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It can be done. LightWorks offers various packages including an AEC package for those CAD products that want it and obviously Nemetschek doesn't. BTW IMSI has TurboCAD which is cheaper than VectorWorks and it has radiosity, volumetric lighting and luminances and TurboCAD 10 will also have hdri soon.

I for one have bought TC10 and won't be upgrading VW until Renderworks is significantly improved.

Shaun

[ 05-04-2004, 02:58 AM: Message edited by: Shaun ]

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Dave Donley or BaRa:

Just to chip in on the bitchin here but radiosity or lack there of has been a subject on the renderworks forum for quite sometime. And it appears that lightworks has all the goodies most power users want but Vectorworks still will not incorperate them I guess because of " cost issues ". So my question is this. Why can't Vectorworks offer different renderworks packages like a basic one and a deluxe one with radiosity, HDRI, a decent animation system, etc. ? I for one would pay hundreds of dollars for a deluxe version way before going to C4D which costs, last time I looked at it +/_ $1,800.00 dollars with the advanced rendering package which has radiosity. And it still is not a fluid solution to what we all want. It seems like the Vectorworks marketing guys are missing a golden oportunity here to make even moe money instead of having their users go to another software program. Are they not not looking at these message boards? Who are they talking too? The sketchy/ artsy renderers in R11 are nice but I would much rather have the elusive Radiosity.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

quote:

Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

So my question is this. Why can't Vectorworks offer different renderworks packages like a basic one and a deluxe one with radiosity, HDRI, a decent animation system, etc. ?

I will say the idea has been discussed. But NNA has a finite number of programmers, and it takes time to bring new ones on board and bring them "up to speed", and this slows down the others in the process as they help the new folks. Moreover, we programmers tend to specialize, so (for example) I would take a while to be able to work on printing issues. NNA management has to decide what are the best things we programmers can spend time on to improve the product, and as of VW 11.0, the assumed benefit of adding a deluxe rendering package hasn't been as favorable as other improvements.

This may change in future, no promises one way or the other. But we're certainly not sticking our fingers in our ears and saying, "Nah-na-na-na-nah, we can't hear you..."

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quote:

Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

C4D which costs, last time I looked at it +/_ $1,800.00 dollars with the advanced rendering package which has radiosity. [/QB]

You can get it for half that with the plug in. It is not perfect but it does work VERY well. If you make the money commitment and have a few days to get up to speed you will be producing much better renderings in much less time and time=money. I agree with NNA. I think ther programmers time is much better spent in improving and adding features that the vast majority of users will use. VectorWorks/RenderWorks is a great CAD package with good rendering capabilities for a CAD package. If you need advanced rendering or animation capabilities you should consider a package that is designed to do that. Plus the lightworks engine is so slow without GI I can't imagine what it would be like with it.

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Has a generic file exchange format that includes textures ever been discussed in the CAD software industry? I read that a couple of new formats have been included in the VW export menu. Is this for geometry only?

If NNA is not planning to implement radiosity, perhaps you would consider an 'export all textures' as a submenu item for all 3D export functions, thus making a folder of textures?

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  • 1 month later...

If you go to the lightworks web page there are many cad programs that use the more advanced lightworks LWA render engine and LWA enabled textures. There really is no mention of the render engine vwks chose to use. I myself cannot see how it would so dificult or take up so much programing time to implement the more advanced lightworks render engine as aposed to the "basic" renderworks engine. Plus there are all those free bitchen textures for the LWA enabled renderer. And in regards to AndyM's comment about the lightworks engine being so slow, this is true, but perhaps the LWA advanced renderer is much faster than the "basic" render engine we are stuck with. i would think this would be true since it appears to me to be a newer superior product that lightworks seems to promote and showcase as their best. Seems like VWKS chose the wrong path to go down.

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Radiosity is very slow on even the fastest rendering engines. If they added radiosity I bet a lot of the same users that have been yelling for it would come back screaming about 14 hour render times. The majority of users don't have dual G5s or dual xeons and radiosity rendering isn't something to be done casually on a 1GHz G4. Radiosity isn't a magic feature that will make renderings look great. You can get very good results with and without it. Radiosity will make it possible to make the jump from "absolutely great quality" to "absolutely unbelievable" but there is a huge price to pay in rendering time. If you must have it, it is already there via Cinema 4D along with much more advanced shading and lighting tools.

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For me a major flaw with RW has been it's mapping rather than it's lighting.

Advanced lighting would be nice, and like Kurt, I would pay more for it, but as BaRa said; it can be faked.

Note that Dave D has donated a Skydome symbol that does a workman-like job (not to be confused with the "Skydome" symbol that comes with VW11)

AndyM's observation is also highly pertinant: Toxic, Blender, Radiance etc etc all produce VERY nice lighting, but rendering times of "14 hours" might be modest for a print quality, presentation size image!

I rarely deal with planar surfaces as the many architects who use VW do. VW started as, and appropriately (given it's customer base), continues to focus on, a CAD solution for Architecture. The expansion of VW into other industries, however, combined with current 3D functionality has left the RW mapping looking very weak.

Unfortunately NNA doesn't provide a demo of RW (for what reason???) so I have not been able to look personaly at the new mapping interface. It looks OK but has been long overdue.

Whether RW's ability to actually map textures has been improved (as against the interface) is rather unclear. Given the experience I recently had trying to apply a Chrome texture to a DomeNut from the Mechanical library, I'm dubious. RW10 could just not cope with a solid that had 6 Planar faces in 3 different directions AND a Spheroid form all in the same object. In over 2 hours of trying every combination of options that were available to map that texture, I could barely get it to change it's (cheesy) appearance, let alone look realistic.

For a contemporary rendering engine this is a tragic measure of "usability".

Perhaps this has changed with RW11? The advertising material features a nice shiny complex-geometry car wheel -perhaps things have changed significantly in the mapping area. I remain to be convinced.

Personal Rant follows- no offence intended; Begin Rant:

Andrew mentioned the scarcity of Programming resources inherant in NNA (like most "small" businesses). What shocked and horrified me with the RW11 release was the "artistic" effects. A number of them appear effective and usefull (this is from someone who uses Doodle because of it's presentation effects), but;.... the OilPainting and Mosaic modes (at least)......... !!

WHO was the brains trust who decided THAT was an effective use of programmers time!!?

Perhaps it's just me; perhaps I'm completely out of touch, but I can't imagine ANY proffessional presenting their work to a customer looking like a 3 year old had coloured-in mum or dad's work with a box of smudgy crayons!

MOSAICS!!!????............................WHY???????????

I imagine NNA just licensed someones "effects" plug-in and got the crappy effects in the bundle with the decent ones, but really........

This discussion is essentialy about the distribution of resources. I've been hanging around this board since 1999, and lighting has been a familliar background tune at least since then, but I can't ever remember someone saying, Shoot! ah'd like to draw me a house outa Mosayeeks!

The VW team has always been responsive to it's users. What proffessional Users want from RW is usability, not crappy tricks like "Oil Painting" effects. In the case of most Architects, I gather, that's radiosity etc. In my case that's staightforward and effective mapping of textures onto the complex surfaces that are inherant in modern product design. If NNA intends to promote VW/RW as a serious solution for product design and visualisation, whether the product is a house or a toothbrush, then that's probably where the focus should be.

End of Rant;

cheers,

N.

[ 06-12-2004, 02:48 AM: Message edited by: propstuff ]

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Yes. Mapping should not produce "surprise" results. One of the biggest problems is when you use a class, say "ext wall" which has one side as "siding", but need to change rotation or scale of the mapping. The inability to change the texture mapping BY CLASS as opposed to either changing each individual item (or creating a new, cloned & modified texture) is a drag. I also agree that textures should map anatomically correctly in every case, without as much tinkering as currently required.

I sort of like a couple of the new "artistic" rendering modes, but more or less agree with Nic's rant (BTW Nic, have you ever considered stand-up as a second career???LOL). However I had one very nice surprise result which I will now describe:

Start Surprise Result: So I have this JPG of a building site taken last winter on a cold, gray day with snow flurries. The clients have watered down the design for 4 or 5 months (due of course to "budgetary" limitations = cheap?) so the house now looks a little too much like a manufactured home for my taste. I'm messing around (no working!) with using the JPG as a background and purely by accident (well OK, It's not as if my mouse selected it on its own) end up rendering the scene using the "hatch" artistic rendering mode. Guess what? It looks like it's snowing! And even better, it kind of hides the house.

[i would include the image but I can't quite figure out how. Do I need to have a webserver? Or can I just create a dummy page?]

Anyhow, it's been fun as usual,

Peter Cipes

Residential Designer

Ashland, Oregon

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I couldn't agree more with Nicholas. Cute tricks are tacky and not needed and cheapen the presentation. Improve the functionality on those most basic features. You want to talk about the stair PIO?, no dormers/skylights in roof faces?, no editing eave profiles in dormers?, no texturing sides or bottoms of roofs and floors?, and yes, limited texture mapping? no more than one scale drawing on the same sheet?

I know some of these issues can be addressed with work-arounds but why should we have to? How does it happen that when the VW programmers created the dormer feature (for example) they overlooked editing of the eave profile when Create Roof dialog allows this on a regular roof? I purchased VW Architect. Architects need this basic functionality. Hire an Architect to critique the functionality.

I know for certain that Vectorworks is the biggest and best bang for the buck. Viewports alone is probably worth the cost of an upgrade but it's tough for me to afford right now. I bought VW just under a year before this release of VW 11 so it has yet to pay for itself and now they want $500 more for features I naively assumed would be available on VW 10 so it feels like I'm having to pay $2200 dollars for a program that new purchasers are getting for $1700. I also know that ArchiCAD is around $4000?

I just finished rendering a Quicktime video of a dining table with Italian chandeliers and dishes and silver. All the geometry and four lights and transparency and reflectivity led to a 12 hr render on my dual 867. I can put up with this because it's the limitations of my system and the product looks great. But to do a 12 hr render and have to put up with weird inconsistant dormers would not be acceptable.

How about functionality-specific upgrades? Buy the basic VW for $1,000 or whatever. You want Viewports...add $500. You want a fully editable dormer......add $100. You want radiosity....add $800 or whatever a fair price would be. Or people could design or configure their own user specific CAD program...just like they do their computers. Then they would know what they were getting and they wouldn't have to be buying rendering tricks they don't want or need. Maybe this isn't doable, I don't know, but thanks for my chance to rant........bc

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bc, It is unfortunate that you cannot afford to upgrade. I think you need to remember two things: 1) Although this software is no longer in its infancy, it is certainly not yet fully mature. I would say that it is somewhere between late teens to early twenties - ie: usually behaves properly but occasionally falls back into strange (hormaonal?) behavior that is "thoughtless", "crazy" or "self-destructive". And, while it has "smarts" it still lacks "wisdom", but is gaining every day. And 2) In my experience, the people at NNA are (as they should be) VERY user-driven and sensitive to our needs, however, they are still people and are not perfect or super-human. They are also in business and must make a profit. My own solution to the upgrade-or-not question has a very simple answer: if I use it for work every day, and if it will allow me to do better work, how can I NOT afford it? What happens is that DO get better and faster, then can raise my rates to cover the cost. I feel like an upgrade every 18 months or so is worth 8-10 hours of my time! I remember a very few years ago when I was still drawing with a pencil! Think of how far we've come.

Peter Cipes

Residential Designer

Ashland, Oregon

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Peter, Thanks for you insightful reply. I regretted having posted almost immediately realizing I was sounding like the impatient ungrateful folks who occasionally sound off here...I couldn't figure out how to remove it. How my posting status was upgraded to that of Power User I'll never know. I have only been at this for a year now with no prior computer knowledge so I am green and my CAD experience is not quite ready for prime time and generating income. I have appreciated the work done by VW moderators as well as the informative comments offered by yourself, propstuff, bara (that 3D drawing demo was wonderful) and many others that have helped me to learn. I intend to become fluent in this program and perhaps someday I'll have my own insightful (or perhaps less inciteful) comments to add.

'Nuf said.........bc

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Great rant propstuff. It seems like the latest bells & whistles now in the CAD market is trying to make the drawings look like they are handdrawn by an artist (or a three year old ). To me this is effect is better done and quicker too in photoshop with their filters versus rendering engines. Additonally, Doodle! seems to work great interfacing with VWKS without "reprograming" VWKS. I thought the lastest trend in software was "plug in architecture". I cannot believe it takes more time for a programmer to implement the LWA enabled rendering engine over the basic renderworks engine. Like it takes more time to put a 4 cylinder engine in a car versus a V8 ? I do not thing so. So you can buy renderworks alone for $400 dollars. You can buy turbo cad, the full program with it's radiosity engine for $695 dollars. You can buy Artlantis for around $550 ? Or you can buy C4D according to Andy M for around $900 dollars. How much does VWKS pay lightworks to license their product ? Could it be that much more to license the LWA enabled render engine ?

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Kurt, you've mentioned twice that you cannot see how it would be tough for VW to implement a better rendering engine. I must ask, have you ever written C code to produce a front end interface for rendering libraries. Have you contacted lightworks to find out how much their licensing fees are? Have you done marketing surveys and statistical analysis around the globe to determine ROI on implemented CAD features? Have you ever installed a 4-cylinder engine AND a 8-cylinder engine. I don't think that VW ignores it's users, it's all about money. Nemetschek will determine what is or is not a golden opportunity, based on research, user feedback and market analysis. I wish Renderworks was a little more full-featured myself, but I've been using it since version 8 and each version has gotten better than the last, yet I'm more excited about the 3D powerpack development than the rendering engine development, and if I had to choose because of limited resources at Nemetschek, then I'd leave the rendering development on the back burner. Personally, I don't need radiosity, neither do the other 3 architects I share office space with, nor the contractors that read our prints. That's 4+ that don't need it...3 architects and 1 engineer that buy the latest upgrades everytime they come out. I've found more users that don't need it rather than do. So, I ask you, how many people in your survey of Vectorworks users want radiosity? And if you think VW went down the wrong road, you can always switch to something else.

[ 06-14-2004, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: tom kyler ]

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All right Tom ! Got you going here ! This is getting good. Yes, I have installed a 4 and 8, not much difference. And no I do not write C code but I posed the question to Andrew Bell at NNA before: "How much more time does it take to write in renderwrks versus Lightworks LWA ?" And yes I know many architects that do not give a about rendering and they do not buy renderworks and they stick with just the VWKS program or Autocad and are happy as clams. I also know alot of Architects that use ACAD 12 with a tablet and some that still use pencils too. And of course a contractor would not care about radiosity? I am not contesting that. But I do care! And it seems like alot of us here in this forum do care. And hopefully VWs is listening. And my personal market surveys show that most of the Architects and Illustrators that do care about high quality renderings do not even consider Vwks/ Rndrwks because of the short commings discussed here in. They go to other programs like Maya, 3Dstudio, Vray, turbocad as posted herein, etc. Which you may say is fine, let them go. But I like VWKS and I want to stay. I have been a user since Minicad 3. The point is I/we do not want to go to another program. I personally have done that before and spent alot of money. I bought Strata 3D when it was the only export rendering solution for Minicad, and I bought Artlantis when it was the only rendering solution for VWKs. And now Nemetschek says C4D is the lastest rendering solution beyond renderworks. So buy that program now if you want more. And I have to say they all had/ have their problems. Exporting to another program has inherent problems that just do not go away. Is it wrong to want more from your CAD/ rendering program ? You obviously do not understand my and the others frustration here. We all had high hopes for R11. We are not a bunch of wankers. And statements like "go somewhere else" are lame. Obviously, we care enough about the program to spend the time to write in this forum and tell somebody. And hopefully NNA is listening about what we think are shortcomings to the "renderworks" program. No I do not know how much light works charges for a license. That is why I asked the question. Does anybody out there know? What is the difference between what we have and what we could have ? Is it $50, 100, 200 ? Reach for the stars or shut up and be happy with what you have. I personally will keep on reaching.

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Granted Kurt, I've been trying to get a decent render solution since MiniCAD 5 myself, including the Strata route (who here hasn't) and I am thrilled with the process VW as made as well as the improvements to Renderworks. What I've gotten tired of reading is the "bitchin" as you put it earlier. The nature of the posts soundly reflect a lack of respect, consideration or understanding of the scope of work developing a software product. Competition is fierce, I agree, and as a consumer, you have the right to be demanding, but to imply in these posts that Nemetschek is ignoring users or couldn't care about user's input is to imply that you know Nemetschek's business better than Nemetschek, and that is a slap in the face to the employees that bring you this great product you don't want to leave. (See Andrew's response post above) It shows a lack of respect or consideration and is unprofessional...period. That's what I'm tired of. Make your wishes known in the "wish list" forum, it's that simple

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quote:

Originally posted by Kurt Magness:

And no I do not write C code but I posed the question to Andrew Bell at NNA before: "How much more time does it take to write in renderwrks versus Lightworks LWA ?"

What do you mean by "write in Lightworks LWA"? Do you mean the LWA texture format?

Regards,

Sean

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Sean; yes the textures and a Raydiosity render engine too, I think it is called the AEC pack from Lightworks. What pack does NNA use ? And by the way, I apologize to anybody at NNA that may have been offended by my posts. This was not my intention. I wanted to bring up these issues to spark interest and show my disapointment in getting a mosaic filter instead of Raydiosity in R11. Thanks for QTVR finally. And I think this is the forum to be in. Now that I know some other opinions on this subject I will post in the wish list forum too. By the way, I was just at the Strata 3DCX web site users forum and they post a tip about importing VWks files http://www.stratacafe.com/tips/showtip.asp?tipid=120. Does anybody use this solution ? I have seen Strata 3DCX at Macmall for around $300, upgrade $169 at the web. And their renderings are beautiful. So you have all these choices. Do you get one of the alternate software rendering & animation packages discussed here in this forum to work with VWKS and for go Renderworks 11 ? If it's base on software costs, if it based on user learnig curve, if it's based on seamless integration into VWKS, if is based on Raydiosity. To be continued...

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Quotes from the Lightworks web pages. "Achieve a faster time-to-market for your new products and product upgrades. You can create a rendering application using the LightWorks AEC Pack in just 5 days, including a full drag-and-drop GUI that is completely integrated into your application, without sacrificing quality. The LightWorks API is structured so that it is very easy to upgrade to newer versions of LightWorks as they are released, giving you immediate access to our latest technology. " and: "Realize shorter development cycles and lower maintenance and enhancement costs. Once you have integrated LightWorks into your application, our powerful software architecture allows you to easily upgrade to new functionality when we release a new version of LightWorks or even to include additional LightWorks products as and when you require. The LightWorks AEC Pack lets you add new LightWorks functionality just by linking in the updated or additional LightWorks libraries, and is a very cost-effective way of expanding your application's functionality into other areas. " So I guess I can't let go of this issue, at the risk of being obnoxious, I will mention it a third time, how hard would it be....

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Kurt,

The LWA texture format doesn't work for us because of licensing reasons; Lightworks requires that the texture not be reusable except as a separate LWA file which we are not allowed to distribute (only the creator can). Instead we've decided to outsource creation of VectorWorks-format texture resources ourselves to make sure we have the content our customers need. 10.5 and 11.0 both added many new textures developed by expert customers in the industry.

5 days for a full rendering application with API for two platforms?! Sometimes the marketing teams of the technology firms push a strong story out there, just like Apple kept telling customers developers could make their apps native in "just a few weeks". There is a reason that you can't buy nice stand-alone renderers for $200 that have all the capabilities you need. Radiosity is not part of the AEC pack.

We asked RenderWorks customers before we started 11 what they wanted to improve and the answers were pretty consistent: 1) Faster rendering 2) Easier texture mapping and 3) Better texture content 4) Radiosity. The first two items were by far the most requested and were driven by the goal to generate presentation renderings more quickly. These two areas were where we spent the most effort in 11 and will likely to continue to put effort in future versions. We also feel that Artist RenderWorks rendering provides a tool to allow presentations much more easily since a high level of detail is not necessary in the scene...the more photorealistic the scene, the more time is necessary to make it look right. And yes, mosaic comes along for the ride with the other more useful modes.

Radiosity gives the most realistic results but also is quite an extensive project for several reasons. It nearly requires a full physical lighting implementation. Good implementations also don't do it as just a post processing implementation since it is so slow, you need to support interactive refinement. Finally you MUST tune the entire process perfectly for speed, since a bad Radiosity solution can be disastrously slow. We're also concerned that many of the people who ask for this have never used it, they only know that it is the most accurate. Will their first tech call be to complain that it took 5 hours to render their scene? So this remains on our roadmap for the future, but our current strategy has been to make the basic elements of rendering highly usable for customers and then move on to the more advanced functionality.

Regards,

Sean

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