vectorworks and film/television

[JRH]

Hi,

I don't use vectorworks. Never heard of it until I saw that the Directors Guild of Canada of which I'm a member is offering a beginners course in it. So I've read a bit and see it's for art department purposes. Here's my question. I'm a director getting into using a programme called Motionbuilder for previsualization. It's a character animation programme that allows me to set up a scene and cover it from different camera angles as it would be done on set. Motionbuilder has the ability to import dxf/obj/3ds files and I've read that vectorworks can export dxf files. So now I'm getting really excited. If I can take the dxf output of an art department's drawings and import it as 3d objects into Motionbuilder then I can set up some incredible previsualizations. I've read the article on how vectorworks was used for Madonna's set and that's what I'm thinking of but by bringing it into Motionbuilder I can add characters and special effects. I wanted to know what the dxf file would be like compared to what it is in vectorworks. Is there an example file I could download from someplace that's a dxf export from vectorworks that I could get hold of and try to import into Motionbuilder? Any comments on other people's experiences if they've tried anything like this would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

John

[Bart Rammeloo]

The reason for using VectorWorks for Madonna's clip is twofold. (1) you need to have scene plans, and VectorWorks allows you to make those - it's after all a CAD package. It also allows you to build a 3D model of the scene. (2) There's something called VectorWorks Spotlight, which allows you to make technical studies of the lighting situation. If you happen to have the add-on RenderWorks, you can also make elementary visualisations of this.

Exporting your geometry to Motion Builder isn't an issue - as you pointed out, you can use DXF to achieve that. The problem would lie in exporting your lighting data to MB. If it's only geometry you're interested in, then DXF would do just fine, especially since you can differentiate between different materials or object categories in VectorWorks by using either Layers or Classes and exporting one of both to DXF Layers.

The point I am however not getting is why you would want to bring everything together in MB? MB is a great character animation tool, but is seldom used for it's rendering capabilites - at least not in professional productions. Most of the time you'll see it as an add-on to Maya, Max, LightWave and, in the not too distant future, Cinema 4D. Especially the last one would be interesting for you, since there exists a plugin for exchanging and updating geometry and light information between VectorWorks and Cinema 4D, which is a much better solution than using DXF.

Of course, if it's not the quality of the render that you're after, but rather the (pre)visualization of your scenes, then MB would do just fine. But if you want to get accurate visuals with correct shadow, light color, falloff, material characteristics and so on, then MB will probably not be enough.

Kind regards,

BaRa

[ 10-26-2003, 02:46 PM: Message edited by: BaRa ]

[JRH]

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed and clear response. On the one hand, for some work, I would only be interested in the geometry for previsualization. I'm sure in other situations the ability to import lighting info as well as geometry and to be able to render a photorealistic sequence would be extremely useful. When I posted the original message I wasn't aware of the Vectorworks edition of Cinema cd4. It makes Cinema cd4 a very interesting and exciting possibility, especially if it also will eventually support fbx files.

Thanks again

John