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I was an early adopter of Vision but have not used it for some time.  Can anyone tell me what one can and cannot do when rendering an image in Vision now that VW and Vision are integrated?  I don't recall what the feature is called, but you can export an image file with better quality images than what you would have with standard "operational" OPEN GL meaning the rendering you see when working in real time.    Here is what I suppose I would really like to know:  

 

- Can I export from VW into Vision using all of my existing VW textures?  

- When exporting still images at higher quality, do those textures appear the way they would in final quality Rendtrworks?  (i.e. reflections, bumps, transparencies)  

 

I am assuming not as I do not believe that was ever the case before, but perhaps there have been some changes with the integration?  

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hey Scott! 

 

You can export your textures to vision from Vectorworks, they will appear in the same scale and quality as they do in Vectorworks, with the exception of transparency and reflections. 

 

Vectorworks now uses a Cinema 4D-based renderer, which would add a new layer of difficulty to implementing well in Vision. Lights in Vision are calculated as actual lights (falloff, particles in the beam, light wave interference, etc) so adding in the ability to bounce those lights could cause a bit of havoc on current gen GPUs. Maybe one of the engineers could weigh in on this, but I would expect if it could be added, rendering times would skyrocket. It would be akin to rendering a final quality renderworks with maxed out settings, plus the fact that you're rendering actual photometrically calculated lights.

 

Hope that helps! If you haven't already, update to Vision sp3, as the textures come in much closer to final quality renderworks, without a performance hit now.

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That is good to know. I am leaning towards this as a presentation solution. In my case, I am finding that I am spending inordinate amounts of time focusing, adjusting levels, assessing gobo and color choices then testing those choices with minimal amounts of geometry. I then go back and make additional changes and test again. Then create a set of renders. Once that is done I have to start over with another scene and then run the process again. This can literally take days. 

 

Assigining universe and address information would be infintely quicker than what I am doing now. 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I may be able to clarify some things, if there is any misunderstanding.

 

Universe and Address are fields that, in both VW and Vision, contain plain data. Basically, it is just a number. It was not hard to get both VW and Vision using these numbers, and that is why when you fill out Universe/Address information in VW it exports to Vision as you'd expect (btw, if you want to change what fields in VW map to Vision you can do so in the Spotlight Preferences->Vision Mapping).

 

Gobos and Colors were not so straight forward. While we do want to work toward having one mechanism for Gobos and Colors, we haven't had the opportunity yet. It will take some time for us to get Vision switched over to VW resources. That being said, we have two "sets" of Gobos/Colors resources in VW now that Vision has been integrated. One set is specific to Renderworks; this is what you are likely used to using. But there is also a new set of resources that are specific to Vision.

 

The gobos/colors you have likely always used only effect Renderworks and are specific to VW, meaning they are selected through VW resources. The new "set" of resources/fields/dialogs is the Vision set.

 

If you are running VW 2017 or newer, you can either continue using the old "Edit Vision Data" dialog to set Gobos and Colors in VW and have them export to Vision (although these will not effect Renderworks because they are Vision specific). This is the old workflow that Vision supported back in the Vision2/4 days. Alternatively, we have added a "Color Wheel", "Gobo Wheel", and "Animation Wheel" to the Lighting Devices OIP Edit button.

 

Someone else may need to chime in here, but I believe once you have your fixtures set up in VW with Vision Data and Renderworks Data the way you'd like, you should be able to copy and paste that fixture into new VW documents. Hopefully that will save you the time of having to "redo" all of the same gobos/colors over and over again.

 

The last thing I will say is that any time you can set something for Vision from VW, you should. The reason being is that the communication between the two products is currently one way. This means that the vwx will always be the "master" file. If you keep it up to date, you should be able to get _fairly_ close to the same esc/v3s by exporting it again. Some things, like conventional pan/tilt, will need to be adjusted every time you export from 2017, and that is something we are looking into.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I agree completely with Scott that Vision should be able to work as a conceptual rendering tool- and/or that Renderings should be able to use the stage/ real world lighting fixtures you're placing in the same drawing..  there isn't a really good workflow in VW currently for this especially for event lighting designers..

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  • 8 months later...

I wanted to take a moment to revive this thread for a bit. My question is this:

Why is it that Vision, using only OpenGL can output realistic volumetric light beams and emits them at the correct lens aperature size while the far more “advanced” CineRender engine cannot come close on either count?  Eight years into this rendering engine and I am still just as frustrated as ever. Anyone else??? 

Edited by scottmoore
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I really want this functionality in Vectorworks.

 

The current ability to visualise shadows, reflections and bounce with Vectorworks is of paramount importance now if one wants to create renderings that will sell a concept. What is missing is the ability to produce believable volumetric haze, beam-width and lens-flare effects which means that Vectorworks cannot offer the complete package. For this particular functionality to exist in Vision and not in Vectorworks seems retrograde. If one could make the light beam from a fixture with an 18" lens look like its coming from the lens (rather than a pin-hole), or light from a LED strip fixture behave in the way its meant to behave without a huge amount of work tinkering with symbols to get half-decent results, it would be a significant selling point for Vectorworks. The rendering engine in Vectorworks far outstrips the competition in the "events" lighting market and would be a real bonus in terms of new adopters to this way of working if it could be implemented.  Lighting design is not just about beams of light through haze which is really what Vision/Capture/WYSIWYG/MA 3d are about. These tools are primarily for pre-programming which they excel at. I use Vectorworks because it offers the ability to really experiment with light and produce believable renders. Although some of these wishes can be created with large amounts of customisation, the time investment is just too much for anybody except the most ardent Vectorworks nut.

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Agreed.  Reflections, surface textures and accurate lighting are what is required to produce realism and VW does that pretty well.  Certainly well enough for me to sell concepts to clients.  What it cannot do, and this has been a huge sticking point since the introduction of the "new" rendering engine some 8 years ago,  is any type of realistic volumetric lighting.  I keep hearing that the VW development team is working with Maxon to allow VW users some additional functionality that is available in Cinema 4D to address this, what I consider to be a HUGE issue, in Vectorworks.  Still nothing has changed.   There are any number of real time visualizers (Vision, MA3D, Wysiwyg, Light Converse......) that produce FAR superior results to ANYTHING Vectorworks can do and I think that is a complete shame, especially when you consider the amount of time it takes to render basically miserable looking volumetrics in VW.  Did I mention that these are "real time" visualizers?   In the world of live entertainment, a huge percentage of events rely on haze as a major part of the overall design aesthetic and not being able to produce that in VectorWorks in any kind of a realistic fashion is frankly intolerable.  

 

Can anyone explain why Vision can do this and VW cannot?  

 

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