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Seriously improved volumetric rendering for entertainment


scottmoore

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5 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

 

Well, I don't know that I entirely agree with this broad statement. As I recall we had more low fog, and a slower render engine.

I was referring to lighting control or the lack thereof. Certainly the rendering engine is superior to what we had previously. The lighting control, not so much. 

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6 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

Just curious how the volumetric rendering might be affected if Spotlight Lighting Device incorporated IES files? How might that translate into Vision? 

I’ve wondered about IES files as well. I’ve not worked with them before so there would be a bit of a learning curve for me. 

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2 minutes ago, mjm said:

I think what Kevin's asking is what if the IES file drove the beam shape and Lumens. If built-in as part of the spotlight fixture it 'should just work' is how I read this.

Yup, that's what I'm asking/suggesting. I have some IES Vectorworks Spotlights, I may try and see how they look...

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My understanding of this is that IES files do not work with Spotlight Instruments despite being able to run the "edit light" command and change the light to read an IES file. The Spotlight instrument just reverts back to normal behaviour. Light objects with IES files attached are not able to utilise Lit fog either. All those ETC IES files on their website are essentially useless for spotlight instruments.

 

Sorry to be such an "Eeyore"!

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Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps an explanation as to my usage and workflow is in order. 

 

- I do understand that most production designers utilize programs like C4D, Studio Max, etc. I do not because my workflow typically has me moving from the presentation phase to the shop fabrication drawing / lighting shop drawing immediately. Therefore, having to translate from one program to another to accomplish those tasks is a serious time drain that I often cannot afford. To that point, if I design something in the presentation phase that may require CNC machining, I start that on it’s own class so that it is ready to export when the time comes without having to “re-draw” it later. 

 

- I find that texturing while I go will often inform my decision making as I go. Therefore, the idea of modeling in VW and texturing in another program impedes my work flow. 

 

- so.....it would be really nice to be able to produce some reasonable volumetrics in VW. I would pay extra for that. In fact, if that was the only new improvement in 2019, I could not imagine I could possibly be happier. 

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Scott,

 

It seems you and I work very similarly, and indeed, the way the program is designed to work, as a unified production tool. That said, we all hope for further improvements and features. OK, I know not everyone wants more features, but I certainly do. Improved volumetric rendering is high on that list.

 

The fact that I can keep my work, and my file within the single eco-system is very important. I usually say that I start with a pencil and paper sketch, but that isn't necessarily true any longer. I can start by doodling in Vectorworks just as readily as I can start cooling on paper. In VWX, I can refine those doodles and rough space planning until I have a finished design. The rendering process reflects the same thought process and development.

 

Recently, I worked on a project with a colleague, he was doing the lighting, I was doing the set. However, in order to get the look he wanted, we needed to export the file to another application. That meant at a certain point, further development of the set had to take a backseat so we could deal with the export/import process.

 

Within Vectorworks, all of that development can take place simultaneously.

 

Our reason for the two applications, the final renderings. The look of the lighting.

 

 

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I would also agree about workflow. 

We haven't been using this product for long, but already for us, a design process will need multiple changes after being viewed fully rendered. 

Were we to be using more than just VW, this process would take much, much more time. 

 

And yes with us as well, the need for the render is a full lighting look.

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As mentioned earlier in the thread,  I am one of those guys that incorporates Cinema 4D for my presentation/volumetric renders.    I agree with the need for this feature "in-house",  but here are a few related thoughts:

 

For me, doing these renders often takes quite a few low-quality test renders to get everything how I want before cranking out a HQ final.   It has been my experience in Vectorworks 2017 and 2018 that, for whatever reason, after handful of these test renders the renderer will stop showing new or changed geometry and will just keep re-rendering whatever the geometry was when it stopped recognizing updates.    You then restart Vectorworks and the problem goes away for another handful of test renders,  rinse, repeat.   I don't know how widespread this problem is,  but I know it's not isolated and restarting Vectorworks every 45 minutes or whatever to "deal" with this gets to be pretty irritating. 

 

Another thing,  there isn't always a real way to cleanly abort any render immediately for whatever reasons you may require.   You have to wait until it allows it,  or worse force quit.   It kinda reminds me of older windows versions where explorer (the host) wasn't really in charge of it's processes,  they more or less controlled it,  versus something like Linux where it is basically always the boss and can kill a process immediately upon asking.

 

My point is, I think there are some overall stability/control issues that need to be addressed to really make the requested features as useful as everyone wants.   I don't intend for this to be a C4D commercial but when you are rendering it's nice to have a platform that simply doesn't crash.    Always updates the geometry in renders,  even after hours of changes.    Can abort any render,  at anytime, for any reason.  

 

Just some thoughts...

 

-W

Edited by Wesley Burrows
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I haven't had the issue with stopping a render, Command-. or ESC seems to work fine, but I have had the issue with the rendering finishing and then the screen render going black. That's a known bug and the solution seems to be creating a SLVP and rendering there. This does disrupt my process, but it does get me through the trial render process.

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2 hours ago, Kevin Allen said:

Scott,

 

It seems you and I work very similarly, and indeed, the way the program is designed to work, as a unified production tool. That said, we all hope for further improvements and features. OK, I know not everyone wants more features, but I certainly do. Improved volumetric rendering is high on that list.

 

The fact that I can keep my work, and my file within the single eco-system is very important. I usually say that I start with a pencil and paper sketch, but that isn't necessarily true any longer. I can start by doodling in Vectorworks just as readily as I can start cooling on paper. In VWX, I can refine those doodles and rough space planning until I have a finished design. The rendering process reflects the same thought process and development.

 

Recently, I worked on a project with a colleague, he was doing the lighting, I was doing the set. However, in order to get the look he wanted, we needed to export the file to another application. That meant at a certain point, further development of the set had to take a backseat so we could deal with the export/import process.

 

Within Vectorworks, all of that development can take place simultaneously.

 

Our reason for the two applications, the final renderings. The look of the lighting.

 

 

^^what he said.

 

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58 minutes ago, Kevin Allen said:

I haven't had the issue with stopping a render, Command-. or ESC seems to work fine, but I have had the issue with the rendering finishing and then the screen render going black. That's a known bug and the solution seems to be creating a SLVP and rendering there. This does disrupt my process, but it does get me through the trial render process.

 

I have recently changed my render workflow to be almost entirely built around SLVP. I am sorry it took me so long to get to that solution, but it has improved my render life measurably. It is irritating to bump out to the SLVP for the render but the gains have been more than offset. renders are easily controlled, faster and client-ready due to the ease of template creation. Having said that, I continue to be irritated by the volumetric lighting flaws, but because my clients do not want haze or atmospheric effects all that often it is less of an issue for me.

 

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11 hours ago, Wesley Burrows said:

As mentioned earlier in the thread,  I am one of those guys that incorporates Cinema 4D for my presentation/volumetric renders.    I agree with the need for this feature "in-house",  but here are a few related thoughts:

 

For me, doing these renders often takes quite a few low-quality test renders to get everything how I want before cranking out a HQ final.   It has been my experience in Vectorworks 2017 and 2018 that, for whatever reason, after handful of these test renders the renderer will stop showing new or changed geometry and will just keep re-rendering whatever the geometry was when it stopped recognizing updates.    You then restart Vectorworks and the problem goes away for another handful of test renders,  rinse, repeat.   I don't know how widespread this problem is,  but I know it's not isolated and restarting Vectorworks every 45 minutes or whatever to "deal" with this gets to be pretty irritating. 

 

Another thing,  there isn't always a real way to cleanly abort any render immediately for whatever reasons you may require.   You have to wait until it allows it,  or worse force quit.   It kinda reminds me of older windows versions where explorer (the host) wasn't really in charge of it's processes,  they more or less controlled it,  versus something like Linux where it is basically always the boss and can kill a process immediately upon asking.

 

My point is, I think there are some overall stability/control issues that need to be addressed to really make the requested features as useful as everyone wants.   I don't intend for this to be a C4D commercial but when you are rendering it's nice to have a platform that simply doesn't crash.    Always updates the geometry in renders,  even after hours of changes.    Can abort any render,  at anytime, for any reason.  

 

Just some thoughts...

 

I certainly agree. The render cache issue you mentioned has been on-going since at least VW2017. Same with cancelling renders though I do seem to find that works pretty consistently now.  

 

I do all of my final renders from SLVPs as well, however, I always end up saving one or two “quick render” views for my design layer. That view is set up to not recall class or layer visibility so it is a really quick way to check anything I am working on from a particular perspective. I usually use Final Quality Renderworks as the keyboard shortcut makes things very quick. Of course now there is the bug where you have to render it twice to get a render.....

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Just an update on the processes discussed in this thread:  

 

- Volumetric control has not changed at all which is not overly surprising but certainly disappointing.  

 

- The beam origination issue has not changed in Spotlight lighting devices.  I am not really sure we should expect to see changes there either until there is some entirely new processes put into place.  My solution is using my own lighting fixtures for presentations only.  They are not "legitimate" lighting fixtures and have no records attached.  That said, I find VWX performs really well and does not get bogged down at all when using standard geometry and not a bunch of plug in objects and symbols with records which has improved my overall attitude and sense of well-being whilst working in VWX🙂  But that is just for my in-house usage.  

 

- VWX did seriously step up their game in 2021 with the advent of vastly improved focus options which was part of the wish-list on this particular thread.  My assumption is avoiding focus points as much as possible will improve the overall performance of the platform.  Of course, now that I seldom use Spotlight lighting devices it's not that big a help to me personally, however, someone was indeed listening and I seriously appreciate that.  Hopefully that is a marvelous improvement to others.  

 

- I have messed about with using IES files for lighting renderings and they can be useful to an extent in volumetric renders, however, performance is seriously degraded as there is a lot more detailed information that the CPU has to render.  I find they might be best used for large format wash lights such as multi-cell 4-light, 6-light, 8-light units perhaps? 

 

None of this solves the "inverse square law" (as I jokingly refer to it) where the beam is basically computed as a piece of geometry; the larger it gets, the brighter it gets as there is more of it for lack of a better explanation.  

 

Continue on my friends.  

Edited by scottmoore
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