Vectorworks and Vray

[MGuilfoile]

I occasionally work in FormZ and I can't help but notice that its renderings using Vray are superior to what I can get in Vectorworks 2023 (usually using Renderworks Interior Style Final). This is especially true with imported OBJ realistic human figures. These are complex meshes with complex mappings. In Vectorworks they look OK, but there are missing triangles and the maps are hyper-glossy in places. In FormZ/Vray, they look great as do the shadows and shadings. Plus, there are more controls available, etc. In short, it is a much more robust system. Even the lighting is easier to manipulate. This isn't saying the VW renderings aren't good, they are. Since implementing the Cinema4D rendering engine the quality is 100x better, but I get the feeling we are getting a watered-down version of the lights, cameras, and rendering engine found in C4D. Is that so? If it is true, can we expect a more robust version in the future?

 

Anyway, right now having everything in one application trumps everything else. I love keeping everything in one app. After all, Vray can go bad and having to resort to a third party is a pain, especially one as small as Chaos. I am encouraged that VW has come so far in its rendering capabilities, but can we expect this improvement to continue within the base application (in my case, Architect). I hope so! What are your plans?

 

Thanks!

MHBrown

[grant_PD]

I abandoned VW's realistic rendering a long time ago for this very reason.  I love that it can create OpenGL renders, hidden line renders, anything but realistic style.  Once I started rendering in C4D, and then C4D with Redshift, I never looked back and neither did my clients. Even if I liked the quality I was getting out of VW's realistic style renders, I couldn't deal with the amount of time it takes to produce a render.  

 

I am always excited each time VW adds new capabilities to the rendering engines, because like you, I prefer to keep my work in one program.  But for now, I need to render in another program, whether it's C4D or Twinmotion.  

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

1 hour ago, MGuilfoile said:

but I get the feeling we are getting a watered-down version of the lights, cameras, and rendering engine found in C4D.

Vectorworks and C4D are an amazing combination.  I use them as a single application and not two separate applications, sending models back and forth if required. but they are different animals.  

The rendering engine may be the same, but the tools are much different in both, especially cameras.  But also, light, etc. 

 

Their modelling capabilities are excellent, but they bring sculpting, motion graphics, etc. to the table.  Having said this, you can start many of the processes that C4D has in VW's. For example.  You could develop a Terrain model in VW's, send to C4D and sculpt out complex creeks.  

 

[Kevin Allen]

4 hours ago, MGuilfoile said:

Anyway, right now having everything in one application trumps everything else. I love keeping everything in one app. After all, Vray can go bad and having to resort to a third party is a pain, especially one as small as Chaos. I am encouraged that VW has come so far in its rendering capabilities, but can we expect this improvement to continue within the base application (in my case, Architect). I hope so! What are your plans?

 

All in one App is important Renderworks needs love.

[Mark Aceto]

7 minutes ago, Kevin Allen said:

Renderworks needs love.

 

It's been a MINUTE.

[grant_PD]

Wholeheartedly agree, but realistically do you think it's a high priority considering how much attention they would need to give it?  The standard for renders these days is unreal/unity or the renderers of vray/octane/arnold/redshift.  So how do they compete with that?  

What would be the renderworks Final Quality features we should be asking for?

[MGuilfoile]

Yes, rendering has come far, but still needs some work. For example, Redshift is a total bust. Not only is the quality bad and full of bugs, but it also takes just as long as the Renderworks Interior Final which I assume is true raytracing. I had great hopes for Redshift dashed. Same for the Twinmotion plug in. It's great if you are doing full buildings, but for interiors or anything up close: ugg. It is awful. The rendering quality is fine for animations, but dead in the water for stills. Plus, I don't really feel like redoing all my texture maps. Some translate, but some don't. I just use the walkthrough built into VW since the Shaded render HAS gotten better. 

The one thing VW has going for it is its ability to keep everything in one app. Using CD4 as a first-cousin crutch is a path to nowhere. It has to be built in.

Thanks!

MH Brown

[MGuilfoile]

Hi grant_pd, that is a very fair question. I suppose I see it as a lost opportunity to up the quality and control of lights and rendering to where CD4 is. The software is already in-house; it's not re-inventing the wheel. I can't even control the falloff distance of lights in Vectorworks, something I was doing with Strata3D two decades or more ago. Stuff like that.

[Kevin Allen]

2 minutes ago, grant_PD said:

What would be the renderworks Final Quality features we should be asking for?

Honestly, I have to consider that and I assume its multiple years. I do think the users should drive the changes.

Speed and quality are vague, but important, Pretty sure I can get better and faster results with Rhino or Blender.

I would like to see some constancy of nomenclature throughout the 3D world. XY and Z and inconsistent between VWX and Vision, let alone other programs. Yaw, pitch and roll are used in other apps but not really throughout VWX.

Shaders and nomenclature. 

I think shaders should provide an accurate preview for Renderworks, RedShift and other render types. It is closed to Renderworks, now, but only ,IMHO, a preview. I should only have to prepare a file once for different rendering engines and similar results.

 

How do we best crowd source a task document?

 

[MGuilfoile]

I wouldn't compare a modeler like Blender to a CAD app like Vectorworks. Blender, like 3D StudioMax, is made for video and animations. In short, the screen image is the final product. Both are not useful for architectural work like I do, thought that does not stop these apps from dominating the industry. In my business (museum design, trade show booths, and other specialty interiors), the final product is produced in a wood or metal shop, not on a screen. I can't stand the lack of precision in apps like Blender, StudioMax and even FormZ (bless its little lost heart.) I think Rhino has great tools, but not really useful for me--overkill, really--since my products are produced from sheet stock (plywood) or stick-built from lumber and metal. Vectorworks is really the perfect solution for what I do and is why I've always used it. I just wish I had more control over some of the rendering tools, but, with the addition of Pixar's modeling tools, there really isn't much I can't model anymore. It is more an issue of not needing to and, therefore, I have not learned all the new tools. Yet.

MH Brown

[grant_PD]

@MGuilfoile I had high hopes for redshift when VW integrated it.  But for whatever reason it just doesn't as expected.  I've been a redshift user in C4D for a few years now, I couldn't see ever going back to a cpu based renderer.  I totally agree with you about twinmotion.  So perfect for creating exteriors!  Not perfect for controlled lighting situations like the television work that I do.  So like you, I need to produce high quality renders (for the clients) and high quality drafting (for the shops).  It is a crutch to go to C4D as you say.  @Kevin Allen here would be my starting list to woo me back to renderworks:

-Light falloff controls

-Real, usable area lights that can be assigned to geometry

-a material editor workover that gets us into this decade: more precise controls and all the channels we expect: normals, masks, glossiness/roughness, subsurface scattering, etc.  

-UV mapping.

-alpha channel output

-more control from cameras.

 

[Kevin Allen]

2 hours ago, grant_PD said:

-a material editor workover that gets us into this decade: more precise controls and all the channels we expect: normals, masks, glossiness/roughness, subsurface scattering, etc.  

 

I have a whole list I need to organize.

In this vein, like I mentioned above, we need consistent terminology.

[mjm]

6 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

All in one App is important Renderworks needs love.

word

[line-weight]

6 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

All in one App is important Renderworks needs love.

I doubt it's going to get it though. There have been barely any improvements made to it for several years now. Meanwhile the new generation of renderers like Twinmotion etc progress incredibly quickly and I think it's assumed we'll all move to them while RW is quietly parked in a frozen state.

[line-weight]

People will say, use Twinmotion because it's so much faster, they might even say that it saves you so much time that it's cost neutral even if you have to pay for it.

 

But this ignores so many of the benefits of a truly integrated renderer. The renderings themselves might be faster but there's all the time spent making sure the applications are syncing properly and all the extra cognitive load of keeping on top of that process. And all the time and mental admin it takes to learn the interface and habits of a new application, and relearn half of it when there's a three month gap since you last did a bunch of rendering, because you've forgotten half of it and they've changed stuff since last time and you're only allowed to use the latest version.

 

And then there's those old files from three years ago, for a project that gets revived, and if they are vectorworks you can open them up and the RW renderings you've got laid out on sheet layers are still all there and you can make some changes and carry on. But what if you did all your presentation renderings in some external program that no longer exists or has changed its pricing structure... Or you can hardly even remember how you did them anyway?

 

Once you're invested in VW as the main application you sign your life away to, there really are big benefits of keeping as much stuff "in house" as possible.

[zoomer]

17 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

All in one App is important Renderworks needs love.

 

I would love to have a all in one App.

 

Around 2009 I did so for some larger projects by doing all in Modo.

That was a great and enjoyable time.

I was already fit enough in Modo to be fast.

No more lossy export/imports, redundant 3D Models, ....

 

But somehow I really have a love for CAD and missed it again.

Volume Modeling, Precision, ....

 

And in 2014 I switched to VW and was even more intrigued by

parametric Modeling with VW PIOs.

So I switched from Modo to my redundant Cinema License because

of better exchange with VW. And when C4D Exchange finally worked

after a couple of VW releases, lossless Exchange was reality anyway

and VW + C4D a no brainer.

 

 

But what I would miss in VW and Cineengine - without a C4D,

is NOT so much the missing or limited C4D Renderer and Material features ....

(AFAIK Archicad does offer the full package since they also integrated Cineengine)

It is the standard Visualization comfort features of 3D Apps.

 

Things like being able to easily save a screen rendering. Or the flexibility of

C4D's Render Takes System to batch render and "publish" versions.

Or the ability to calculate and save images at a certain resolution by a

given Pixel amount, and all such things.

 

In VW this all is still a pain.

Paper oriented, Imperial driven, DPI thinking, inaccurate Paper Sizes, ...

 

 

So I do not see that happen for VW.

And C4D personally deprecated since years since being subscription only

and latest experiences with my last C4D R21 and VW 2022 (?) and newer

weren't very good with Exchange anymore.

 

I think Enscape Plugin would offer great "Exchange" with VW,

since it has Mac support.

But that is now Chaos Group and subscription only, so deprecated even

before being released too 🙂

 

So for me it will also mainly lead to VW to Twinmotion (or Unreal).

But I do not have tested enough if Datasmith Exchange would really work

reliable for me.

 

 

And if I ever need to go for an All in one App,

I think I need to go to Blender(BIM).

Which would cover both of my priorities, BIM and VIZ.

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by zoomer

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Reading through this thread, it doesn't seem like anyone has quite the same problem.  Everyone has a wish list, but the solution has varying degrees of complexity.  For one it's fairly simple, for another quite difficult.

The one thing I do notice in all of these threads is a very small subset of users commenting.  The usual suspects that I suppose I am one of.

Last year I did a survey of almost all the Architectural firms in Kingston Ontario.  It is always expanding.  I called over 15 firms.  Very few used 3D in any meaningful way.  Most were either still on a board or computer 2D.  Only one big firm designed in 3D in a useful way.  

 

Yet, the small firms still compete well....go figure.  I think this is still what VW's and other Architectural firms see, so C4D and like solve this problem cheaply for them.

 

 

[MGuilfoile]

That's interesting because I know of only one design firm that does not use 3D and that's a small environmental signage company. Every other architecture, interior, industrial, and landscape design firm I have worked with in the past 25 years is totally 3D design. I do see, however, lots of draftsmen and draftswomen working in 2D with AutoCAD. Still bringing down datum lines to draw elevations from plans as if they were taped to a drafting board, so perhaps that is what you are seeing in Ontario. I worked for a Toronto company back in 1998 and we used Vectorworks and FormZ.

MH Brown

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Not sure of Ontario, it was just Kingston.  Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal would be much different.  Still, from the questions that are posted on this forum, I would guess there are many VW's designers quite happy with 2D design.  It has worked for hundreds of years.

Edited October 27, 2023 by VIRTUALENVIRONS

[line-weight]

I am self employed but the medium sized (10-15 people) practice I used to work for (where we used vectorworks), did not use 3d at all. Except for the odd bit in sketchup, independent from the VW project drawings, towards the end of the time I worked there, about ten years ago.

 

And they still don't.

 

In fact the only reason I now work pretty much entirely in 3d, I'd say, is that I work for myself so the inertia of changing my whole workflow was less (but still painful) and I don't have to co-ordinate all my drawings with an office standard that others can use. It was hard enough getting that to happen in 2d - I can only imagine 3d would be worse.