Kaare Baekgaard

If you add fabric bumpmaps yourself, here are some 1000+ fabric textures: http://www.theinspirationgallery.com/wallpaper/ Most of them quite ugly but all of them seamless

I needed to create a rounded, amorphous shape and struggled quite a bit with it in VectorWorks, before I decided to try an old version of Cheetah, I purchased a few years back. I created a basic shape in VectorWorks, exported it to Cheetah through the 3ds format and placed the shape inside a subdivision container in Cheetah. I was able to achieve my goal in no time at all. It was so easy! But wait: Why did I have to go outside VectorWorks at all? I wish there was an intelligent subdivision function in Vectorworks. Some people say, subdivision is not an accurate modeling method, but then design is not always an accurate science, so let us bring it in :-)

I have been asking for an industry series version of VW for designers more than once. The product labelled VW Designer is really just all the tools of the other packages thrown into one - which is not really useful. Shaun I second your request.

I am told, that the rendering engine in Renderworks is from Lightworks. In that case, it would seem logic, that I could take advantage of textures and other content from the Lightworks user site, most of which is provided in the .lwa format, but I cannot. Why shouldn't I? I wish there were an import/export function for this format.

Well you can do it the hard way as demonstrated above or just turn up the contrast of the image in photoshop, use constant reflectivity and turn off cast/receive shadows in the texture dialog. It will do the trick without making renderings heavy and it allows you to place lighting objects behind the screen without effecting the screen image.

Thank you for VW 2008 - a great version, that has boosted our productivity. After much attention to workflow and presentation, hopefully it is time to update the basic drawing and modelling capabilities of the application. In other words a powerpack 2: 1. True 2D bezier curves - with control handles like in Adobe Illustrator. And if possible, control handles on 3D nurbs curves as well. 2. Loft tool with 3 rail curves to give independent control over width and height of cross section. 3. A multible extrude-along-path tool which produces an extrude along path object with more than one cross-section profile, seamlessly blending between them. 4. Unfold objects. I still have to keep an ancient Classic version of Form-Z just to do this. Now with OSX Leopard, I stand to loose that capability. Its pretty basic, so let's get it onboard :-) 5. More tolerance. Even the slightest flaw in a nurbs surface will 'destroy' the object, that it is a part of, and make it useless for solid operations. (This is really a time-killer) Thank you. And by the way: Has anybody ever heard of anybody, who has had any use whatsoever of the Create Fillet Surface Tool? - Na , didn't think so - it is pretty useless. With kind regards Kaare Baekgaard

Just an idea: Use the batch print command and save the print job to PDF-files. The application should ask you, if you want to update viewports upon print. Use the resulting PDF's. You can open the images in full resolution with an image editor by option-clicking on individual images from within Adobe Acrobat - if you dont have Acrobat, you can use the image editor of OSX to crop and resave the PDF's as jpegs.

Im blown away by the Photo Match capability of SketchUp. I have done a lot of photo manipulation in VW - it takes forever and it is not at all accurate. I acknowledge, that ScetchUp is a completely different package, but there are a lot of overlapping areas, where the intuitive approach of SketchUp would suit VW users just fine. How to deal with textures is one example. VW is not exactly drag n' drop simplicity when it comes to visualization.

Oops - forgot: You will have to add longtitutional nurbs points by setting the U degree of the surface to 3-4. Avoid working with more points than you have to.

I have done this with a sailing dinghy. Make an extrude of a bezier curve with no more control points than required - coarsely representing one half of the midsection of the hull. Convert it to a nurbs surface (it should become a single surface). Work on the nurbs points of that surface individually to shape the hull. You can also work with the weight of the individual points - but do so only, when you have to - like in the stem of the boat - as it reduces the overall harmony of the surface. When you are satisfied with the result, mirror the surface to make the full hull and use the 'Create Contours' tool to produce the boat hull lines. The first steps only applies to a sailing boat hull, but you can use the create countours command on any solid.

Only the demo - and it was a few years ago. Never got past confusion, Christiaan.

Christiaan: Sorry for the 'geek' label... it was a cheap joke. But with the new HDRI capability of Renderworks, I must disagree. Renderworks is extremely easy to use. And while it still lacks the sophistication of other rendering platforms, it has caught up tremendously. I do not do a great many exteriors in my line of work, but here is an example of a small solar cell lamp: http://homepage.mac.com/kaarebaekgaard/.Pictures/Solarlamp.jpg The deal is, that there is absolutely no lighting of this scene - lighting and reflections comes only from the HDRI map. How hard can that be?

>Indeed. For that you'll want to use Artlantis instead:< No you won't... Renderworks can do the job and Artlantis is for geeks ;-) With the new HDRI capabilities of Renderworks lighting the scene has actually transformed fram an artform into something that anyone can do. Buy a decent HDRI skydome. Load it into the scene and delete all directional lights. Play around with the parameters of the HDRI texture and render the scene a few times to get it right. Thats all. For vegetation you will need to use image props. A good place to get those is at the homesites of artificial plant manufacturers or resellers. There are at least a dozen of these on the net, that have neat pictures in a decent resolution with neutral backgrounds, that can be made invisible when creating the imageprops. You still need to train, but it has become a lot easier.

Here is a tent which was created for an illustration by a combination of lofting and create surface from curves. http://homepage.mac.com/kaarebaekgaard/.Pictures/tent.jpg

If you need to construct a real life tent, I suggest, that you break the job down into creating the 5 different 1/4 side types individually. As far as I can see, it is 5 if the tent is to be manufactured as a single piece of canvas. Loft each side from the curves, that define the side(s), intersections, midsection and top point. You may have to break each side into two or more lofts. You can also try with the create surface from curves comand, but it is my experience, that it does not give adequate control. If the tent is ideed constructed as several individual elements , each section can be lofted from two nurbs profiles - a square, a superelipse and as top a 3D locus point. The sagging will come from how high you place the middle profile. Islandmons approach is OK for illustration purposes, but does not take into account how canvas behaves under tension. Good luck

I design lamps, so I have made a gazillion atempts to create the perfect frosted glass - and failed. Instead I have a collection, that I switch between in order to use the best solution for the job at hand. If it is lighted or backlighted I use a texture with a combination of translucency and transparency - both set rather low. Or a white texture with constant reflectivity combined with a little transparency. In other cases I use a white texture with finely patterned transparency map. In other again I use the simple glass texture with medium transmission and high roughness setting. Hope you can find what you need. If you find the ultimate solution, please share it.

read 'as' - not 'af'

I have it in a custom workspace - I dont think it is in the standard workspace. If you cannot find it within the workspace editor af a menu item - then maybe I got it from a third party? Her is one with a script - actually maybe it is the one I have transformed into a menu item. http://www.aetherlumina.com/vw/ At the bottom of the page. Sorry for the confusion.

Is it an idea to send the backup file instead of the full? I have noticed, that they are less than half the size of the full version.

With the new rendering capabilities, I should be more than happy - and I am. Only to render something, I have to model it first. After about 50 consecutive error messages I went to sleep last night and I had a dream. I had a dream, that one day I would comand a solid operation - and my chosen CAD application would give me a solid operation - not an error message. I had a dream, that one fine day I could point to an edge with the fillet edge tool - and that edge would be filleted. I had a dream, that one day I could produce any curve - 2D or 3D - by adjusting little handles attached to control points along that curve. That when a curve is offset, I would not get legions of needless extra controlpoints - but a new, clean curve. I had a dream, that one day a man would be judged by the span of his imagination - not by the limitations of his tools. That a man could actually model anything he could percieve and that he did not have to spend his time finding workarounds and compromises. That one fine day Vectorworks Designer would provide stable, useable modeling tools for designers - instead of useless leftovers from other professional fields, yeah I had a dream. I love to model stuff, but man I hate those error- and failure messages.

http://www.lightworks-user.com/hdri_starter_collection.htm

Faceting? Are we not talking about a nurbs-based 3D objects nowadays? Do you convert objects to meshes for some reason? In that case - don't. Nurbs updates and renders fast. If the base 2D profile object in an extrude is too complex, then the 3D will be as well. In that case use the Simplify comand on the 2D geometry within the extrude.

Even simple sections takes forever to generate. I think there must be a bug there.

Well now I feel really stupid - and perhaps I am... The limited amount of shadows come from a HDRI map, I had set tol 'low' quality. The same scene rendered with higher quality setting produces no discernible sharp edges. The may be there, but I cannot distingush them. The rendering time, however is slow.

Hi again Well I should learn to investigate a little before I make a statement. Please disregard everything I have written so far. I was cheated by the ceiling and a single wall set to not cast any shadows. Just did a rendering of the interior of an entirely closed building - and nothing 'burned' through. - Oops The bit about the sharp shadows is somewhat correct, however. It seems there is an array of directional lights, a limited amount, each of which cast a sharp, graduated shadow onto the scene. Is that true HDRI? As to the last question: Well - it was interesting, but I feel a little violated afterwards... Yesterday evening I did a rendering of a wall lamp, where I used the HDRI map only as an environment/reflection map - and I used traditional lighting of the scene. You can do that through the set layer lighting option menu item. The result was breathtakingly nice - rendered fast and was so easy to control. Sorry I cannot show the result, as it is a product in development