willofmaine Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 There seem to be all kinds of improvements with lighting in more recent versions of VW's. But how come we can no longer have smooth curves, as we did in VW 2008? See attached. These are both rendered in FQRW. Quote Link to comment
Kevin McAllister Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 I think there's actually a bug with FQRW. I would try the same experiment with Custom Renderworks and setting the the curved geometry setting to high or very high. Somehow the default for FQRW is not high or very high any more.... I recently discovered that Send to Cinema 4D defaults to the curved geometry setting of FQRW if your model isn't rendered in a Renderworks mode when its sent. When I render in Custom Renderworks with a higher curved geometry setting and then send it to Cinema 4D I get a much better result. In my situation I've filed a bug. I suspect you're seeing something related. Kevin Quote Link to comment
willofmaine Posted February 16, 2013 Author Share Posted February 16, 2013 Thanks, Kevin. I tried it with custom RW and all settings at "Very High," which seemed to help some but, still, the curves are not smooth as they are with VW 2008 (see attached). I'll submit a bug. You mentioned Cinema 4D. If Renderworks uses Cinema 4D, why do you also need Cinema 4D separately from Vectorworks? Or why would one use Artlantis? (Aside from VW's inability to render smooth curves, of course...). There seem to be some outstanding renderings out there, featuring things such as very realistic curtains, cushions, bedding, etc.: http://jironomo.com/architectural-visualisation-blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/high-quality-interior-3d-rendering.jpg I'm pretty sure these things are not image props, and I'm pretty sure creating them with NURBS curves would be a nightmare. Is it these stand-alone rendering softwares that make these types of elements and renderings possible? Thanks! Will Quote Link to comment
grant_PD Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 VW does use the C4D rendering engine, but it's abilities are really constrained. What you're seeing in that rendering is no doubt from a higher and modelling program than VW, with some advanced rendering features that Renderworks doesn't have (look at the blanket). One can do things in C4D modelling wise that are just not possible or at least extremely difficult in VW. The hypernurbs deformer alone in C4d can do some amazing smoothing of polygons. One can do things texturing wise in C4d that one cannot in Renderworks: layering of textures, adding phong tags for smoothing, limiting lights to just a single object, rendering with a real world camera....etc. Quote Link to comment
Kevin McAllister Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Hi Will, Grant's assessment of Cinema 4D is pretty accurate. It is much more powerful for renderings and animations. It also has the ability to model in a more freeform way. Ironically, it also produces cleaner STL files than Vectorworks. I'm currently using the Vectorworks --> Cinema 4D --> STL workflow almost daily to create files for my 3D printer. Cinema 4D has tools to optimize and fix VW models to make them watertight for printing. This is how I discovered my own curve quality problem.... Kevin Quote Link to comment
willofmaine Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 Great Grant & Kevin, thanks for all the info. I've downloaded the demo of Cinema 4D to see what it's all about... Quote Link to comment
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