3D Render Engine/system

[billtheia]

hi all

billtheia :

my render image was made in vectorworks with renderworks (I used BCD settings above , rendered with custom radiosity and a simple directional light.).

Curiously it took less time to render that i expected but the fact that i have an Q9400 may have implied in reducing the rendering time he!he!he!

I tryied with an hdri (free one) and it took twice as much time to render and i didnt noticed much improvements...

By the way G_Hannigan and billtheia , nice images.

How did you put those background images in vectorworks ? i create an background and use it on ambient but it never shows....

Thanks, Orlando.

I'm not surprised that the HDRI rendering took longer but I am surprised that you didn't notice much difference. Rendering with a single, directional light usually gives very quick render times but results in crisp/harsh shadows. Rendering with an HDRI background (and no other lights) usually takes longer but results in softer, more realistic shadows.

I got the background used in my rendering here:

http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/7928/free-hdri-cd-collection-from-evermotion

You have two choices for attaching a background.

1. Add it to a design layer by double clicking in the organization dialog (or right-click, Edit in the Navigation palette.)

2. Add it to a Sheet Layer Viewport (SLVP) by selecting the SLVP and using the Object Info Palette (OIP)

[Jershaun]

Hi Bill

It depends on which image you're talking about. I've used Renderworks, Maxwell, Vray and C4D. Generally Renderworks is the slowest (there's no sugar coating that) and Vray is the fastest. C4D has good speed and I'll say it's about 5-10 times faster than Renderworks especially when using Radiosity and HDRI. Vray is about 4-8 times faster than C4D. Maxwell is in a league of it's own and painfully slow. It depends on your computer but it can take from 2 hours to 2 days to render an image however it wouldn't be fair to compare Maxwell to Renderworks because to come close to the quality of Maxwell, all Renderworks' setting will have to be set to 100% and then Renderworks would take twice as long than Maxwell.

If I get some time later on I'll try to do some tests and post them in this forum.

Thanks,

[MKingsley]

Hello George,

I just downloaded the C4D demo and was wondering if you could point me to some good online video tutorials to get me started working with the new interface? I've found some online but nothing basic like just navigating views within a window.

Thanks,

[G_Hannigan]

Michael,

Here's one:

http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/index.php?autocom=downloads&showcat=1

5th one down in the list: Interface

I think I have some more on a different machine.

There are some free videos here after registering:

http://www.cineversity.com/index.asp

Edited June 6, 2009 by G_Hannigan

[MKingsley]

Thanks for that, George. I had since found the Cineversity one. I'm off and running.

[billtheia]

Hi Bill

It depends on which image you're talking about. I've used Renderworks, Maxwell, Vray and C4D. Generally Renderworks is the slowest (there's no sugar coating that) and Vray is the fastest. C4D has good speed and I'll say it's about 5-10 times faster than Renderworks especially when using Radiosity and HDRI. Vray is about 4-8 times faster than C4D. Maxwell is in a league of it's own and painfully slow. It depends on your computer but it can take from 2 hours to 2 days to render an image however it wouldn't be fair to compare Maxwell to Renderworks because to come close to the quality of Maxwell, all Renderworks' setting will have to be set to 100% and then Renderworks would take twice as long than Maxwell.

If I get some time later on I'll try to do some tests and post them in this forum.

Thanks,

Thanks, Shaun, for the run-down of applications that you use and their relative speed. Which one do you use the most, these days, and why? Also, have you ever used Artlantis? If/when I get a stand-alone renderer, I will almost surely get one that has a plug-in for or in some way easily links to, VW. If I had to choose right now, I'd probably go with Artlantis but C4D is certainly in the running.

I'd really prefer that RW gets some attention from NNA and is made faster because I like the integration and the ability to easily do non-photorealistic, rendering.

[Jershaun]

Hi Bill

I find myself mostly using Vray. Reasons are, it's extremely fast, especially when dealing with large amounts of geometry. Other applications like C4D will slow down to a crawl and RW would probably breakdown, however Vray (provided one has enough ram in ones' machine therefore I wish VW was 64bit) breazes through the geometry. An example would be a scene with a lot of 3D trees and plants.

I tried a demo of Artlantis a long, long time ago but the interface never appealed to me. I don't want this to turn into a render application war but the advantages of C4D is it does animation of the camera and objects and it can do a lot of organic modeling as well and more importantly is allows me to use Vray/Maxwell/Fryrender/etc. With C4D, one has a lot more options for now and especially the Future. I don't see the exporting from VW to C4D a problem. It's well intergrated and updating the model in C4D is easy. I'm sure it's the same for Artlantis.

Also I didn't mention before but Fryrender will be releasing a technology soon where one can render a scene then that scene can be sent to a client and they can move around the scene in a free player-similar to quicktime VR but more powerfull. Check their website out http://www.randomcontrol.com/rt However computer hardware still needs to go a long way to catch up with programs like Fryrender and Maxwell.

HTH,

[cad@sggsa]

Here is one that my people use on occasion with very good results.

http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php

Thank Thom.

This is a really quick and easy way to get good results, still need to read the tutorial but managed to do a quick render from a complex VW drawing....need to play with lighting and textures still too.

[bking39116]

So what is the workflow to get from VW to Kerkythea? I am exporting to 3ds with several different scales and can't ever get a model to show up in KT.

I have just had a rather large project dropped on me (a studio/ballroom/exhibit hall flythrough) and Renderworks is dying with a bare exhibit hall. I can't do 2 hour renders with just the architectural geometry.

btw, I am on Spotlight/RW 08. Have access to machines built to Nemetschek specs.

any thoughts/advice?

tnx,

bk

[Jershaun]

@bking

C4D is the only answer for animations. Don't even think renderworks.

[Tom G.]

Here's one.

This is a Vwks 2010 Renderworks rendering.

Mac OS Snow Leopard

2.5 Gig MacBook Pro

4 Gigs of RAM

Vwks 2010 Architect

Custom Renderworks

(3) lights, 1 sun, two interior

HDRI background

9 minutes to render

Edited October 19, 2009 by tguy

[billtheia]

9 minutes! That's a pretty quick render, for Renderworks.

It looks like the HDRI background is NOT being used for lighting - right?

Also - what were your Custom RW settings?

[Jershaun]

And this is one created in C4D

http://www.maxonpodcast.de/gallery/index.php/image/179/

[Jershaun]

If one had to attempt this image with renderworks, I think renderworks would break your computer

http://www.maxonpodcast.de/gallery/index.php/image/190/

[Tom G.]

Shaun:

I would also be out of business as that is not the business I'm in. Though it does look great!

Tom

[billtheia]

And this is one created in C4D

http://www.maxonpodcast.de/gallery/index.php/image/179/

Beautiful! I suspect, however, that the render time was a bit longer than 9 minutes.

[grant_PD]

I built this model in VW 2008, and rendered stills from it. About 15 minutes a render on my machinge.

http://jhalldesign.com/currentshow/OZ27.html

Took that same model and converted it into C4D and rendered a movie walkthrough for it. Rendered it to DVD quality (slightly lower quality renders though) and that process took my machine about 3 hours to render.

http://jhalldesign.com/reel2droz.htm

The advantages of C4D are large. The advantage I used in the above example was C4D's multithreading capablity and 64 bit programing. With an 8 core processor and 8 gigs of ram, the rendering times were small enough to do a very high frame rate and size. I wouldn't think about it with VW.

[Tom G.]

Billtheia:

The settings I used were:

Custom Renderworks

Ray traced transparent shadows

No Final Gather

Ray Tracing on

Anti Aliasing on

other settings set to High

Lighting:

Ambient light set to on at 26%

Sunlight set to 75%

Color temp: Daylight

I re-rendered the image with Final Gather on at 20% and it was not much slower than the original 9 min. render. I did not see a significant difference in quality.

I re-rendered with same Final Gather settings but with Specular Highlights on.

The image showed softer detail but since I wanted a sharp image, this worked against me. This setting might be better employed on an interior view. Rendering time was not recorded but it was not more than 15 minutes.

The HDRI backdrop doesn't have an OFF setting that I'm aware of so all of them affect lighting of the model to one degree or another. In rendering using different HDRI's I found that many really affected how much light was reflected off the front windows. I liked this HDRI background better than most for its less intense reflections. Also, faces of elements which would have been vague in renderings without the HDRI background now rendered with crisp detail. The set of stairs that face the viewer head on are an example of this. Previously, they would have rendered without clear demarkation between the treads.

Renderworks, while not a competitor to the renderers that have been mentioned above, has take a huge step forward in v.2010 regarding ease of use--in my opinion. Given the return on investment, I think HDRI as implemented will be judged an important step forward for VectorWorks for those users who don't need the more sophisticated, high-end renderers.

Edited October 20, 2009 by tguy

[billtheia]

If your HDRI background is indeed contributing light, I'm surprised that your shadows aren't softer.

HDRI lighting is controlled in "Lighting Options." You can set it to use the current background, a selected background, or none. I would have guessed that yours was set to none.

It might be that your sun is drowning out your HDRI background. The easiest way to tell is to turn off ambient and the sun and re-render.

For exteriors, I try and use HDRI as the primary light source and then fill in where I need to with point or directional lights. See:

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=114253&Searchpage=1&Main=24224&Words=hdri&Search=true#Post114253

[Jershaun]

Renderworks, while not a competitor to the renderers that have been mentioned above, has take a huge step forward in v.2010 regarding ease of use--in my opinion. Given the return on investment, I think HDRI as implemented will be judged an important step forward for VectorWorks for those users who don't need the more sophisticated, high-end renderers.

While I agree renderworks is not a competitor, I strongly disagree renderworks is moving forward. I would hardly call "material blur" and "decal" huge steps forward and the implementation of HDRI is the same as it was in 2008. I'm sorry, but I don't see any advances in renderworks.

One can't use "Camera Match" to it's full potential (that's why I haven't purchased it) because it doesn't have the "shadow catcher reflectivety". Also, it can't do an elementary mapped shadow through an object with any type of transparency. "Important step forward". I don't think so.

[cad@sggsa]

I built this model in VW 2008, and rendered stills from it. About 15 minutes a render on my machinge.

http://jhalldesign.com/currentshow/OZ27.html

Took that same model and converted it into C4D and rendered a movie walkthrough for it. Rendered it to DVD quality (slightly lower quality renders though) and that process took my machine about 3 hours to render.

http://jhalldesign.com/reel2droz.htm

The advantages of C4D are large. The advantage I used in the above example was C4D's multithreading capablity and 64 bit programing. With an 8 core processor and 8 gigs of ram, the rendering times were small enough to do a very high frame rate and size. I wouldn't think about it with VW.

Good day Grant

I had a look at your renders and note the human figures seem to be image props, but 3d ones.

Is this what VW2008 is capable in doing?, creating photo quality Human figures?

Would like to know how you got this if not in VW.

Keep Well

[grant_PD]

no, those are 2d people. Placed post rendering. Image props are fine for a few instances but for something like those audiences the only way to do it is in photoshop.

[Tom G.]

Shaun said: "I strongly disagree renderworks is moving forward."

In my last paragraph I said Renderworks has taken a huge step forward in EASE OF USE which I stand by. The "implementation" of HDRI is NOT the same as in v.2008 if by implementation we mean "a practical means for accomplishing something."

To Billtheia: Thanks for the tips! My HDRI option was ON and set to my preferred background. I indeed did render earlier with ambient lighting off as a test but my model was too dark for my tastes. I did want the model bright as would happen when sun peeks through storm clouds.

I'll definitely follow up on your suggestion to experiment with individual exterior lighting.

[billtheia]

tguy, You can increase the brightness of the HDRI by editing the RW background and turning up Brightness over 100. You can also reduce the impact that HDRI color has on the scene by turning down Saturation (I usually set this to 10%.) If your HDRI has a "sun" in it, you can turn the image by setting an angle in the Rotation field of the RW Background - then, you don't need a separate light source for the sun.

[Tom G.]

Billtheia:

Where is the location for Saturation or Rotation? I assume these should be accessible from OIP of the selected viewport?

Thanks