RenderWorks 2009

[Hans Jakob M?ller]

Are there any improvements to RenderWorks in version 2009? I could not find any in the .PDF brochure. Since there is a new and improved 3D engine I would expect this to open up new possibilities for rendering. At least I would expect faster and more accurate global illumination and some sort of fast or nearly interactive preview. After all it's already there in LightWorks and RenderWorks is based on this. There is no reason to give up RenderWorks yet. I do not fully support the views raised in the previous post from carpalmer. I get reasonable results with many point lights on quite complex models in minutes on a multiprosessor PC. I get a fairly nice Cornell box render with Final Gather in ten seconds and with radiosity in about two minutes. But I still haven't managed to make one decent interior perspective!

[Christiaan]

From What's New PDF:

Texturing Improvements

Texturing in Renderworks just got even easier. You can individually texture multiple parts of objects, such as wall tops, start caps, extrude edges, and more. Additional improvements include new mapping ease-of-use functions.

New Textures

Forbo flooring: Choose from 100 new material textures from the Effect, Eternal, and Smaragd product lines.

From Parasolids Advantage PDF:

Rendering: Parasolid?s faceting technology results in much faster, improved rendering in Vectorworks.

Although it's not clear if this is just Viewports or rendering in general.

In any case it's going to need a lot more than these things for the this spin to come true: "Renderworks 2009 makes rendering even easier with new capabilities, so you don?t need a separate rendering program."

And, as an aside, OpenGL rendering of walls is a lot smoother and accurate:

http://download2.nemetschek.net/www_movies/2009/T00495/T00495.htm

[Christiaan]

Personally I suspect the main problem with Renderworks is that it's stuck inside Vectorworks. There are too many compromises shoehorning a rendering app into a CAD app.

I think I'd like to see Renderworks become a separate app, but highly integrated with Vectorworks.

[gmm18]

But one of the things I love about VW is that you can do your rendering

right in the app...no exporting, swtiching, just hit "render."

I get pretty great results this way, if I wanted better sure I could export

to C4D, Artlantis, or something, but what a pain, I never do this.

I prefer to keep it all together to keep the work fluid.

Perhaps your vision of a "separate, but highly integrated" would do the

trick, but we'll see.

[grant_PD]

Right...but didn't Adobe figure this out with their whole Jump to ImageReady thing? Two separate programs that we passing info back and forth. I agree that the process gets more clunky with having two discreet programs, but try explaining that to a client when they don't like your rendering.

[G_Hannigan]

Quality is not the only reason for using external apps, the main problem with having it inside VW is that VW is idle during a render. If it rendered in the background, you could continue working.

[billtheia]

Quality is not the only reason for using external apps, the main problem with having it inside VW is that VW is idle during a render. If it rendered in the background, you could continue working.

Great point. Background rendering would be great.

[Christiaan]

But one of the things I love about VW is that you can do your rendering right in the app...no exporting, swtiching, just hit "render."

Yeah, well, that's what I mean by "highly integrated". If they're in control of both apps then maybe the export/import process can be done away with. Let a separate Renderworks program open the Vectorworks file, for instance, and allow both apps to have the file open at the same time.

Don't know if that's technically feasible but I know one thing: exporting and importing into Artlantis is inordinately quicker at producing quality renders than the Renderworks route.

[russh]

They've missed the boat again. No LWA support. No RPC support.