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Legacy textures rendering, but very slowly


P Retondo

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Does anyone have advice on how to handle textures from 2010 and earlier? We just did some testing and found that replacing a glazing texture converted from 2010 with a "native" 2012 glass texture cut our rendering time by about 60%. A reflective metal texture, same issue, especially if it was customized in any way.

How can one easily tell if a texture is "native" to 2012? We have a lot of legacy symbols with 3d content, plus we'd like to be able to re-use objects from previous projects that we've invested time into. Is there any way to convert a pre-2012 texture to a similar current texture? Any thoughts about texture substitution a la the font substitution window that pops up when your file contains an absent font?

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PS: a tip - windows contain a single plane rendered as glazing, doors contain 2, leading to a noticeably different attenuation of light. If you render a glazed door as a panel, assign your glass texture to either exterior or interior panel, and a class that has no texture and zero line weight to the other panel, you can spoof the door object to transmit light the same way a window does. This also leads to significantly improved rendering times. But :-( you can't fix your transom windows or sidelites.

Edited by P Retondo
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Window PIOs use extrudes for the glazing or two 3D polygons so that they have correct refraction. Door PIOs have problems with the sidelights that aren't created as two surfaces, this is a known bug. To get correct refraction a glass object should have two surfaces for the light to go through - one for the air to glass transition, and another for the glass to air transition. The only time you shouldn't do this would be for things like swimming pools where the correct thing is to have a 3D polygon for the air to water transition and then no other surface, because the pool is full of water.

The native 2012 glazing texture also has Cast Shadows off and Indirect Lighting off, which may help it with scenes with lots of lights and/or Indirect Lighting.

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Dave,

These PIOs are converted from 2010, but are now in 2012. The door glazing contains TWO extrudes (therefore 4 surfaces), the windows ONE extrude. Hence, the darkened rendering behind the doors, and lighter behind windows (trying to paste in a graphic). You can verify this by converting these objects to groups and looking at the pieces.

Doors_vs_windows.pdf

Hence, the workaround suggested. BTW, if you can see this graphic, you'll also see the messed up transom window glazing. Strangely, this transom window problem only shows up as your viewpoint becomes more oblique. While you're fixing that, how about eliminating one of the door glazing extrudes? Or are those objects doubling as panels?

Thanks for the heads-up on the shadows texture option. It did turn out that our legacy texture had shadows turned on, but we don't have the time right now to do the testing to see if that alone was responsible for more than doubling rendering time. Re: other comment, please note that it was the NEW texture that rendered faster, not the old one.

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Thanks for the heads-up on the shadows texture option. It did turn out that our legacy texture had shadows turned on, but we don't have the time right now to do the testing to see if that alone was responsible for more than doubling rendering time. Re: other comment, please note that it was the NEW texture that rendered faster, not the old one.

Thanks

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