Showcase in VWX 2025, preliminary findings

[R_Teunissen]

Dear all,
I had the opportunity to toy around with Showcase and a Lighting Desk (ETC Ion).

Hope my experiences can help others or Vectorworks in improving it.
If I overlooked some things, please let me know.

 

First of all, it looks really promising, especially now that it's bundled with Spotlight.
I can imagine that a lot of WYSIWYG and Capture users may want to reconsider their choice.
 

In my opinion, it does need some improvements, for instance:

- A more stable sACN connection (but I gather from other forums, that VW is aware of the problem) 

 

- Binding a Lighting Device to a GDTF is not intuitive.

Suggestion: When inserting a Lighting Device, you can bind that to a Vision fixture in the Tool options. 

Having the ability to bind that to a GDTF in the same place would help.

 

-When using the "Update GDTF files" command, there is no feedback that anything has happened.

When you are not logged in to the GDTF-share site, there is also no feedback that the connection to the database could not be made.

 

- On the GDTF-share log in; it would be nice if you would not be automatically logged out after a certain amount of time.

 

- For an average user, it's not clear, why there are no visible beams.

For this to happen, the Current Background must have "Lit Fog" enabled, and also the individual Lighting Devices must have this turned on.

An easier accessible way could improve the user experience.

Suggestion on the "Lit Fog" on/off per Lighting Device; this could be done with an extra column in the Visualisation Palet.

 

Hope this helps.

Keep up the good work

[klinzey]

19 minutes ago, R_Teunissen said:

-When using the "Update GDTF files" command, there is no feedback that anything has happened.

When you are not logged in to the GDTF-share site, there is also no feedback that the connection to the database could not be made.

The feedback is being improved in Update 2. You are NOT required to be logged in when using the "Update GDTF files".
 

 

21 minutes ago, R_Teunissen said:

- On the GDTF-share log in; it would be nice if you would not be automatically logged out after a certain amount of time.

This is a limitation of the GDTF-Share site. When you use the command in Vectorworks you are opening the GDTF-Share site the same way you would open the site in an independent web browser. We are working with the site to extend logout time.

 

27 minutes ago, R_Teunissen said:

- Binding a Lighting Device to a GDTF is not intuitive.

Suggestion: When inserting a Lighting Device, you can bind that to a Vision fixture in the Tool options. 

Having the ability to bind that to a GDTF in the same place would help.

You will see some improvements in this in Update 2. You will not be able to select the GDTF file from the tool options but you will see some improved behavior when inserting fixtures that have been updated using the "Update GDTF files" command.

[Dave Donley]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement @R_Teunissen!
 

"- A more stable sACN connection (but I gather from other forums, that VW is aware of the problem)"

Update 2 should have rock solid sACN, this will come out next month.  HTH!

[R_Teunissen]

Hi all,

found some time to test the Showcase functionality a bit more.

 

Friend of mine helped out with an ETC EOS and Capture with the same model (exported to MVR) as a comparison. 
 

- In the model we’re using are 2 videoscreen objects, linked to seperate MP4 files. 

Running Showcase with a reasonable amount of fixtures AND the videoscreen objects showing the videofiles caused several crashes. 
Deleting the videoscreen objects made it a whole lot more stable.

 

- We pointed lights at the opposing wall, but at first, we could not see the light spot on the wall.

After some reseach, it appeared that the ‘Light Fall-off” for these lights was set at ‘Realistic “

Setting this to “None” did make the light carry to the other side of the venue. 
I”m not sure what is considered realistic in light fall off, but in normal life, the fixtures should be able to throw light on the wall.

 

- When adjusting Color temperature, color in general and focussing gobo’s, the images that we got out of Capture were a lot more realistic, than the ones we got from Showcase.

 

- Getting a reasonable image from Showcase does take some tweaking with parameters that are sometimes not that obvious.

For instance the mentioned “Light fall-off” settings, “Lit-fog” & “Receive Shadows” settings in the used Background, etcetera.

Is it an idea to have a more comprehensive manual or tutorial online ?

 

Hope the above helps in improving Showcase. 

Looking forward to the next update. 
 

best Remco

[R_Teunissen]

Part 3 of my findings with Showcase.

Set up a demo file to show people the possibilities of Showcase.

Had a hard time getting the file to respond as expected.

 

- Had to restart Vectorworks multiple times to get changes to DMX addresses, fixture changes to work.
Every time I started Showcase after a VWX restart, the scene looked different.
I have the feeling, that somehow the exposure, fog, F-stop etc settings are set back to a "default" even if I saved the file prior to restarting VWX.

 

- The sACN connection seams to be a lot more stable, but I would really recommend a way to check if (and how) DMX values are entering the Showcase realm.
As said, had a lot of problems with getting certain fixtures to work.
Now it's a guessing game, if it's DMX settings, settings with the Lighting Device (is the light set to "On") , or is the GDTF file properly made.
Currently I can only check if DMX data is getting into my computer, but it would make trouble shooting a whole lot easier, if I knew what is actually getting into VWX.

 

- Probably a lot of people have said this, but a way to control the lights in Showcase, without having to use a online or offline lighting desk would be really nice.

 

- Had some Niethammer profiles in my file, connected to GDTF files and use the shutters. This shutter info did not transfer into Showcase.

 

- For the demo, set up some geometry with a glow texture and attached the DMX Glow record to imitate LED tape.
Worked as a charm, however, when setting the DMX start address, I noticed, that this is called "Channel" whereas  for Lighting Devices, this field is used for a unique identifier.
This could give some confusion. Would suggest recalling the "Channel" field in the DMX Glow record to "DMX Address"

 

- The used DMX parameters for DMX Glow do not end up in the DMX Patch window.

This could cause conflicting patches.

 

- When setting the needed GDTF mode per fixture, it would be helpful, if the GDTF Fixture mode menu (see screenshot) would indicate what the currently assigned mode is (for instance having that mode in Bold) and what the amount of DMX parameters for the said modes are. (aka DMX footprint)
Often, modes are just indicated as Mode-1, Mode-16 bit etc.

 

- Using an ETC EOS, we recorded some DMX streams for the demo, but I was not able to loop all of them on playback.

The button was active, but at the end, it just stopped.

 

Watched the "Showcase: Discover Preproduction Efficiencies" video on the VWX University.

Really insightful where it comes to setting the correct ambient light, reflection control etc.

 

Hope the above can help in making Showcase even better.

 

Thanks in advance

 

[R_Teunissen]

Thing I forgot to mention in part 3 of the series;

 

Somehow, when setting up the file for Showcase, the "Limit Shaded render mode to 8 lights" was activated in the Document Preferences.

Took al while to figure out, why only some lights were responding to DMX in the file.

 

Someone on the VWX Spotlight User Group on Facebook mentioned the same problem.

[Peter Smith]

I am having good success with VW2025, using Showcase and EOS. I am running everything on one PC running Windows 11, and I have set Shaded options to High with bloom and camera settings active. It looks great, and the transitions are smooth

I was concerned that if I used RW textures, trusses, drape and video, along with over 100 fixtures, it would slow down. Fortunately it has not!

The GDTF work added a fair amount of time to the process. It's worth the extra effort if Showcase is your only option for previz.

I will upload a video shortly

 

Processor    AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor            3.70 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB
Device ID    C9749496-9661-4501-9376-E980500DAF7F
Product ID    00325-96658-07912-AAOEM
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    Pen and touch support with 10 touch points
 

[Peter Smith]

Continued:

I am having adventures (not problems!) with multi-cell fixtures. VW doesn't respond to the commands from Eos, when I do a spread of intensities across the cells of a Solo Batten for example. The visualizer in Eos of course does. I don't want to build these in VW as individual emitters, but I don't see another way if I want to display this in Showcase

Any ideas?

[jcogdell]

Have you tried a GDTF version of the fixture?