How to get plant image props to render at night correctly?

[JonKoch]

Hello! 

 

I'm attaching a screenshot of the issue I'm having. I am trying to put together a landscape lighting rendering and everything is going pretty well but I'd like to have the plants in the rendering as well in case I want to uplight a tree or something. Question is: is it possible to do this with image props? Or do I have to use 3D plant symbols for this? The lower plants are from a landscape area that I created with plant symbols that have image props attached. I'm just not sure how to get those image props to respond to the nighttime conditions. I've only put one light in there for now but the plants obviously shouldn't be bright like that. 

 

Thanks!

[Tom W.]

The RW Plants all have 100% Glow Reflectivity applied to the textures the Image Props use which is why they look illuminated in a dark setting. The Glow prevents one plane of the Image Prop casting a shadow on the other plane when Crossed Planes is enabled (which it is by default). The advantage of crossed planes is that it produces fuller, more realistic shadows.

 

If you are doing night time renders you can edit your Plant symbols so that they include a 2nd version of the Image Prop which uses a texture that has had Glow turned down or turned off completely (turning down will reduce the self-illumination but they won't receive external light; turning off will mean they will only gain illumination from Light sources in the scene). So create a duplicate version of the prop texture; edit the 3D component of the Plant + duplicate the Image Prop in place; apply the new texture to the duplicated Image Prop; place each prop on 'day time' + 'night time' classes then you can control which version is seen at any one time depending on the nature of the scene.

 

Depending on the lighting in the scene, the problem if you have zero Glow can be that one plane of the Image Prop casts a shadow on the other plane which looks pretty awful. In order to disable crossed planes for some crazy reason you need to Group the Image Prop first, then enter the Group + disable 'Crossed Planes' in the OIP. Leave the Image Prop in a Group. If you don't Group the Image Prop it will show one plane in the symbol edit mode but back in the drawing it will return to crossed planes.

 

I am pretty sure last time I tried this a couple of years ago even Grouping the IP didn't work + so there was no way to disable crossed planes...

[JonKoch]

14 hours ago, Tom W. said:

The RW Plants all have 100% Glow Reflectivity applied to the textures the Image Props use which is why they look illuminated in a dark setting. The Glow prevents one plane of the Image Prop casting a shadow on the other plane when Crossed Planes is enabled (which it is by default). The advantage of crossed planes is that it produces fuller, more realistic shadows.

 

If you are doing night time renders you can edit your Plant symbols so that they include a 2nd version of the Image Prop which uses a texture that has had Glow turned down or turned off completely (turning down will reduce the self-illumination but they won't receive external light; turning off will mean they will only gain illumination from Light sources in the scene). So create a duplicate version of the prop texture; edit the 3D component of the Plant + duplicate the Image Prop in place; apply the new texture to the duplicated Image Prop; place each prop on 'day time' + 'night time' classes then you can control which version is seen at any one time depending on the nature of the scene.

 

Depending on the lighting in the scene, the problem if you have zero Glow can be that one plane of the Image Prop casts a shadow on the other plane which looks pretty awful. In order to disable crossed planes for some crazy reason you need to Group the Image Prop first, then enter the Group + disable 'Crossed Planes' in the OIP. Leave the Image Prop in a Group. If you don't Group the Image Prop it will show one plane in the symbol edit mode but back in the drawing it will return to crossed planes.

 

I am pretty sure last time I tried this a couple of years ago even Grouping the IP didn't work + so there was no way to disable crossed planes...

@Tom W.Thanks so much for the detailed response. I like the idea of having the classed image props with one for day and one for night. That seems to be the way to go and just dial down the glow a bit. 

 

I had come across the same issue with the crossed planes earlier this year and couldn't figure it out. The image props do result in some wonky tree shadows on the ground sometimes. 

Thanks again.

[JonKoch]

19 hours ago, Tom W. said:

The RW Plants all have 100% Glow Reflectivity applied to the textures the Image Props use which is why they look illuminated in a dark setting. The Glow prevents one plane of the Image Prop casting a shadow on the other plane when Crossed Planes is enabled (which it is by default). The advantage of crossed planes is that it produces fuller, more realistic shadows.

 

If you are doing night time renders you can edit your Plant symbols so that they include a 2nd version of the Image Prop which uses a texture that has had Glow turned down or turned off completely (turning down will reduce the self-illumination but they won't receive external light; turning off will mean they will only gain illumination from Light sources in the scene). So create a duplicate version of the prop texture; edit the 3D component of the Plant + duplicate the Image Prop in place; apply the new texture to the duplicated Image Prop; place each prop on 'day time' + 'night time' classes then you can control which version is seen at any one time depending on the nature of the scene.

 

Depending on the lighting in the scene, the problem if you have zero Glow can be that one plane of the Image Prop casts a shadow on the other plane which looks pretty awful. In order to disable crossed planes for some crazy reason you need to Group the Image Prop first, then enter the Group + disable 'Crossed Planes' in the OIP. Leave the Image Prop in a Group. If you don't Group the Image Prop it will show one plane in the symbol edit mode but back in the drawing it will return to crossed planes.

 

I am pretty sure last time I tried this a couple of years ago even Grouping the IP didn't work + so there was no way to disable crossed planes...

@Tom W. Just a heads up, the trick of grouping the IP did work for me. When I turned the glow off and didn't have it grouped it did exactly what you said and cast a shadow on the other plane. Once I grouped it and then disabled 'crossed planes it worked out well' See attached file. Left render is with grouped IP and right side is crossed plane ungrouped.

Untitled 3.pdf

[Tom W.]

3 hours ago, JonKoch said:

the trick of grouping the IP did work for me.

 

Yep same here. But I checked back + reminded myself what the issue with this method is: if you Group the Image Prop inside a Plant it means the 3D representation of the Plant is no longer scalable via the Plant settings. The Plant in the drawing will be set to the size of the Image Prop + won't respond to the height + spread settings for the PIO. So this is what I must have been remembering when I said it didn't work. Not sure if this is a problem in your case or not.

[JonKoch]

5 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

Yep same here. But I checked back + reminded myself what the issue with this method is: if you Group the Image Prop inside a Plant it means the 3D representation of the Plant is no longer scalable via the Plant settings. The Plant in the drawing will be set to the size of the Image Prop + won't respond to the height + spread settings for the PIO. So this is what I must have been remembering when I said it didn't work. Not sure if this is a problem in your case or not.

Yeah I did notice that. It took be a bit to figure out what was going on because after I grouped it the scale of the plants looked all off. I'm going to try and find a work around and do some more testing. 

[Tom W.]

I found the earlier thread on the matter:

[Kevin K]

@JonKoch, I was just curious from the standpoint of reality, what kind of up lights did you have in mind to utilize for a nighttime setting? For example, the frequency of where they would be placed, and the actual physical light fixture, etc. Also…..which you probably won’t like, is that For my rendering preferences, I would just use actual 3d plants, etc and not image props.  I believe it would mitigate all the issues you are experiencing using image props being correctly lit for a more or less after dark rendering.

Just a thought 🙂

[Kevin K]

In addition....if you didn't really want to commit to an actual lighting fixtures, lighting, or up lighting your plants and trees for an evening rendered view, you can take advantage of that pesky 'glow' reflectivity option and apply it to a symbol object, like I had done in the rendering below, that utilizes a ton of small round light bulb shapes.

Doing so will actually act as a light object, and light your scene without the huge overhead of having many many actual light objects in the file.

 

Admittedly It is sort of a cheating workaround, but it has its place 🙂

Those oak trees on the right of the image are actual 3d trees, not image props, btw.

 

[JonKoch]

1 hour ago, Kevin K said:

In addition....if you didn't really want to commit to an actual lighting fixtures, lighting, or up lighting your plants and trees for an evening rendered view, you can take advantage of that pesky 'glow' reflectivity option and apply it to a symbol object, like I had done in the rendering below, that utilizes a ton of small round light bulb shapes.

Doing so will actually act as a light object, and light your scene without the huge overhead of having many many actual light objects in the file.

 

Admittedly It is sort of a cheating workaround, but it has its place 🙂

Those oak trees on the right of the image are actual 3d trees, not image props, btw.

 

@Kevin K Thanks for the info! Yeah I figured 3D objects would work best but in most cases will probably slow the file down too much. I also don't know if there's enough of a library that represents the plants of my location. 

 

I'm not anticipating doing a TON of night time rendering so maybe I'll just change it in the file as needed. It will take a little more exploration. 

[Kevin K]

Jon, the main reason I suggested real 3d items is that any shadows will look much better than the ones cast from and image prop.  I am sure you would agree 🙂

Depending on your computer system, because any 3d plants, etc can become symbols,  it may not slow things down too much.

Just for grins, if you are up for it, perhaps post the file, or a link to it, and I can have a look. If you are NOT in the mood...no worries 🙂

[JonKoch]

@Kevin K I'll have to mess around with the 3D plants and I definitely know for a fact that the 3D plant shadows. 

 

I'm sort of in the process of just running some tests at this point with the image props but maybe you can solve this little issue I'm noticing. I have a saved view with a test plant symbol on top of an extrude. When I am in the saved view and then create a viewport, it shows up on the sheet layer but all of the dimensions are wrong. The image prop of the plant has changed size, and the extrude has different dimensions. Why would this happen? 

 

See attached file. It's really bizarre and I've never had this issue before. Version 2024 FYI

 

Thanks

Full Glow No Crossed Planes.vwx

[Kevin K]

Hey Jon.  

Just got your last post.  

Let me have a look and I shall get back to you pronto.

[Kevin K]

Jon, ok, I took a peek at your file. I am not totally clear on your comment regarding the dimensions being off??

 That. said, I attached an updated version, and made some notes on the viewport sheet.

Let me know if that addresses your issues 🙂 

 

 

Full Glow No Crossed Planes-KEV.vwx

[JonKoch]

@Tom W. @Kevin K So I created a bunch of quick vignettes with a few options based on some of the previous posts. Take a look at the results. I noticed early on that the crossed planes vs. non crossed planes, doesn't really matter when glow is turned on relative to shadows in each case but in true scientific process, I left them in there. See attached PDF

 

As you can see, for night time rendering, the no glow option with the IP grouped and crossed planes turned off looks the best. However as Tom mentioned, the IP will not change when the plant style is changed. I think it will differ for everyone but perhaps that's not a big deal.

 

I guess the take home message is that with the current way image props are set up, you may have to make some concessions on how you are showing things at night and day. Maybe one is more important than the other and we have to live with that until it gets fixed. Or as Kevin mentioned we can use 3D plants!

Image Prop Render Tests.pdf

[JonKoch]

21 minutes ago, Kevin K said:

Jon, ok, I took a peek at your file. I am not totally clear on your comment regarding the dimensions being off??

 That. said, I attached an updated version, and made some notes on the viewport sheet.

Let me know if that addresses your issues 🙂 

 

 

Full Glow No Crossed Planes-KEV.vwx 7.32 MB · 0 downloads

@Kevin K Thanks so much for that! I guess my assumption was that even in the perspective or orthogonal view that the dimensions of the image prop and the square mulch area would be the same. The square mulch area is 10'x10'. When I measure it in the viewport it's different than that. Maybe I'm not understanding perspective correctly but I feel like in the past when I've made viewports of perspectives, I was able to dimension them and they were true to the size of the original drawing. 

 

If you go to the saved view, which is also in perspective, it still measures the square mulch area correctly: 10'x10'

 

Maybe I'm just having a moment of dullness after a long day. haha. 

[Kevin K]

Jon

Man, you did a lot of testing!!

Yeah, maybe....just a long day.   I have had those myself!🙂

Yeah, you can't accurately measure dimensions in annotation mode on a viewport in anything other than a top plan view, seems to me.

You can do that on an object on a design layer, however.

[JonKoch]

Just now, Kevin K said:

Jon

Man, you did a lot of testing!!

Yeah, maybe....just a long day.   I have had those myself!🙂

Yeah, you can't accurately measure dimensions in annotation mode on a viewport in anything other than a top plan view, seems to me.

You can do that on an object on a design layer, however.

That makes sense..... Probably best to dimension in design layer and then make the viewport!

 

Thanks again, Kevin.

[Kevin K]

Exactly correct!!!

Dimension in the design layer...!!   Then the viewport should be right as rain.

[Kevin K]

Jon

One more supportive thought,  then I will shut up, pertaining to using real 3d plants, etc.as opposed to having to go through all that mess you and Tom W were discussing about grouping / not grouping and not having the IP scale properly,  glowing properly, etc, etc

If you are doing photorealistic renderings the lighting and shadows on the plants / trees, etc will look much better than if you use flat image props in most instances.

 

The image below, which is  more of a night rendering look,  is just rendered with Shaded rendering, not even using the higher quality rendering options, and it still looks pretty dang good, and rendered in seconds. Of course you could tweak the ambient lighting if desired.  I turned it all off.

I just took the basic info and objects in the file you sent me, but fluffed it up a bit with some path lighting and a real 3d plant symbol.

 

Again, do as you wish, these are only my thoughts 🙂

 

[Tom W.]

1 hour ago, Kevin K said:

One more supportive thought,  then I will shut up, pertaining to using real 3d plants, etc.as opposed to having to go through all that mess you and Tom W were discussing about grouping / not grouping and not having the IP scale properly,  glowing properly, etc, etc

If you are doing photorealistic renderings the lighting and shadows on the plants / trees, etc will look much better than if you use flat image props in most instances.

 

The problem is, if you're designing landscapes + producing planting plans, reports, tagging plants, etc you will be using Plant objects + these will generally use Image Props, most of the time without issue. So any 3D plants would (generally speaking) need to be in addition to the Image Props which creates a layer of extra work/management, just for the production of probably only one or two VPs at most, so there is an incentive for getting it to work with Image Props if at all possible. It's not necessarily just a simple case of choosing one or the other. The issue with having to Group IPs in order to turn off crossed planes + then find you can't scale the Plant in the process should really be addressed. No news @Eric Gilbey, PLA, @Scott Lebsack, @Katarina Ollikainen?

[Tom W.]

6 hours ago, JonKoch said:

@Tom W. @Kevin K So I created a bunch of quick vignettes with a few options based on some of the previous posts. Take a look at the results. I noticed early on that the crossed planes vs. non crossed planes, doesn't really matter when glow is turned on relative to shadows in each case but in true scientific process, I left them in there. See attached PDF

 

As you can see, for night time rendering, the no glow option with the IP grouped and crossed planes turned off looks the best. However as Tom mentioned, the IP will not change when the plant style is changed. I think it will differ for everyone but perhaps that's not a big deal.

 

I guess the take home message is that with the current way image props are set up, you may have to make some concessions on how you are showing things at night and day. Maybe one is more important than the other and we have to live with that until it gets fixed. Or as Kevin mentioned we can use 3D plants!

 

Image Prop Render Tests.pdf 1 MB · 1 download

 

Excellent work! I have my Plants set up with a 'night time' Image Prop set to 30% Glow as the least worse option. But ideally they would be 0% Glow + a single plane so that they receive light (+ still be scalable).

[Kevin K]

Tom

I am not so much a landscape guy, but I am pretty sure you can do all you mentioned but simply use a 3d plant as the plant object, in lieu of the image prop? I will have to check that out. 
This exercise was more about the night time scenario rendering, which most likely would be rare.

[Tom W.]

19 minutes ago, Kevin K said:

I am pretty sure you can do all you mentioned but simply use a 3d plant as the plant object, in lieu of the image prop?

 

Yes absolutely you can. But if you have several hundred Plants all set up with Image Props, do you go round them all adding 3D objects to them as well on a different class, in case you need to use them in night time renders or even want something more realistic for close up day time renders?

 

Or do you just manually place 3D plant symbols on top of the Plants in the model where necessary + turn off those particular Plants? For the purposes of generating a specific show-stopper render. Then use the Plants for everything else.

 

Probably the latter I guess?

 

Just saying there is the 2D/reporting/tagging side of things to consider as well in Jon's case (I imagine) rather than for it just being about producing a good looking 3D render + nothing else. Just wondering what the best strategy is where there are competing considerations to weigh up.

 

I have a library of good-looking 3D Rendermall plants but I rarely use them as I'm never really sure how best to incorporate them into the wider scheme of things...

[Katarina Ollikainen]

I fully agree that 3D plants are the way to go if you want a proper render, and we're working on increasing the libraries for this. Also, remember - if you can't find the specific species you're working with, look for the structure and use what's the closest. This is how the library's plants with IPs are set up as well.

 

If you're worried about file size, creating plant symbols with double IPs is perhaps not the best way to go. I regularly see files where the IP is far bigger than a Laubwerk tree would have been. If your graphics card has difficulties dealing with the geometry, try using the Laubwerk Proxy setting while working and change the global setting when it's time to render (this is also the preferred detail level for IFC export, as a BIM model is mainly about geometry and data, not the look).

I'm also not a fan of doubling up by adding separate 3D plant symbols - anything that requires manual editing when an amendment is done has a tendency to getting you into trouble. The one exception to this is illustrations of planting beds. I would never use the actual planting plan for the illustration (and also not maintaining 3D in the plant styles) - it would be far too sparse for my taste. Instead, I have Landscape area styles specifically created for this purpose, which are overstuffed with plants to give a better look. The plant styles have no botanical data and are clearly marked 'Concept', so even if I would make a mistake, it would be very clear in the report - I would never order a 'Concept' plant 😀. I can then also use the landscape area for the compost/topsoil quantities. This also allows me to use fewer 3D plant styles overall, as I'm working with mostly green and structure instead of very specific plant images.

 

We are currently working on the plant tool, and there will come something that will make the geometry-swap easier for plants (I can't say when this is rolled out, though).