Teaser Tuesday - Image Effects - Vectorworks 2019

[PVA - Admin]

This feature is quite possibly one of the easiest to underestimate in this release. Image Effects allows you to make real time adjustments to the color, clarity, and other attributes of a rendered viewport, an image, or image-based resource.

 

When we talk about quality here on the forum, a lot of the time the core focus is either speed or application stability. On Demand Tessellation and VGM Sheet Layers do a lot of the heavy lifting this year as far as improvements to those aspects of the application go. However, the quality of life of the user is also important but can be a little more difficult to define.

 

When we look at quality in this light, we try to find things that a lot of users do frequently. Or, we try to find things that new or returning users want to do in Vectorworks, but instead turn to another software package to get the desired results.

 

This time, we’ve targeted the very common scenario of what users do with images before bringing them into Vectorworks, as well as what they do with images after they've been rendered or exported. We’ve also addressed the very common need to alter the source image of a resource, like a texture or image fill.

 

 

 

We have tried to make this tool not only simple to use, but as useable as possible. You can enable and edit image effects on imported images, viewports, textures, image props, images within symbols, PDF image layers… pretty much anywhere that an image or bitmap object would be used. We don’t always know exactly what you do now and plan to do in the future, so we did our best to make this tool as flexible and broadly appealing as possible.

 

We will be hosting a live Facebook session to discuss each of the items we share in Teaser Tuesday posts. Here’s how it will work: the teaser will come out on Tuesday (Wednesday if you live on the front edge of the world!) and then you can post questions about it on Wednesday in the forum, through direct messages, or on our Facebook post. On Thursday at 2:00 p.m. ET, we will answer your questions live on the official Vectorworks Facebook page . If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll also be transcribing the answers and posting to the forum too.

Feel free to ask any questions you like related to the feature that was just teased. This format is an experiment for us, so we also welcome any feedback or suggestions for the format, as well.

 

We plan to share Teaser Tuesday posts and host live Q&A sessions each week leading up to our launch of Vectorworks 2019!

[PVA - Admin]

This feature was one of @zsarver's projects this year (One of our Atlanta office engineers), and I love him for it.

[Andrew Davies]

This could save tonnes of time rendering!  Great how it is non-destructive too - so you can go back to the original easily.

 

Looks good!

Edited August 21, 2018 by Andrew Davies

[zsarver]

Yep, @Andrew Davies, that's exactly the kind of time we're trying to save you. The exposure setting will do an overall lighting adjustment, and the shadows and highlights settings give you a little more subtlety and control.

[Andrew Davies]

@zsarver Thanks!

[RGyori]

Sounds analogous to how RAW photo post-processing works in programs such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, DxO Lab, etc. True real time non-destructive edits that leave the source image unchanged. And that is very good thing. 😀

[Kevin McAllister]

Looks pretty cool! A couple of questions -

1. Are the saved Image Effects resources?
2. Can you use them on images that are part of textures?

And a couple of wishes for the future -

1. Can you add an image alpha function?
2. Can you add a gradient option (directional)?
3. Can you add a vignette option?

Kevin

 

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by Kevin McAllister

[Andrew Pollock]

This is a huge time saving feature for me! I'm back and forth to photoshop all the time. I find I'm alway lightening bitmaps in my projects. Thank you!!!!

 

[zsarver]

Hi, @Kevin McAllister, let's see if I can address some of those. As for the questions,

1.  No, they are not resources. That said, you can apply image effects to image resources in the resource manager.
2.  You sure can! You can apply image effects to RenderWorks textures and RenderWorks backgrounds, again through the resource manager.

We always love to hear feature requests. Of course, much like a secret agent I can neither confirm nor deny anything, but keep the good ideas coming! I will say that you can manage a pretty decent vignette effect with crops, soft edges, and optional sepia.

[Markvl]

Gotta say this is a pretty cool feature and that means less time in PS.

[PVA - Admin]

I also wanted to add: This is honestly one of the very few "new" features in 2019. Almost the entire feature list, with the exception of some new tools for Braceworks, are improvements to existing tools and commands, or revamps of existing systems to improve usability.

We ALMOST granted this request flat out:

Almost. I'm super happy with the bosses decision to double down on quality as a whole this year, it's looking real good from where I sit.

[zoomer]

I like that very much and am impressed by the v1.0 state with introduction.

 

I just miss :

- bloom

- vignette

- numerical values for input option beside slider option And better readability.

 

(So basically what is currently hidden in camera effects)

[rDesign]

Since they are not Resources, can the Image Effects be applied from one file to another using the Eyedropper tool? Thanks. 

[Hugues]

4 minutes ago, rDesign said:

Since they are not Resources, can the Image Effects be applied from one file to another using the Eyedropper tool? Thanks. 

 

Yes.

[Andy Broomell]

Great new tool that has the potential to save a lot of time. Awesome!

 

One question right off the bat: why was "Hue" not included as a slider? (Unless I'm blind and it's in there somewhere...) This would honestly be the slider I'd use the most, so it's disappointing to not see it there.

 

Although it probably doesn't make much sense to adjust overall Hue of a rendered viewport, if you think about image-based textures this could be VERY useful. Quite often I have to Extract Images from a texture, bring them into Photoshop, adjust the Hue to get a different "color" of the same thing, then re-import. 

 

Here are a few textures in a file I'm working on right now where using a Hue slider would be applicable:

 

 

For example,

 changes hue to this  or any other color lens.

 

 

Hopefully this gives a sense of the types of images Hue would be useful on, and I hope it can be added in before 2019's release.

 

 

[PVA - Admin]

3 minutes ago, Hugues said:

Yes.

Dontcha just love a simple answer?

[Lunar Waneshaft]

This is absolutely massive, and really appreciate the interest in adding Sleep back into the Eat + Design equation. Can't wait till the triumphant return of volumetric lighting next Tuesday! 😉

 

Would love to see some of the other key features found in Lightroom like:

• Tone curve
• Vignette (a slider not a multi-step workaround)
• Noise (actually adding noise instead of reducing it... to help with the uncanny valley)

Also, as @zoomer suggested: numerical controls in addition to the slider.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Mark Aceto

[Andrew Davies]

This really could be a great improvement - can't wait to use it.

 

Quick question - do Image Effects work on imported PDFs?  I sometimes find myself importing scrappy old PDFs to trace.  It would be great if I can reduce the contrast to remove some of the feinter lines for example.

 

Also - if I convert a VWX 2019 file to VWX 2018 - are the adjustments lost or retained but with no further adjustment possible?

[zsarver]

First of all, to everyone suggesting new features, I can't comment except to say, thanks, and keep them coming!

 

@Andrew Davies , no, image effects don't work on imported PDFs, just images, OpenGL and RenderWorks viewports, RenderWorks backgrounds, and RenderWorks textures for now. Also, on exporting to VWX2018, the adjustments are lost.

[PVA - Admin]

20 hours ago, Andrew Davies said:

Quick question - do Image Effects work on imported PDFs?

What @zsarver said. However: You can ungroup a PDF and the source bitmap image can then be altered. You do lose PDF snapping at this point, so it's definitely a worthy improvement request.

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, zsarver said:

no, image effects don't work on imported PDFs, just images, OpenGL and RenderWorks viewports, RenderWorks backgrounds, and RenderWorks textures for now.

 

So currently only Viewports.

Not when View Pane OpenGL, Rendering+Image Saving.

 

Not a big problem, just that I get it right.

 

 

But it sounds interesting if we could also use that just to adjust

our modeling view panes to our liking or taste.

For working or Screen Shot adjustments.

 :)

 

Also things like Vignette or Bloom aren't very urgent for me,

it is just that with current popular fashion, you don't see any Renderings without

Bloom effect, Vignette, Lens Flare, Volumetric lighting, Fog, ....

 

And as I already use image adjustments in C4D image manager from time to time

for my renderings, if all such effects are available as non-destructive effects to

overlay, I would make more use of them too.

[PVA - Admin]

Livestream starts ~2 hours from now, feel free to ask any more questions about this feature or any of the previously teased features, or suggest further enhancements in these areas either here on the forums or in the live chat!

https://www.facebook.com/Vectorworks/

[PVA - Admin]

 

[ccsw]

For rendered viewports it would be great if you could use these adjustment features by texture. Sometimes one texture comes out oversaturated etc. and if you could just adjust this and not the whole image it would ideal. It is maybe the next step and would bring Vectorworks capability more inline with other rendering programs.

[line-weight]

On 8/27/2018 at 3:12 PM, ccsw said:

For rendered viewports it would be great if you could use these adjustment features by texture. Sometimes one texture comes out oversaturated etc. and if you could just adjust this and not the whole image it would ideal. It is maybe the next step and would bring Vectorworks capability more inline with other rendering programs.

 

It looks like effectively you can do this by using image effects on the image used in that texture resource.

 

It would be great if over time this expanded into a greater range of editing options for things like texture images and backgrounds - scaling, rotation and so on. It's certainly very laborious when you have to go out of VW to do a small tweak, then re-save it, then re-import it to the resource, and so on.

 

This looks like a useful improvement - good work.

 

Now, can we have something similar to edit linework viewports please! If it were possible to selectively remove lines in the output of hidden line render views, or top/plan viewports, that would be amazing - especially if it could be done non-destructively.