Smoother Hidden Line Rendering

[Bruce Kieffer]

What is the setting to make curves smoother when doing hidden line rendering? I have some layer plane circles that render very chunky.

[Joe-SA]

In your Render Modes settings you can up the quality. I had to do this in both the Open GL settings and the Custom Renderworks settings. For renderworks there is a specific 'Curved Geometry' quality setting.

I had extruded a crown assembly along an eyebrow roof eave. In order to get a reasonable curve I had to up the quality to the point where it took 20-30 minutes to generate the rendering. Not very effective. In addition, my hidden line elevations wouldn't generate smooth. Here I had no option where I could increase the quality. I had no choice but to mask over it with 2 polygons.

This is one area where some improvement is needed. (one of many, that is)

Joe

[Kevin McAllister]

Bruce are you combining rendering modes in a sheet layer viewport when you see the curve issue, or is it generally?

If its in general try setting Vectorworks Preferences>3D Tab>3D Conversion Res to high or very high.

I've found layer plane objects can look pixelated when combining rendering modes (ie. hidden line + final quality render works) in sheet layer viewports.

Kevin

[Bruce Kieffer]

I am not combining rendering modes on a sheet layer. I'm just rendering hidden line on my design layer, and I do have the 3D conversion res set to very high.

[Bruce Kieffer]

I have it better now. I created a viewport and set the sheet layer DPI to 300. That renders smoother. Then I exported the "view" as EPS, imported it into Illustrator, and it's relatively OK. Still pixilated, but I understand the limitations of 3D objects rendered and exported. I'm open to other suggestions if you know of better ways to do this. Thanks.