Rendering Tab in the OIP

[Kevin McAllister]

Hello,

I am a long time Vectorworks user who has struggled off and on with the Rendering Tab in the OIP. Frankly the documentation is terrible and the interface doesn't help. There is all this power in the background that is barely accessible. (Spend a little time with C4D and you'll know what I mean.)

My most recent challenge is that the Scale, Rotation, Offset H and Offset V are greyed out and not accessible. What causes this? I've tried different objects, different textures, different mappings and it just seems locked.

I am also curious if there is documentation somewhere about how Vectorworks determines the origin point for a texture on an object. It often seems very random though I'm sure there is some logic to it. The manual pretty much glosses over this...

Thank you for any help you can provide,

Kevin

[taoist]

The Rendering tab could use some help.

You might need to use the Renderworks Bitmap tool.

Not sure as I am trying to get this down as well.

In my opinion. anything (images, colors, textures) should be editable from within the Render Tab of the OIP.

Even if that means it takes us to another menu, the seamless link is there, or should be.

Economy of motion here please.

VW could do a better job of this.

We should be able to right click on any object and have full edit menu instead of having to use or find the specific tool to do what we want.

Smoother interface please.

imho

taoist

[Kevin McAllister]

I agree that the interface needs improvement, however that doesn't solve my immediate challenges.

The enabling / disabling of the Scale, Rotation, Offset H and Offset V seems to be related to how a texture is built. As an example, if I edit and add a Bump Shader to a texture that previously had these options greyed out suddenly they become active.

Is there a list of which texture attributes affect whether an applied texture can be scaled, rotated, offset etc.? All this trial and error is time consuming and wasteful.

Kevin

[taoist]

Kevin,

As to why it Scale, rotations and Offsets H&V are grayed out I can't answer at this time

If you use the Attribute Mapping Tool for applying textures, it

only works on Plane type mapping.

If you select the object and switch to 3D Mapping Mode, move the cursor over the object and the face you want to texture, the cursor changes to a pointing hand. Click once on the intended surface. You will notice a small tile instance of the texture.

You can re-size the texture to fit the surface. If you move the cursor over the green diamond (the textures origin point)the cursor changes from a pointing hand to a cross, click/hold the mouse and move the texture tile to a new location. Click again to complete the operation and then click on the 2D Selection Tool to release and render the drawing

Default is Perimeter type mapping

If you want to align the mapping of the texture on lets say a cube with a tile texture and you have a right Iso view.

Change map type to Plane under the Render Tab in the OIP.

The mapping of the tile may not align correctly.

You may have to check Auto-Align Planar Mapping

If that does not work you may have to check Follow Longest Edge

If that does not work you ay need to manually adjust the texture location by using Offset H and Offset V boxes by entering small dimensions

I will try and do some more with this over the weekend about your grayed out items

taoist

[Dave Donley]

The items in the OIP are grayed if changing those values will not have a visible effect on the appearance of the mapping, which sounds like what is happening in this case if they become ungrayed by adding an image bump shader (which is affected by those controls).

[Kevin McAllister]

Thanks Dave.

I had wondered if that were true but the implementation seems inconsistent. The custom texture I was having trouble with had Object Attribute Color, Metallic Reflectivity, Image Based Transparency and no Bump. Essentially I was creating a texture like a grating. It wouldn't allow for translations, rotations and scaling yet it needed to and should have.

Honestly these options should always be available since, as you say, it doesn't matter for some textures. Inadvertently blocking the options in situation where they may be necessary is not ideal.

Kevin

[cad@sggsa]

As I mentioned here:

http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=164813&gonew=1#UNREAD

They went back to the Stone Age!!!