Wall color

[Scott61]

Hi, I am trying to do mock-ups of interior wall color for a design.  The drawing has walls made up of Exterior Bearing CIP.  When i try to change the texture in the "object info" panel, the middle of the wall changes, but the face stays the same.  i need just the opposite.  Obviously i am not selecting the right part of the object or using the wrong tool??  Thanks for any help!

[AlanW]

@Scott61

Hi if you set the walls up correctly you will get a lot of flexibility to control the walls. Here are 2 videos that may assist. Follow this workflow, occasionally you may want to create an unclassed wall but classed is the way to go.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkK32tglmIE&t=199s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdDtMSW7H4c&t=2s

[Scott61]

Thanks for the links, your videos are helpful.  I followed your steps, and after turning "off" the textures for one wall did get my paint color to show in rendering, but others will not following the same procedure.  Are there any pitfalls that are not in your video?  I select the wall, usually in 3d rendered mode.  I go to classes, then to finish, then edit that.  I have also selected the wall, gone to object info palette, and then to edit style and gone through prompts with no effect.  I got it to do one and can't seem to repeat!  Thanks for your help!

[Scott61]

Update, By using a class for each wall texture and assigning that class to each wall, I get the colors I need.  Thanks again for your help.

[Scott61]

Sorry to pepper this string with replies, but I am have issues again.  Assigning class only works with some walls.  The wall I am having issues with is rendering gray, but the component window shows both sides should be maroon.  The component setting show maroon also but strangely most of the options are grayed.  Thanks for any help.

[AlanW]

@Scott61Hi, Using wall styles you need to use all by class see attached. If you want to colour different walls in rooms then that's another issue and better controlled elsewhere. How a lot of people do it is extract the face of the wall, change the texture to a desired colour and move it say 1mm off the wall surface.

Unless there is a better way to have multiple colours for rooms i would like to hear it.

The others are greyed out because they are controlled by the Component Class of the wall.

[Scott61]

Thank you for the response!  I did try to use "all by class" but they are all grayed, as in the example above.  How do you get Vectorworks to allow access to that part of the menu?  Also, I could find no "extract" tool for the wall face, though that process does sound like a great idea, just have to find out how to do it.  Thanks agin for any help on these issues!!

[Scott61]

OK, i did find the extract tool in 3d, and I used it to take out the wall faces.  There is now a colored textured look to it, and I did try to take out the texture in the object info pane, set it to "none", but still there is texture.  Looked online and it was said that the extract and the wall extracted from can get mixed, so move the extract out a small amount.  Did that, but then I started to wonder if I chose the wall or the extracted surface, how can you tell?

[AlanW]

@Scott61Hi, Sorry I led you a little astray there. Extract does take the full surface of so what you do is draw a polygon using automatic working plane on the face of the wall. Go Modify/ Convert Convert to 3D poly. Add a texture in the OIP (No need to extrude) a 3d poly with no thickness will take a texture. Move the 3dPoly 1mm off face of wall. See attached file.

HTH

Walls.vwx

[Scott61]

Thank you for the clarification, but all the NURB surfaces, and then the polys begin to be difficult to deal with.  I have first and second floors, straight and angled walls, I cannot figure out how to select the NURBS from plan view, and in wireframe 3d I can select them but it really is not easy.  Still the process was not 100% successful, I still have walls that refuse to show a simple color.  Thank you again for all your help, I do appreciate your time.  I traced the plan again, used simple walls (I used CIP before from the Vectorworks library)  I then assigned a class with the proper color, and I still get no color.  At this point I am just frustrated.  Thanks again.

[Kevin McAllister]

31 minutes ago, Scott61 said:

I still get no color.

 

Is this when you're working in OpenGL in the design layers? What are your View>Rendering>OpenGL options set to? Use textures and colours both need to be selected to see colours created with textures.

 

I would ultimately recommend adding colours to your walls through textures. With your wall selected you can set it up on the Render tab in the OIP. I would set the mode to By Object instead of By Component. If you select the side of the wall you'd like to colour in the Part dropdown its easy to add a texture to one side or the other (or both). Made some simple textures that only set the colour.

 

Kevin

 

[Scott61]

My Open GL prefs are as pictured below.  It seems like the program is set up to use textures, which would be fine if I could find a simple drywall texture and some paint colors.  All I can find are concrete, tile, carpet etc...meaning textures, so I assumed paint would be elsewhere, where should I look in textures for "paint"?  I have searched the texture menu.  Thanks for the response.

[Kevin McAllister]

2 hours ago, Scott61 said:

My Open GL prefs are as pictured below.

 

This is good. You should be able to see fill colours assigned through the Attributes Palette or colours that are part of textures.

 

2 hours ago, Scott61 said:

It seems like the program is set up to use textures,

 

It depends upon what you are trying to achieve. If you want to assign a colour to a whole object and don't mind that colour appearing in your B&W drawings then assigning a fill colour using the Attributes Palette is an easy way to go. But if you want more direct control of PIO objects like walls, textures will give you that. In your example, textures will allow you to give different finishes to different wall surfaces but fill colours will not.

 

2 hours ago, Scott61 said:

which would be fine if I could find a simple drywall texture and some paint colors.  All I can find are concrete, tile, carpet etc...meaning textures, so I assumed paint would be elsewhere, where should I look in textures for "paint"?

 

If you open the Resource Manager window, you can search for textures using the Search box. The dropdown menu next to it will need to be set to "All Resources" or "Renderworks Textures" to get any results. You should be able to type "paint" and get a variety of texture options.

 

Ultimately though it will be far better if you learn to make your own, since then you can choose your own specific colours. I've attached an example file that has a couple of simple paint colour "textures". I've also attached an image showing the basic texture settings to create a "paint" texture. Most of the stock textures add some "sheen" using the reflectivity shader. I don't think any add any drywall "texture". You will need to override the "By Class" setting to assign specific colours to specific surfaces of a wall. If you click on one of the walls in my file and look at the Render panel of the OIP you can see how its done.

 

Kevin

 

Wall Paint.vwx

[BobS_50]

On 5/3/2018 at 11:28 PM, AlanW said:

Unless there is a better way to have multiple colours for rooms i would like to hear it.

Hi

 

I came across this thread as I was facing the same challange, how to control surface colours within an interior design project.

 

I discovered and this thread confirms  

 

i) when using wall styles,  use class fill to colour a component - but this impacts how the element looks in section views, and prevents different surface colours for the same wall style 

ii) do not use wall styles and 'texture' each wall and surface within the object info palette - say goodbye to wall styles!  

iii) create a surface polygon of each wall and show correct texture/colour  - not nice as changing wall layouts require these "surfaces" to be amended !

 

 

Given the quote above is 3 years old are these still the best options or has a better way been created/found?

 

TIA

 

Bob

[Tom W.]

I would start off using a styled wall with all the graphic attributes for the components set to by class. For the plaster finish component I would assign a white colour texture or whatever colour I thought I would be using most often. This would be the default + all walls would have this colour initially. Then I would go through the drawing selecting the walls I wanted to have different colours + make them unstyled. These walls I would select the plaster components in the O.I.P. + change the class they were assigned to as required. I would have a number of different classes set up already for the different paint colours I thought I would use (both the fill colour + texture). This way I could also change the wall colours in viewports using class overrides if I wanted to show a few different options for the same room/s.

[BobS_50]

@Tom W.

Thanks

Helpful information and a useful workflow.

Your approach works well unless you want to range of different tones up the wall.

 

I am used to using VW for building/architecture, whereas my latest work is veering to towards small scale interiors and bespoke carpentry...which present slightly different challenges, that I'm investigating how VW can be used to resolve them.
 

[Tom W.]

@BobS_50 in that case I would probably go down the Extract > NURBS Surface route + use the Split tool to divide the them into the different horizontal stripes. But still use the same paint colour classes to assign the textures. Or you could probably do something using wafer-thin wall components + use the top + bottom offsets to stack them on top of each other? So that at least the surfaces would change with the walls + you could control them by style...

[scottmoore]

It sounds like textures would be the solution to most of this. Textures are simple to create and allow for a ton of flexibility. Client decides to change that shade of green? Just edit your texture. Otherwise you have to go to every wall using that color and change the fill (not cool). You could even go to the point of creating textures for each room. For instance “living room standard” “living room accent”. Even if all those colors are originally identical, (simply duplicate your textures) it would allow you to go back and change things really quickly if needed by editing the correct texture. If you decide later to add a bit of physical texture to your walls, again, this is as simple as editing your RW texture with either the image of some texture or a physical bump shader. Add some sheen for the client who insists on a semi-gloss wall?  No problem. 
 

Textures can also be used for multi-colored walls. Draw out your to-scale pattern with simple polygons, colorize as necessary, take a screen shot and create your texture. (Make sure to set your texture size correctly) The only caveat is mapping it correctly to the wall. VWX can be tedious in that regard. 

[Tom W.]

Tried it out with components + works fairly well:

 

Then you can report on sqm for each colour if that's useful

[BobS_50]

Both helpful contributions to add to my learning curve....thank you.

I can see these will be a good starting point and deffo helped with understanding the options.

 

I'm sure there will be situations (eg staircases and landings )  where I'll have to make a model that has 3d polygons act as the "finish/texture" plane but at least I have a sense of the options.