Highlight specific areas of the stage in Viewports / Renders

[Cristiano Alves]

Hello everyone,
 

I’m preparing some renders / viewports for a stage design presentation and I would like to highlight specific areas of the stage while keeping the rest of the scene darker.

The idea would be something like:

• highlighting a specific area of the stage
• emphasizing certain scenic elements
• or even specific lighting fixtures
   

While the rest of the stage becomes darker or less visible.

This would be mainly for visual presentation purposes, to better communicate different parts of the show.

What would be the best way to achieve this in Vectorworks?

• Some Renderworks workflow?

Ideally I would like to create multiple viewports, each highlighting a different area of the stage.

How do you usually handle this?

Thanks!

Edited March 5 by Cristiano Alves

[Dave Donley]

Hello @Cristiano Alves I think one technique you might explore would be to overlap viewports with or without None fill for alpha channel, and to desaturate with Image Effects in the Object Info palette, to de-emphasize the background from the foreground.

[Bluetones]

I would agree. Setting classes visible in the shaded & colored ones for those you want to empahsize. Hidden for all others. Then have the non-textured/colored one behind with that one hiding the class shown in the foreground.

[Kevin Allen]

only light certain areas, leave the rest dark

[TomWhiteLight]

 I would use a data vis for this.

I have a data vis that provides a texture override to objects by type.

 

[scottmoore]

Data visualization is the way to go. Make sure the items you want to highlight have something about them that will work as a criteria for data visualization (let’s assume class assignments for this example) Then create two data visualizations:  

 

data vis 1: set criteria to “class is scenic element 1”. Then set the fill to white for instance and make sure it’s active. 
 

data vis 2: set criteria to “class is not scenic element 1”. Then set the fill to something gray. 
 

run both of those data visualizations in a sheet layer viewport and you should get the result your looking for if using shaded render with color but not texture. Alternatively I would imagine you could render using color and textures and only activate the second DV that would then leave your highlighted item in full color. 
 

 

[scottmoore]

16 hours ago, scottmoore said:

Data visualization is the way to go. Make sure the items you want to highlight have something about them that will work as a criteria for data visualization (let’s assume class assignments for this example) Then create two data visualizations:  

 

data vis 1: set criteria to “class is scenic element 1”. Then set the fill to white for instance and make sure it’s active. 
 

data vis 2: set criteria to “class is not scenic element 1”. Then set the fill to something gray. 
 

run both of those data visualizations in a sheet layer viewport and you should get the result your looking for if using shaded render with color but not texture. Alternatively I would imagine you could render using color and textures and only activate the second DV that would then leave your highlighted item in full color. 
 

 

Also, respect to Matt Geasey and the team at Clear All Visuals where I pilfered that concept. 

[EAlexander]

Definitely check out Andy Broomells excellent tutorial on Data Visualization for Scenery.

 

https://www.andybroomell.com/masterclass-data-visualization

Edited March 13 by EAlexander