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Boundary elevation drawings and fine mesh fencing


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I'm trying to produce some boundary elevation drawings from my model.

I'm currently using two viewports; one for the buildings which I've greyed out and then one in front of that for the boundary fence/wall, to isolate it out.

The problem is some of the fencing is a fine mesh, which looks fine on the main elevation drawings with the buildings in the background, but when they're rendered by themselves in their own viewport the mesh becomes blurry and messy because the anti-aliasing merges together and creates a solid white in between instead of being transparent.

Any ideas on how I could go about this differently?

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=7179&filename=boundary-elevation.png

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=7180&filename=main-elevation.png

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It's an interesting problem, mainly because I think our eyes can see an range of sizes, colours and textures which computing can't reproduce.

The physical mesh for instance is probably round wire, which if you draw it that way slows rendering engines to a crawl, but in real life causes glints and textural shading that our eyes can pick up and recognise from past experience as a fence, even when the wire is so thin and so far away.

All you can do is what you are already doing, look for a work around that represents reality but the components of which are actually hugely exaggerated.

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Not sure if this would work but:

Measure the area (panel) between each post to obtain a scale.

In Illustrator or photoshop:

Create an artboard with the same scale & transparent background.

Draw a grid using the pen tool and appropriate thickness. Med to dark grey may work best. maybe reduce opacity to 70%.

When happy, save as .png (png's support transparent backgrounds)

Place that in viewport and resize to fit between posts.

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That looks pretty good - why do you have to use another prog to create the grid? Can't it be done within VW?

Problem is, VW doesn't support transparent backgrounds in it's textures.

Otherwise, you could create a tiled texture, with only the grout showing and everything else transparent. But alas....I don't think that can be done.

I did the fence in 10 mins in photoshop.(shame about my VW skills though ;) ) Only prob with this is that you would have to save the view and fix in photoshop and not within the viewport itself.

Bear in mind though, that it's not unusual in our business to touch up our images post render.

Edited by Kizza
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NO, Wait. VWX does have transparent background capability in the image mask texture creation.

But is Christian making the fence from a texture or is it a rendered object - eg wire from 3d poly, or NURBS, or EAP? The EAP can be done with a triangle profile to cut down the facets and render overhead.

A horizontal and a vertical EAP can be converted to symbols and duplicated to make the grid.

Scale the profile and change the fill color to get heavier or lighter mesh in the renders.

-B

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Bear in mind though, that it's not unusual in our business to touch up our images post render.

True, but I don't do it. I prefer to work with VW(+RW) alone because it's faster in the end when you need to change a lot. Plus you will learn VW more and more trying. Working with programs you know real good like photoshop may look faster, but you'll never learn anything that way.

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I'm using the Handrail tool in this instance. I could have added vertical elements to complete the mesh but I wanted to emphasise the horizontal, plus I was using the Handrail verticals for the posts. And they were at 1:200 scale.

Rendering them at a high resolution (e.g. 720 dpi) is all that's needed. No need for other programs or transparent image masks, etc.

The main problem here was actually the grey out mask I was using on the buildings behind. Decreasing the opacity of that mask really helped.

Here's a example without the grey out mask, with the vertical elements added into to the Handrail tool (posts modelled separately), mesh at its actual aperture (76 x 12 mm security fencing) and rendered at 720 dpi. This part of the boundary is at an angle to the elevation so the verticals appear closer then 76 mm.

It's this kind of mesh:

http://www.sourcewire.com/news/59347/358-mesh-fencing-high-security-system-benefits-from-improved-aesthetics

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=7191&filename=mesh.png

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Working with programs you know real good like photoshop may look faster, but you'll never learn anything that way.

That's a bit harsh Dworks...I'm trying :cry:

If you have a chainwire style texture that would be usable in this instance I would like to know how to create it. I tried, but couldn't get it right.

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NO, Wait. VWX does have transparent background capability in the image mask texture creation.

Do you mean opacity or a true transparency. JPEG's do not support transparency.

How would you create such then?

I'm thinking if you had a 3D poly with a chainwire tiled transparency applied to it then you should get the result that Christiaan wanted.

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The Image Mask transparency shader can make a mask from any imported image. Maybe Vectorworks does some conversion. I have used jpg, png, pdf. But the controls only make one color transparent, so it works for mesh like this drawn in Vectorworks, but probably not very well for photographs with busy backgrounds. However, those backgrounds can be erased in other software, imported to VWX and then treated with the image mask shader.

Somewhere, my original image got a border. Could trim that in external software, but did not in this case, hence the tile spacing in my example.

Begs the question, though. Why can't we draw something, select it and click to have Vectorworks create a texture or hatch or image in the Resource Browser. What a pain to draw, export, import, make the texture.

-B ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=7199&filename=Image%20Mask%20texture.png

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Thx Benson, will experiment with the image mask shader.

Problem is, VW doesn't support transparent backgrounds in it's textures.

Probably should read:

Problem is, VW doesn't support transparent backgrounds in it's image imports.

I tried to create a fence on a transparent background in PS, saved as a .png (which does support transparencies i.e. software supporting png's fully will import a logo on a clear background instead of a white background), tried importing into VW as an overlay on a viewport. What should have been clear was in fact white.

That was the intended meaning behind my statement that VW doesn't support transparent backgrounds.

Edited by Kizza
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I'm using the Handrail tool in this instance.

One of the great posibilities of the handrail tool! I use it a lot lately for this kind of things, and other stuff like a glass wall for a shower.

(posts modelled separately)

You can use two handrails on top of each other. Using more than one on top of each other can create nice effects and many possible handrail configurations.

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I'm using the Handrail tool in this instance.

One of the great posibilities of the handrail tool!

What tool set is the handrail tool in?

Edit:

I've dumped the handrail in the building toolset.

So no provision for round posts in this tool?

Edited by Kizza
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