VW 2017 Renderworks Improvements are brilliant

[zoomer]

To allow complex C4D Material Compatibility, without bringing that Complexity into Vectorworks
and keeping VW Materials reduced, simple and easy was brilliant.

I see a ton of Bug Solving in FBX and C4D export also.
(Camera Triplicates, Material Duplication and Naming, ...)

The new Export Controls are brilliant.
Thanks for not forgetting FBX. With these I get a beautiful Vectorworks -> Modo workflow !
This will save an endless amount of time.
Same for VW -> C4D Exchange.
It saves so many of the tedious workarounds that were needed until now.

[barkest]

Hi Zoomer,

I can't download 2017 yet as my download situation is like living in the 1970s as we are on vacation. 

When importing C4D materials how does it work given there are only 4 shaders in VW?

Also after import can you resize the material or does it come it at the default 10mm size?

Is the import restricted to materials only?

Are the materials the right way around? (I ask this because I have had issues in the past when importing OBJ - although that was flipped normals).

 

Thanks Zoomer

 

 

[PVA - Admin]

The 4 shader limit is overridden for imported textures. You can render the full amount of shaders in Vectorworks, you just cant control more than the 4 shaders through the Vectorworks Texture UI, they mark each shader as "Imported":

I'll let @zoomerverify the rest!

[barkest]

Thanks Jim

[rDesign]

Does that mean that imported Cinema 4D textures will render the same in both Vw and Cinema 4D? 

[PVA - Admin]

3 hours ago, rDesign said:

Does that mean that imported Cinema 4D textures will render the same in both Vw and Cinema 4D? 

It should indeed! (If it doesn't, you come get me.)

EDIT: This is not true of REFLECTANCE shaders, these can not be rendered in Vectorworks directly. However, the information is still maintain and if the texture is used in Vectorworks and then you export back to C4D, your reflectance channels will resume working as normal. We do not destroy this info.

[barkest]

Looking at your import size I guess that you can't resize materials  but they will resize if the object they are on are resized. 6.6GB download on a 1.2Mb download may take a while....

Edited September 14, 2016 by barkest
change

[zoomer]

I haven't played with it so far, just watched the videos.

C4D import is Materials only.
Your typical extra Material file that you were used to have to overwrite (imported) Materials with your own.
(Same material names, called Material Exchanger ?)

VW will import these Materials. You can't completely manage them in VW, but temporarily overwrite them by
your 4 VW channels (which are more anyway, but just 4 at one time) and even go back to the C4D Settings.
RW or C4D Engine can of course render the full material complexity. (Like it does in Archicad)

So a bit pity for those who don't have a Copy of C4D, because they can't "create" nor "edit"complex Materials in VW.
But they should be able to download any C4D material preset files and include them in their files.

Any Extrudes have still one Face flipped, as it looks so far. (Slabs, Extrudes, probably parts of Stair Objects, ...)
I found a way to re-align those flipped faces in Modo as well as C4D. Tedious but solvable.

I think you can/have to overwrite the size.
C4D Materials have no size itself. They get their final size (UV/Projection Mapping) per Object after being assigned.
So they may come in in any arbitrary default size in VW but that should be editable without destroying any C4D
connection.

Edited September 14, 2016 by zoomer

[PVA - Admin]

Confirmed here, you can alter the textures "Size" value both when editing the texture itself as well as rescale it on objects without breaking the shader overrides.

[barkest]

Thanks guys - I am very much looking forward to using this feature. I can stop baking textures whooooo!!!

[barkest]

Actually I should have said that C4D is an extension now to VW with regard to materials and UV mapping. I too think its a shame its not open to everyone and I do appreciate you can't do everything in VW. This is a big step forward for me and as Zoomer has said the export to C4D is much better. Great news 

[zoomer]

I think that 4 channel "only" material system is better for the majority of users.
And now everybody will use RW.
As some channels include "sub"channels it is more as it looks anyway.
(Of course those could be rearranged and even easier to use and understand)
But you can use complex materials.
I don't want or need much of these extended features like multi layers in VW.
It is more about compatibility for Exchange.
Of course Fresnell Reflexions and Attenuation Values are very nice to have.

 

But the new export options solve so many hard problems at once.

Symbols are so useful in a CAD. Now I can make use of these again, without
any negative impacts on my 3D exports. That will make my VW files much better.

For Modo, where I didn't get Symbols in as Instances anyway (although FBX is able to do so),
I can import them as normal geometry (no more hidden in redundant nested locators)

For C4D I can use Symbols, but now I'm able to control these again from Symbols Group Folder.
Visibilities (as C4D does not assign layers to instances) and general edit.

Scene Organisation allows me for the first time to bring VW geometry to Modo in a way that
i can pack all single parts of one Material into a single Mesh Item.

 

There are a few refinements appearing as wishes for me, but overall that helps so much.

Edited September 14, 2016 by zoomer

[barkest]

when exporting to C4D where does the object axis centre go now?

[EAlexander]

15 minutes ago, barkest said:

when exporting to C4D where does the object axis centre go now?

Curious too - does it stay with the object or does it go to 0,0,0 still?

Mid projects and can't upgrade yet.

[Kevin McAllister]

24 minutes ago, EAlexander said:

Curious too - does it stay with the object or does it go to 0,0,0 still?

Mid projects and can't upgrade yet.

It seems to still be at 0,0,0 for most objects. Symbols appear to be at their insertion points.

KM

[zoomer]

Yes,
Axis Gizmo at Origin as always.

There exists a german plugin from a software vendor that does a lot of this cleaning and ArchViz
prepare work for you (about 100 and 200 bucks fro Pro Version)
But I'm not sure if that it is always good idea to transfer all Axis Gizmos to Geometries (?)

I customized my UI to have a "Center Axis To" Button, in case I edit something.
But yes, annoying for View Fit to Objects.

Edited September 14, 2016 by zoomer

[rDesign]

On September 14, 2016 at 9:53 AM, rDesign said:

Does that mean that imported Cinema 4D textures will render the same in both Vw and Cinema 4D? 

 

On September 14, 2016 at 9:54 AM, JimW said:

It should indeed! (If it doesn't, you come get me.)

EDIT: This is not true of REFLECTANCE shaders, these can not be rendered in Vectorworks directly. However, the information is still maintain and if the texture is used in Vectorworks and then you export back to C4D, your reflectance channels will resume working as normal. We do not destroy this info.

@JimW- I was going to come get you for this previous statement of yours that , but I see that you have already edited it by adding a caveat. How is the non-Cinema 4D user to know which shaders are Reflectance shaders? I certainly don't know.

I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed by this. There should be a VERY BIG ASTERISK next to the 'Import Cinema 4D Textures' feature. 

Essentially this new feature is only intended to improve your Vw <—> Cinema 4D workflow, it was never intended to improve renderings inside Vectorworks. 

Edited September 16, 2016 by rDesign

[PVA - Admin]

Agreed, unfortunately I didn't know this was the case until this thread. I'm going to add this info to the instructional material.

However some good news, because of this and other issues there will be talks soon with MAXON about our interoperability and seeing about removing some of these limitations, I've just found out.

[rDesign]

28 minutes ago, JimW said:

Agreed, unfortunately I didn't know this was the case until this thread. I'm going to add this info to the instructional material.

However some good news, because of this and other issues there will be talks soon with MAXON about our interoperability and seeing about removing some of these limitations, I've just found out.

Thanks JimW, as always I truly do appreciate your candor and honesty on the forums.

The training video for 2017 - C4D Texture Import should also be corrected to make these unfortunate limitations extremely clear.

As far as future discussions with MAXON, my hope is that Vectorworks follow ArchiCAD's approach of completely integrating Cinerender functionality into Vectorworks, because the current Vw approach of trying to minimize RW shader options so that it has the same controls as the pre-C4D Lightworks render engine clearly does not work.

The more complicated functionality of Cinerender could be hidden from the general Vw user by putting those functions behind an 'Advanced' or 'Show More Options' button at the bottom of the Renderworks Texture dialogue. 

[PVA - Admin]

2 hours ago, rDesign said:

As far as future discussions with MAXON, my hope is that Vectorworks follow ArchiCAD's approach of completely integrating Cinerender functionality into Vectorworks, because the current Vw approach of trying to minimize RW shader options so that it has the same controls as the pre-C4D Lightworks render engine clearly does not work.

The more complicated functionality of Cinerender could be hidden from the general Vw user by putting those functions behind an 'Advanced' or 'Show More Options' button at the bottom of the Renderworks Texture dialogue. 

Luckily, this is indeed our intention, I think the limitations now are simply bureaucratic rather than technological, so hopefully we can do some pushing.

I agree with you about an advanced/simplified UI toggle. This would allow us to keep the "Rendering Made Easy" angle while letting more demanding users (Myself included) turn it up to 11.

[rDesign]

Thanks JimW - I'm glad to hear that this is the intention moving forward.

I'm one of those who will want to crank it up to 11. Being stuck on 4 just doesn't cut it anymore in 2017.

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, JimW said:

I agree with you about an advanced/simplified UI toggle. This would allow us to keep the "Rendering Made Easy" angle while letting more demanding users (Myself included) turn it up to 11.

That's true for Maxon also ....

I think their Material Editor broke a bit with the new Complex Specular Model in one of their Cahannels.
Just a little bit ....

But RW doesn't have 4 Channels only at all.
RW just mixed other channel like Glow between its 4 Channels.
And I think it would be much more understandable and easier to use if these Sub Channels would be
pulled out in the UI as separate Channels.
And to show the different, partly overlapping parameters of the Specular Reflection Channel at one time.

[barkest]

Quote

And I think it would be much more understandable and easier to use if these Sub Channels would be
pulled out in the UI as separate Channels.

+1

[PVA - Admin]

We don't plan to expose the FULL C4D material UI at any point because of the various concerns mentioned here as well as others internally, but allowing more functionality in the middle ground I think would do well.

I will say this though, a LOT of the talk I hear internally is that we will be pushing more and more on upgrading the path from VW > C4D and having that be the destination for "higher end" rendering. I would personally have liked to see all of that brought directly into Renderworks but this may not be the case. I am actually going to spend time learning C4D quite a bit now because of this.

[zoomer]

Hey, but beside these problems*, don't forget that the current improvements are still brilliant

*I will fill the Wish List with a RW Thread soon.