Kaare Baekgaard

I sometimes use a transparency map to make a blurred transition between the ground plane and an HDRI background or a tree-line. the transparency map can be made from a screen dump from inside VW using the gradient tool on a temporary 2D object. Also: To reduce the size of a circular ground plane and get the correct horizon height, I sometimes make the groundplane slightly bowl-shaped, as it is the case in this rendering: The downside of this is, that the height of the bowl has to be adjusted for every new perspective. I wish there was a proper ground plane function in VW like there is in most other CAD applications.

Hi Bruce Have you considered HDRI? Image environment lighting has become significantly faster in RW2011 and the shadows are as soft as the map allows for.

You are right, bcd - there is no camera unless it has been linked first. Perhaps a wish list item - it would be nice to have. In the mean time I found a nice use for the existing camera: It is actually pretty easy to do a stereoscopy using RW cameras with viewports. Not what I was looking for but rather cool. It works with HDRI backgrounds too as I found out.

Thanks for the tips.

I have not used Renderworks cameras before. Is there any way to create a camera, that aligns to the present perspective view? I can do this with a spotlight (Set light to view), so it seems natural, that I should be able to do it with a camera, but I cannot find the correct procedure. Does anyone know this - or a decent workaround?

What is a Poch?? My dictionary doesn't tell.

Yup, it cannot be done. In illustrator it takes two bezier control points to create a perfect egg. In VW it takes at least 6 to get an approximation. The perfect egg is recognized as an off center cross-section of a torus. Here i put a 2D approximation side by side with a nurbs curve cross-section of a torus. If you cover the perfect egg with a hand, the other does not look too bad. Uncover it and it looks just wrong in comparison:

I don't know much about this format, but two different prototype manufacturers have asked me to submit 3D files in STEP/STP. I cannot find an inexpensive, reliable program to translate files, that can be written from VW, so I wish for an export filter

Don't get me wrong: Vectorworks 2D beziers are OK for most daily uses - that is until you need to draw something really, really complicated like the sideview cross-section of an egg. Try as you may, it cannot be done.

I wish for a virtual mirror along a major axis of my choise, so that anything I do on one side is instantly replicated on the other - in real time, including changes made with the 2D or 3D reshape tools. Imagine how helpful that would be, when working with the 2D foundation of a swept object - or anything symmetric. When I turn off the virtual mirror, I get the choice to keep the mirrored geometry or delete it.

I tried my original approach. It works for me... https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t4Gogq7Sb_Y/Tedfhy7tlvI/AAAAAAAAAFM/13DuDs3ZUnA/3dreflection.png

And while we're at it: A simple drop shadow feature would really pep up those presentations.

Hi Dave I never considered using this feature. Do I uncheck the 'Emit Light' option only or both?

Texture mapping in VW2011 doesnt work on non rectangular 3D objects. Try doing a spherical-, cylindrical- or planar mapping on a complex nurbs surface, and you will end up pulling your hair. So here is a trick: Create a square3D surface. Add solid the square object with the object, that you are trying to map onto. Now the mapping tool will align to the square object and the solid can be mapped easily. Enter the solid and delete the square object - and presto! the correct mapping remains with the remaining geometry.

Try mapping a texture onto anything other than square objects and you are left at the mercy of the Atribute Mapping tool. Not intuitive at all. I hated the old texture mapping dialogue, but now I actually prefer it over the new. I suggest a mapping mode, that is relative to the present view. Whatever view you are in, you would click on a tab and see the texture perpendicular to the view and centered on the object to be mapped. Get the idea?

Strange. Ill try the link again. https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BxL3Oyph55RRMzNkYjYxYjQtN2FlMi00YjEwLWE1OWYtMzk4ZWFjZWNjZmMz&sort=name&layout=list&num=50 Her are the settings. Size is in mm. Colour: Reflection: Bump:

This is my best bet yet: It renders slow because of the blur setting. The file can be downloaded in the texture share forum.

BrushedSteel.vwx: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BxL3Oyph55RRMzNkYjYxYjQtN2FlMi00YjEwLWE1OWYtMzk4ZWFjZWNjZmMz&hl=da&authkey=CPu0yYUD

Only an idea for a workaround: Create a very large image prop containing an image of sky and horizon. Disable autorotating when creating the prop. Duplicate and place 4 identical props around the scene to box it in. Disable shadowcasting in the texture dialogue of the props. Give each duplicate a separate class. Use section viewports instead of ordinary viewports and section somewhere in the empty space between the 'image prop box' and the model. These sections should now mimic regular viewports with the correct settings in the OIP dialogue. For every viewport disable the classes of the imageprops, that you do not want in the scene, leaving only the one, that provides the reflections. For all regular perspective viewports, disable the classes of all image props. Let me know if it works alright.

I am happy, that there are persons defending the quality of textures in Renderworks 2011. That must mean, that I have not yet uncovered all the posibilities. The Getting Started Guide is a help for sure. Maybe someone will some day produce a 'Getting Finished Guide', which is really what I need, or ? even better ? create and share some quality libraries. The ones, I have produced, are not there yet. In another thread I challenged users of this forum to produce a good 'brushed stainless steel'. Noone has answered that challenge, which has led me to believe, that it cannot be done. I hope, I am wrong.

Not a lot of noise, it would seem, so I guess I will have to get used to the limitations. Unfortunately I have little use for mirrorballs. I just want decent basic materials, that still look OK in closeups and most of all I want parameters, that relate to the real world. Noise settings like 'Cell Voronoi' doesn't really compute with me. I prefer settings called 'Leather' or 'Brushed Steel' or 'Plaster' etc. I suspect that the german owners of NNA have intentionally withheld an adequate rendering solution from Vectorworks, so that we are more likely to buy Cinema4D.

After a lot of trial and error - mostly the latter - I have arrived at the conclusion, that textures in RW2011 are not, what I had hoped for, and that the leap forward, that the marketing of the new rendering engine seemed to promise, is based on less than truthful premises. But I have not seen much comment to that effect in this forum. Are you architect/building guys and girls completely happy with the textures provided with Renderworks? If not, make a little noise here, wouldya?

I draw all 2D objects in screen plane, but I end up in a layer plane view when I enter an extruded object to edit the 2D content. If NNA decides to add a preference to switch off layer planes (which they should) - perhaps they would be so kind as to place me in top plan view by default when entering the 2D content of 3D objects. Another thing: I cannot do a tapered extrude using a 2D screen plane object. No particular reason - just can't. I have to change the 2D object to layer plane - then do the tapered extrude. Please, NNA, just let the application do the darn thing. I don-t care if the 2D content is converted into layer plane as long as I don't find out if I don't want to.

So I am reponding to myself now - I must get a life... Just spend a couple of hours trying to get a decent brushed metal. I think, that it cannot be done in RW2011. Got all sort of exotic noise setting - like cell voronoi, poxo, stupl or sema, but none that denotes anything useful or that can be stretched or tweaked into - say - brushed stainless steel. So I challenge anyone to produce a decent brushed metal and if succesful, share the result. I can't do it. Can you?

While the new rendering engine is significantly better than the previous, the same cannot be said about all the textures. Metal is a real stinker. I have experimented with it for hours upon hours and still I fail to produce a decent texture with the 'metal' setting. Best bet for polished or stainless metal is the mirror setting. I have seen the texture dialogue from C4D so I know, that we are not getting the full package - but for metal something vital must be missing. Can we have that missing part, please? I have requested the 'glow' setting for years. Now, that we have it, I find that exceptionally hard to control. The texture preview is little help: It is not reproducing the texture as it will appear in the model - and it is located on a different level in the dialogue, so it takes a lot of time to tweak the settings. Can we have the preview at all levels please - and a better preview? Glow factors of 1% and 100% looks pretty much the same in the preview window of the present version. The noise bump dialogue offers a host of new options, which can produce very satisfactory results, but the dialogue is not very intuitive. The biggest issue here is the Global scale setting. Maybe it doesn't work at all? The fact is, that I cannot get the scale small enough. Any setting below 1% is rounded up or down - and apparently I need all settings to be somewhere between 0,001 and 0,1%. So can we please have support for decimals here? Last but not least: What's the deal with the built-in textures, that comes with RW2011? How long did it take NNA to create all of them - 20 minutes? The point is, that they suck. I use hours to get my textures right - and I suppose, that so does all of NNA's customers. Wouldn't it be better, if NNA just did them right?