Not-so-Final Quality Renderworks

[PVA - Admin]

This came up in a private conversation but I felt some of it merited a public post.

Final Quality Renderworks is NOT what I would consider Final. It's name is a holdover from a previous rendering engine and leads a lot of users to think that if they slap that FQRW button, they'll get the best rendering possible, I hope to get this renamed soon. This perception can also be colored by how nice OpenGL can be made to look these days, as it has advanced considerably since 2010.

Below is a brief example of what I mean:

 

For many, this file in OpenGL, which renders in seconds if not instantly, is perfectly fine and can be used in a presentation, but the Final Quality Renderworks example in the middle seems incomplete by comparison, even though it took nearly half an hour to render.

 

The example on the right on the other hand took around the same amount of time to render, but looks much better than the middle example. The example on the right is a slightly modified version of the Realistic Interior Final Renderworks style. The ONLY thing changes between these three scenes was the rendering mode used. no textures, lights or geometry were altered.

Our series on rendering covers the basics of this, and I highly recommend taking a look at if you haven't before:

 

 

Another series from Daniel Jansenson covers them as well:

 

 

 

[Andy Broomell]

37 minutes ago, JimW said:

Final Quality Renderworks is NOT what I would consider Final. It's name is a holdover from a previous rendering engine and leads a lot of users to think that if they slap that FQRW button, they'll get the best rendering possible, I hope to get this renamed soon.

 

Yes please! This is one of those strange things to explain to new users.

 

I tend to encourage students to always use Renderworks Style resources, as I've found it almost always leads to better results in less time.

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, JimW said:

Final Quality Renderworks is NOT what I would consider Final. It's name is a holdover from a previous rendering engine and leads a lot of users to think that if they slap that FQRW button, they'll get the best rendering possible, I hope to get this renamed soon.

 

 

It is confusing. I'm surprised it hasn't been removed completely. When you bring old files forward VW could easily reassign things using it to a custom Renderworks Style. I guess maybe for exporting backwards.....

 

Kevin

 

 

[PVA - Admin]

I'm thinking it could easily be made a Renderworks Style, then anything forward converting would just generate a style named "Final Quality Renderworks" if it was ever used in an older file, or even just ALWAYS create it since a RW style isn't going to increase filesize much at all. For exporting backwards, those settings should just convert as a style as well, and since we are fast approaching the oldest exported version being able to support renderworks styles anyway (I'm pretty sure this is true, have to check) the point might become moot. 

[Kevin McAllister]

2 minutes ago, JimW said:

I'm thinking it could easily be made a Renderworks Style, then anything forward converting would just generate a style named "Final Quality Renderworks" if it was ever used in an older file, or even just ALWAYS create it since a RW style isn't going to increase filesize much at all. For exporting backwards, those settings should just convert as a style as well, and since we are fast approaching the oldest exported version being able to support renderworks styles anyway (I'm pretty sure this is true, have to check) the point might become moot. 

 

The main thing it would do for me is free up a keyboard command related to rendering. You can easily access it using the default keyboard shortcuts but you can't access a user set default Renderworks style for example.

 

KM

[PVA - Admin]

Side note: I also think OpenGL, the shaded poly modes and Hidden Line should be Renderworks Styles as well. The Render list could use some cleanup. Also I don't find much reason to use Custom Renderworks now at all since it's basically just a limited version of a Renderworks style.

 

8 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

The main thing it would do for me is free up a keyboard command related to rendering. You can easily access it using the default keyboard shortcuts but you can't access a user set default Renderworks style for example.

 

Agreed. I hate that FQRW is hard coded to CMD-Shift-F since I never use it and for a hotkey I would most likely want to map my fast test render style anyway rather than a slower final one.

[Kevin McAllister]

4 minutes ago, JimW said:

The Render list could use some cleanup.

^ This is long overdue. I just wish listed something related to this about Renderworks Style naming.....

Kevin

[HEengineering]

3 hours ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

Yes please! This is one of those strange things to explain to new users.

 

I tend to encourage students to always use Renderworks Style resources, as I've found it almost always leads to better results in less time.

I think more info on what you refer to as Renderworks Style would be helpful.  Ive typically used open GL for most everything rarely touching any other settings. Mainly because It can get pretty confusing. I get lost between the custom Renderwork styles, custom Renderwork options.  I will say we do very little rendering and open GL works for all, but still leaves me wondering if there are not better options.  I feel as tho maybe I could get a style saved, and apply to all renderings.

Edited August 16, 2017 by HEengineering

[bcd]

3 hours ago, JimW said:

The ONLY thing changes between these three scenes was the rendering mode used. no textures, lights or geometry were altered.

and no animals were harmed...

[Kevin McAllister]

19 minutes ago, HEengineering said:

I think more info on what you refer to as Renderworks Style would be helpful.  Ive typically used open GL for most everything rarely touching any other settings. Mainly because It can get pretty confusing. I get lost between the custom Renderwork styles, custom Renderwork options.  I will say we do very little rendering and open GL works for all, but still leaves me wondering if there are not better options.  I feel as tho maybe I could get a style saved, and apply to all renderings.

 

Custom Renderworks Styles are just a way to save different sets of Custom Renderworks Options. JimW posted a couple of good video links about them above.

 

Kevin

 

[zoomer]

Funny,

I never really used one of these provided styles or ever Custom RW.

 

When I tried for the first time any provided RW render style,

I realized there will be a copy in the render drop down and Resource Manager.

So I immediately renamed that and changed it to my liking.

 

Either I use that method to create my first render style in a new file only

or mostly simply re-import these from my last file.

 

[Luis M Ruiz]

This is my typicall workflow when creating renderings.

 

For showing quick previews when someone is looking over my shoulder and asking questions > Fast Renderworks

For middle of the road and while having my daily coffee > Custom Renderworks, adjust quality as needed

For those almost there moments and fine light tunning > Always Renderstyles + adjust sheet resolution as needed ( 25dpi, 72dpi, 150dpi, 300dpi, 600dpi)

 

 

[Haydenovative]

I must admit that I have not been adventurous enough when it comes to renderworks styles, as a company we predominantly use Final Quality renderworks for renders of our shows, we are often taking in a large area with a lot of equipment and stage set, I had a misconception that anything seriously altered beyond FQRW would drastically increase my render times. I believe I will sample the render settings again and create a custom render setting we can share throughout the company. Does anyone here work in live events and have any tips or tricks they could pass on?

[Luis M Ruiz]

Here are a few:

• Don't use Final Quality.

• Learn the benefits of Custom Renderworks

• If you are serious about quality control and your rendering standards, create your own Renderings Styles.

[grant_PD]

Here are some more:

Don't use high GI settings unless you need to.  I rarely want more than the 3 bounce exterior GI setting. 

Ambient occlusion + a slight amount of ambient lighting (~15%) will go a long way helping a render feel lit

I always try to keep the indirect lighting/soft shadows/blurriness to low quality if possible. 

You can get pretty tricky with your textures to cut down on reflections and such.  Does the clasp on the road box or the yoke on the source four really need to be a highly reflective chrome texture or can it be a color?  

I think adding smoke and atmosphere is much better done in photoshop than rendered.  Unless you're doing some Vision work, which is pretty dang good.  There are brushes for photoshop that have light beams in a wide variety.  You can "stamp out" a pretty good look in about 5 minutes.  

 

 

[frv]

I often feel sorry for VW users who go through the hassle and hardship to get a decent render out of VW.

In Twinmotion, Lumion, C4D with Corona or Redshift, Unreal Engine  you can get the most compelling renders in no time at all. A high res 5000x4000 render in C4D with Corona renders in about 5 minutes. You can add countless trees, people, cars or any vegetation in a fraction of the time you would spend in VW. VW like Revit is not for presentation, it's for engineering. Shaded view is for modelling.

How can you confront a client with a VW render while the competition is doing realtime rendering at photorealistic quality for years already. Its not the costs, the apps you need are basically for free and very easy to learn.

[line-weight]

13 hours ago, frv said:

Its not the costs, the apps you need are basically for free and very easy to learn.

 

What are the ones that are free?

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

he apps you need are basically for free

 

Unreal and Twinmotion basically were,

(UE for "linear" animation work and TM licenses were most times offered for free)

but Epic lately communicated that they will change this.

[frv]

If not for free, a dedicated render app compared to VW is so much easier and quicker in the overall workflow that the price does not matter.

 

I tried Enscape and even though the quality is not fantastic I was able to have a project rendered in less than an hour (rendertimes just seconds) even though I had zero experience with Enscape. I would love to see Enscape in a vieuwport.

VW managed to slow down Redshift  to rendertimes as they where in the previous century. In C4D Redshift is interactivly rendering while modeling. VW could streamline VW by improving shaded view and hidden line further and skip all other renderoptions and 99,9% of users would not mind.

 

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, frv said:

If not for free, a dedicated render app compared to VW is so much easier and quicker in the overall workflow that the price does not matter

 

That really depends on how much rendering you do and where it fits in your workflow.

 

In exchange for the time gained in faster render times, is the time lost messing around moving a model between applications. And learning those other applications.

 

If Enscape or TM could somehow appear in a viewport within VW, then there might be a price that would be worth paying. It would not be a "price doesn't matter" situation though.

[Tom W.]

11 minutes ago, line-weight said:

the time lost messing around moving a model between applications.

 

This is what I wanted to ask about. I do everything inside VW. I downloaded the free Twinmotion a few versions about but never did anything with it so am completely ignorant as to what the workflow is when it comes to rendering things externally. I create sheet layers with viewports on them fairly early on in a project then these get updated + added to on an ongoing basis over the lifespan of the project. The viewports will be a combination of Wireframe (Top/Plan), Hidden Line, Shaded + RW Styles. So how would it work if I wanted to use Twinmotion instead of VW for the RW Style VPs? I'd export the model to TM + render it there + then what? I output the end result as an image + import it back into VW + place it on the sheet layer in place of the RW-generated VP? Or something else? Then each time the model changes + that render becomes out of date I'd need to repeat the process? And unlike a VW VP there'd be nothing to tell me the image was out of date so it'd require some diligence on my part to keep an eye on these particular renders + make sure out of date versions don't slip through the net + get issued?

 

Or is external rendering best approached as a standalone process for generating one-off images in the later stages of a project?

[grant_PD]

You could import the image as a reference, being careful to save the image with the same file name, and then update those renderings prior to exporting the sheet layers.  But in essence, all external renderers are going to generate their own file, that needs to be updated manually by the user, the output of those files will need to be placed either in the sheet layers or in an external presentation. 

 

The trade off is that external renderers are going to give you faster and in most instances better renders.  

 

In my world better quality almost always wins, since that is client facing.  The suffering of the user who needs to do more file management loses, since that is in house facing. 

[line-weight]

54 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

This is what I wanted to ask about. I do everything inside VW. I downloaded the free Twinmotion a few versions about but never did anything with it so am completely ignorant as to what the workflow is when it comes to rendering things externally. I create sheet layers with viewports on them fairly early on in a project then these get updated + added to on an ongoing basis over the lifespan of the project. The viewports will be a combination of Wireframe (Top/Plan), Hidden Line, Shaded + RW Styles. So how would it work if I wanted to use Twinmotion instead of VW for the RW Style VPs? I'd export the model to TM + render it there + then what? I output the end result as an image + import it back into VW + place it on the sheet layer in place of the RW-generated VP? Or something else? Then each time the model changes + that render becomes out of date I'd need to repeat the process? And unlike a VW VP there'd be nothing to tell me the image was out of date so it'd require some diligence on my part to keep an eye on these particular renders + make sure out of date versions don't slip through the net + get issued?

 

Or is external rendering best approached as a standalone process for generating one-off images in the later stages of a project?

 

Your current method, described above, is quite similar to what I do. Viewports updated and added to throughout the life of the project.

 

Yes basically you have to bring the images back into VW, somehow or the other.

 

In theory you can set things up so that if you change the model geometry in VW, it automatically updates in TM, so you don't need to keep exporting new versions of the model each time you want to update the TM renders.

 

I messed with this a bit when the TM "live link" capability was introduced in VW, a couple of years ago. Maybe it's improved since then but my experience was that there were various issues to overcome, in order for it to import and update properly in TM. It would add a whole new layer of file admin to make sure you aren't doing stuff in a certain way in VW that might cause a problem for TM.

 

I don't do fully detailed/photorealistic renders all that often, in RW anyway. I do sometimes, but I think it's often not the best way to communicate something to a client. That's my personal approach anyway. I do sometimes use RW to render "white card" models. I've worked out how to do that in RW and I'd have to faff about for a while in TM to see if I could achieve something similar there.

 

Anyway these are some of the reasons I think it's wrong to say that using an external renderer is automatically the best approach for everyone.

 

Sadly my hunch is that RW is going to be left to slowly die/become obsolete. And then we'll be forced to find other workflows.

[mjm]

4 hours ago, frv said:

If not for free, a dedicated render app compared to VW is so much easier and quicker in the overall workflow that the price does not matter.

 

I tried Enscape and even though the quality is not fantastic I was able to have a project rendered in less than an hour (rendertimes just seconds) even though I had zero experience with Enscape. I would love to see Enscape in a vieuwport.

VW managed to slow down Redshift  to rendertimes as they where in the previous century. In C4D Redshift is interactivly rendering while modeling. VW could streamline VW by improving shaded view and hidden line further and skip all other renderoptions and 99,9% of users would not mind.

 

I depend on the redshift renderer in RW. Make it faster / better, do not deprecate. 

[Dave Donley]

One detail that may be helpful for external renderer workflow would be to use referenced image objects.  When you import an image into Vectorworks you can have it be done as a reference.  Thereafter if you were to update the same image in the same location you would then just update the reference.