be done in VW. That's one of the reason why for me Enscape would not work as well. I tried Enscape and its nice but for the subscription costs I can do much better with other apps. Just added another image of a house I am building right now. I really have no clue how I can do such an image in VW thinking workflow and quality.
  19. Thanks Pat, The image size I usually render is 5000x4000 and would take several minutes to render. Don't know why here at the forum it comes out at such a low res. At 1000x500 you have realtime interactive rendering in C4D/redshift(gpu) and even Corona (cpu). This is not about render speed at all. It's about workflow and image quality. It just hurts to see the struggle VW users go through for the mediocre results they seem to be happy with. Would like to see what you came up with in VW with Redshift though.
  20. Just to get an idea about why I think rendering in VW is a waist of time. See attachment. I was experimenting a little in C4D / Coronarender. Took maybe 15 minutes to generate scattered flowers and some grass. I placed only the trees but all the rest is generated by C4D / Coronarender. Render took less than 5 minutes. Clouds are generated as well and produce shadows. Btw Enscape has the same cloud generator by Chaos. Sounds all like advertisement. But I know you can do this more or less as easily in other apps. In VW however this image would be a nightmare to model or render if at all possible.
  21. Yes Dave, that is a good one. Did that a few years ago for the elevations of a big project I modeled and rendered in Sketchup. Good about it is that you don't need to drag and drop and scale each iteration. But I now just provide for technical engineering models and drawings and add a few good renders made with C4D and Coronarender and everybody is super happy.
  22. If not for free, a dedicated render app compared to VW is so much easier and quicker in the overall workflow that the price does not matter. I tried Enscape and even though the quality is not fantastic I was able to have a project rendered in less than an hour (rendertimes just seconds) even though I had zero experience with Enscape. I would love to see Enscape in a vieuwport. VW managed to slow down Redshift to rendertimes as they where in the previous century. In C4D Redshift is interactivly rendering while modeling. VW could streamline VW by improving shaded view and hidden line further and skip all other renderoptions and 99,9% of users would not mind.
  23. I often feel sorry for VW users who go through the hassle and hardship to get a decent render out of VW. In Twinmotion, Lumion, C4D with Corona or Redshift, Unreal Engine you can get the most compelling renders in no time at all. A high res 5000x4000 render in C4D with Corona renders in about 5 minutes. You can add countless trees, people, cars or any vegetation in a fraction of the time you would spend in VW. VW like Revit is not for presentation, it's for engineering. Shaded view is for modelling. How can you confront a client with a VW render while the competition is doing realtime rendering at photorealistic quality for years already. Its not the costs, the apps you need are basically for free and very easy to learn.
  24. I made this image in Enscape in a few minutes for a client. Grass was generated, trees by Enscape. Also somehow nice that trees move in the wind. Nice touch that is more entertaining than I thought. I got the people from 3D warehouse. The lines are done in Enscape and you can actually finetune those outlines with some finesse. Something that stands out as a quality to me that most other render solutions don't have with this ease of use. I deleted Enscape trial for now. Mostly because I don't like plugins for rendering within VW. It slows everything down. Typical is that I needed to use the Terminal app to delete Enscape.
  25. This weekend tried it on my MacBook Air m1. 16Gb. Actually was easy to use and the results were ok as well. Lots of crashes though and had some weird alterations on my 3D model. Plus •easy to use, good documentation and help •results are ok and easy to finetune •sky is great, real clouds and no need for hdri's •some AI here and there going on, for example grass is generated just by naming a material grass, wild grass or tall grass.. At nighttime the placed artificial lights switch on. Minus •Opening files and starting VW is really a lot slower since every time Enscape has to load as well. Since Enscape crashes a lot this is frustrating. •Placing/scattering assets is (very, very )slow compared to dedicated apps like C4D, Lumion, Twinmotion and so on. •Scattering assets inside Vectorworks is not really there compared to dedicated apps like C4D, Lumina and so on. Larger projects with lots of vegetation are not possible because of this in my view •Expensive for the kind of render you get •Me working occasionally on my laptop at home is not an option without paying much more. Enscape limits installs on one system with the most affordable subscription. I work with VW models in C4D and Corona render. Exports to C4D takes less than seconds. Placing/scattering assets and setting up a scene for render can be done as quick or far quicker compared to Enscape. The quality renders, assets and materials are far better for Coronarender. Looking at Enscape pricing I could not afford to have it aside C4D/Corona as well. Francois
×
×
  • Create New...