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VW2017 Rendering blue lines as black


MHBrown

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Just installed VW2017 and the High Quality Renderworks seems to have a bug. When rendered in VW2016 the solid black lines seen in this rendering (representing clear acrylic tops) render the color they are drawn at: light blue. As you can see in this image, VW2017 renders them black. I'm using the SP4 version of 2017. Any ideas? I tried changing to Custom Renderworks and tweaking a bit, but the results are the same. I'm on an iMac, with 16GB RAM running OS10.12.6

 

Thanks,

MHBrown

Screen Shot 2017-08-09 at 8.35.41 AM.png

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Gotcha, make sure that you create actual 3D geometry so that you'll have control over the render color. You might be able to get away with just converting them to NURBS but often the easiest method is tiny circles extruded along paths so that you can control the thickness and appearance manually. 

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Ah, my arch nemesis - Renderworks rendering vector based lines as bitmaps...... My guess is it doesn't matter whether they are NURBS curves, 3d polys or thin extrudes. Here's a quick test file I put together. I'm not sure if Renderworks is trying to shadow the lines or draw them. There is definitely something going on colour wise here though. The Renderworks version overpowers the underlying line colour. You can just see a hint of the blue in the NURBS curve version.

 

In general, I find NURBS curves behave the best. (I have wish listed, bug submitted this issue for many versions now. 3d lines are just that, 3d lines (NURBS curves and wireframe 3d objects not planar objects). They should render consistently with other 3d geometry.)

 

Kevin

 

598b2498dbe26_ScreenShot2017-08-09at7_58_12AM.png.1a9ad21a33a0842855758436a64d5723.png

Case Example.vwx

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Apologies, by thin extrude and 3D poly I mean extrude a solid shape or a thick poly along those edges, not leaving an empty extrude or edges of 3D polys with no solid fill. If you need full control over 3D appearance, at the moment you need to make sure you are using objects with a fill.

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14 minutes ago, JimW said:

Apologies, by thin extrude and 3D poly I mean extrude a solid shape or a thick poly along those edges, not leaving an empty extrude or edges of 3D polys with no solid fill. If you need full control over 3D appearance, at the moment you need to make sure you are using objects with a fill.

Thanks Jim. You're instructions are clear. I missed the posts in between while I was composing my reply.

KM

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Thanks to all, but lost in this is the fact that since Renderworks was offered with VW, it has always rendered unfilled objects as wireframe. The "wire" having the color selected by the users pen choice. Is this no longer the case? It's always been an easy way to create a transparent effect in renderings (good enough for my purposes) without the rendering time "hit" taken when rendering transparency. They can't be completely transparent or my client will think all the objects on the cases are uncovered. I don't want to give them real geometry (i.e., each box made out of five 1/4" transparent panels) because of the rendering hit there. It has always been simpler to just leave them unfilled and give the lines a "glass" color. Light blue seems to get the idea across. By the way, Jim, don't extruded rectangles have "...actual 3D geometry"? Lastly, will they always render black now and not blue? Should I change them all to NURBS curves? If I do give them a fill, can I control the transparency without making a texture map that is 90 percent transparent? Hope that makes sense. Thanks to all for the help!

MHBrown

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38 minutes ago, MHBrown said:

Thanks to all, but lost in this is the fact that since Renderworks was offered with VW, it has always rendered unfilled objects as wireframe. The "wire" having the color selected by the users pen choice. Is this no longer the case? It's always been an easy way to create a transparent effect in renderings (good enough for my purposes) without the rendering time "hit" taken when rendering transparency. They can't be completely transparent or my client will think all the objects on the cases are uncovered. I don't want to give them real geometry (i.e., each box made out of five 1/4" transparent panels) because of the rendering hit there. It has always been simpler to just leave them unfilled and give the lines a "glass" color. Light blue seems to get the idea across. By the way, Jim, don't extruded rectangles have "...actual 3D geometry"? Lastly, will they always render black now and not blue? Should I change them all to NURBS curves? If I do give them a fill, can I control the transparency without making a texture map that is 90 percent transparent? Hope that makes sense. Thanks to all for the help!

MHBrown

 

As I mention in my reply above, this has been a longstanding struggle for me. I don't normally use unfilled objects but I have used NURBS curves for years. I use them for all sorts of things - fly cables, tent cables, 3d representations of fly paths through the air etc.. The problem started with Planar objects and has progressively gotten worse.

 

In this instance I think the easiest solution is to give your existing geometry a blue fill to match the blue edges. You already have the geometry anyway. I've attached an example here.

 

(When I create cube cases, I usually make the panes NURBS surfaces with transparency. It creates minimal geometry and gives a good look.)

 

Kevin

 

598b38bab3b14_ScreenShot2017-08-09at9_25_03AM.png.e7f743abe6aa443746fafbe5e2b9bf55.png

Case Example 2.vwx

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Thanks to everyone! The only problem with giving my acrylic a fill is that I think they will render as solid when I do a hidden line rendering. I'll try the NURBS "trick" and see if that works. I'll do a little experimenting and see what works. Again, thanks for everyone's help.

 

MHBrown

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The best thing was the way it has been since at least MiniCAD 5 (ca. 1995) and that is to have unfilled things render as wireframe and the wireframe renders in the color selected. It's pretty straightforward and very useful since transparencies are not supported in all rendering styles. Even with a house, it might be nice to leave the window glass as unfilled so that they can be rendered as "transparent" in hidden line. A complicated programming fix would be for VW2018 to include a "Render transparent objects as wireframe" option for the rendering styles that do not support transparency. Or just fix what has been, in my opinion, broken in the move to VW2017.

 

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