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Texture Creation - Preview Render


Andy Broomell

Question

Being able to continue working should always trump the re-rendering of the preview area in the Edit Texture dialogue box.

 

For example, just now I wanted to edit the density of a texture that utilizes the grass shader, so I click Edit Texture, then I have to wait for the preview area to render before I can actually do anything. It's a fairly dense grass with an image base, so this takes about 30 seconds. Then I have to go into the actual grass shader so I click edit for that. On this pop-up it takes another 30 seconds to render the square preview area on the right before I can change any values. I want to make it 90 percent density instead of the current 80, so I type "9" and it automatically starts re-rendering. Once that's finished, it then accepts the "0" that I typed, after which it re-renders again. Once that's done, I can finally click OK on the grass shader settings. Then it has to re-render the preview of the main Edit Texture dialogue box. Once that's finished I can finally hit OK.

 

It rendered FIVE times when in reality I didn't actually need to see any preview. I don't mind the automatic preview rendering as a general concept, but it should never prevent you from typing or from clicking OK, for example. Editing this texture should've taken 10 seconds, but it took 3 minutes.

 

Edited by Andy Broomell
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I have been frustrated by this as well. The lag caused by waiting for the texture preview to auto-update just so I could finish typing was not so bad prior to the introduction of the Grass shader.

 

There needs to be an option inside the Edit Texture dialogue box to turn off the texture preview auto-update. It shouldn’t be a Document or Application preference, because 75% of the time I don’t mind the auto-update. This option should be persistent per-texture, so that the next time I go back in that same Grass shader I don’t have to turn it off again. This would also require the introduction of a ‘Render Preview’ button inside the Edit Texture dialogue box, it would only be clickable when the auto-update option is turned off.

Edited by rDesign
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Nice work - you are certainly pushing the envelope of Vectorworks!  I'm curious where the people came from and how you got them into Vectorworks, how large the file is and render time (per your hardware).  Is the stone a bump texture?  Was the background post-render?

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1 hour ago, lgoodkind said:

Nice work - you are certainly pushing the envelope of Vectorworks!  I'm curious where the people came from and how you got them into Vectorworks, how large the file is and render time (per your hardware).  Is the stone a bump texture?  Was the background post-render?

 

Thanks!

 

Figures are all from renderpeople.com, which is a bit pricey but I like the results (plus I'm building up a library to use from show to show). One of the available formats is SketchUp which is easily imported into VW. You just have to make sure mesh smoothing is on, plus I do a bit more cleanup such as reducing the resolution of the texture to suit my needs.

 

File size is around 350 mb, and maybe a quarter of that is the figures and their textures. Render time was maybe 2 hours? Can't remember exactly. Grass shader also added time. Final render is 16"x9" @ 300dpi with quality settings all Medium or High. Nothing set to Very High (I've never once needed Very high on anything). 3 bounces Indirect Lighting.

 

Keep in mind I "work" at super low DPI and quality settings, and only pump it up at the last second.

 

Yes, stone has bump and parallax on. I ended up adding some displacement mapping too in order to get the deformed edges.

1285318892_ScreenShot2018-06-14at10_23_05PM.thumb.png.c4d1da05d69a64106e238718d8e755ff.png

 

Uplights are .ies lights.

 

Background is just a curved surface with a texture on it. In fact the real backdrop was from https://www.jcbackings.com/

3396169_ScreenShot2018-06-14at10_40_59PM.thumb.png.dbbfeee8927ed0004a612763fee4d1b0.png

 

There's a bit of post in Photoshop, but just accentuating what was already there:

Screen-Shot-2018-06-14-at-10_30.23-PM.thumb.jpg.91f32f8eed12f7c68bb7bb0acd36bb2a.jpg

 

Hope this helps! Happy to answer more questions.

 

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