Jump to content

Vision 2019 first impressions and questions


Recommended Posts

Must say I am impressed, both with features that have left the wishlist (finally!) and the upgrade the app got in terms of rendering and performance. It's great to finally have control over image and video rendering, and being able to save preferences, THANK YOU! Some questions do arise with all the new stuff:

 

- Do 3D elements HAVE to have a texture from now on? I'm using some existing files (and some new ones) and any 3D object that is imported comes in grey, no mater the color it has in VW.

- Can we get a hold of the VWX file of the Sponza demo? It would be nice to understand how the textures are mapped.

 

Cheers 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 9/13/2018 at 6:54 PM, Gaspar Potocnik said:

- Do 3D elements HAVE to have a texture from now on? I'm using some existing files (and some new ones) and any 3D object that is imported comes in grey, no mater the color it has in VW.

 

I apologize deeply as it was not known that this workflow was so popular. When we redesigned the rendering engine, this was not taken into account and it slipped through testing because we weren't aware it was truly being used in the first place. There was also some confusion in house as to whether or not this workflow was possible in 2018, which it is now obvious that it is.

 

The temporary workaround is to make a small texture that is the color you want, and apply that to the object.

 

What I'd like to get done in the code is the automation of this, although the end result is the same for the user. The real solution involves using actual color, but again, with the way the rendering engine was re-engineered for Quality/Performance, this is no longer an easy task.

 

On 9/13/2018 at 6:54 PM, Gaspar Potocnik said:

- Can we get a hold of the VWX file of the Sponza demo? It would be nice to understand how the textures are mapped.

 

About the VWX, there actually wasn't one. One of the new features of Vision is the ability to import new formats such as OBJ. The Sponza Model was created by a video game company called Crytek. The light plot was simply copied over from the Vision 2017 Demo.v3s.

 

One cool thing we did to expand upon the textures in the Sponza model was to use a program called CrazyBump. This application takes a simple diffuse texture and does its best to create bump maps/normals maps/specular maps.

 

This will NEVER be as good-looking as a baked model in, say Blender. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, I am only vaguely aware of how it works but let me try to explain. In some 3D modeling program there is a concept called baking. What this means is you create a extremely high poly count model and a fairly low poly count model. You can then feed these two meshes into a function that will bake the high poly model onto the low poly model. The result is normal maps and bump maps (I believe). This allows you to use the low poly model, while retaining VERY high quality renderings. Look at the lion in the sponza model, for example. If you had to guess, you would think it would be a very high poly count model. But if you enter wireframe mode, you would realize that it actually has hardly any polys at all. Not only is this good for performance, but it looks good too! The reason this is possible is due to normal maps (in this instance, no bump is applied).

 

I hope all that makes sense. I'll ping @Edward Joseph and @Mark Eli as they may be able to correct any mistakes I've made.

 

EDIT: I found the link to the original OBJ that we downloaded. Had to crawl the web archives because the site/model has since been updated. Here is a link to the old site/model that we originally downloaded from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180202205437/http://www.crytek.com/cryengine/cryengine3/downloads

Here is a link to the new model, if you wish to download it and try to pull it into VW/Vision:

https://www.cryengine.com/marketplace/sponza-sample-scene

Edited by bbudzon
adding links
  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I think we may have found an elegant solution to the colors not coming over properly such that it wont need to be reworked later. We are testing the fix out in the beta. Assuming things go well, it should make it into the final SP1 release.

  • Like 3
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...