Phileas Posted April 5, 2019 Share Posted April 5, 2019 (edited) Hey everyone I have a question about shadows in vectorworks: This is what our elevation viewports typically used to look like in older projects: a section viewport cutting through the terrain, showing the building façades. Our office used to only draw in 2D. That means, all the shadows you see on these views are drawn onto the buildings using polylines, gray fill and adjusted opacity. Now, we are switching to BIM, and we have a 3D model of a building and would now like to create façade elevations just like these, respecting our local standards: In all the views, the sun (or light source) is situated at a 45 degree angle from the building. I played with the heliodon tool for an bit, but it doesn't really seem to be the solution to my problem, since I need to have that fixed 45° angle in every elevation view, so I guess I'd need 4 or more heliodons for that (?) I'm guessing I need fixed light sources, but I fear they'll kind of "fight" each other if I have all activated at the same time. So I came here to ask how you guys would do this: would you place 4 heliodons or 4 fixed lights? how would you adjust the parameters of these lights? to avoid them fighting, would you place each lightsource in a different class and activate only the desired one in the corresponding façade elevation viewport? or would you place the lights directly inside the viewports like annotations? Any help on that subject would be really precious to me. UPDATE: so I played around with adding a separate directional light source for every direction of light I want, and placed every light inside a separate classe to be able to activate the right direction of light in every viewport respectively easily. This is the result. While this looks pretty neat, this is not good enough for various reasons. The main ones being: this type of stuff (the lagging shadow stopping in the middle of nowhere): The greyish colour of the walls the fact that I can't really adjust lineweights as clearly as I could in a hidden lines rendering for example. I really like the appearance of the "hidden lines" rendering method for exterior elevations, but I can't manage to add shadows in that mode. Is there a way to do it? Also: I created my exterior elevations by making a section viewport through the terrain in front of the exterior wall. Is that the proper way to do it? Edited April 5, 2019 by Phileas Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted April 5, 2019 Share Posted April 5, 2019 I would use 4 Heliodons, controlled by Classes. Hdden Line would be my Render Mode on top. At the bottom something Shaded that brings decent Shadow quality. OpenGL might be too coarse ? 2 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted April 6, 2019 Share Posted April 6, 2019 To add, I don't do Elevations that often, but when I do, I would be satisfied and prefer just OpenGL Render Style with Lines option ON. (You can crank up resolution to get more crisp OpenGL Lines and maybe shadows) I just noticed that, even old HL Render isn't multi-threaded and called slow, an old Shaded Mode + HL looks similar like OpenGL, but is much faster to update, at least on may old nMacPro. So I always used that old school render mode combo. (maybe that would be different on my PC with a current RTX 2070) 2 Quote Link to comment
Benson Shaw Posted April 6, 2019 Share Posted April 6, 2019 @Phileas Zoomer's ideas are great as always, and can be done via the dual render mode options (foreground, background) in a single VP. An additional approach for shading control is to use stacked, duplicate VPs in different render modes (eg Hidden Line in front, OGL behind), but interpose between the VPs a 2d rectangle with a solid white fill and apply transparency. Any VP behind the rectangle will appear faded. Fade is adjustable via the transparency control in its attribute palette. Create annotations in the front VP so they to do not appear faded. -B 4 Quote Link to comment
Phileas Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 @Benson Shaw @zoomer ok thank you guys, I'll try all of your ideas and update what works best for me 🙂 I don't know what I would have done without this forum Quote Link to comment
Phileas Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 @Benson Shaw @zoomer I'd also like to ask a question: what is the difference between a directional light source and a heliodon? Quote Link to comment
Phileas Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 UPDATE: ok so I tried to do all of what you guys suggested, and I still have a few questions: I tried to use Hidden Lines as a main rendering mode, but somehow once I do that I can only chose from a few variations of Hidden Lines as a secondary rendering mode, which makes it impossble to add shadows. Maybe I'm doing this wrong? I use the OIP of the VP to control this. I then tried to use OpenGL, and cranked up the Presentation Sheet's resolution to 600DPI, which solved the problems with the lagging shadows and gave them more defined delimitations, which is cool. To be honest, that looks good to me, personally I'm happy with the looks of my elevations like this. Unfortunately, I'm not the boss on that project, and so I have to produce something that fits my boss' taste 😕. We have always been working only in 2D and I've finally convinced him to let me try working in 3D on that project, since in my opinion we should try and use all the functionnalities of VW. Suiting his desires ends up beeing quite annoying, since he's the kind of guy who doesn't want to have to model more detailed things in 3D (like window blinds and things like that (which is ridiculous since we have the DWGs and just have to make an extrude it takes 3 minutes...)), doesn't want to draw them as annotations of the VP, and still somehow expects them to appear in elevations 😕 I then tried to stack 2 duplicated VPs, the top one rendered in Hidden Lines for a crisp outline of the main lines, and the bottom one rendered in OpenGL for shadows. I then put a white filled rectangle between the 2 VPs, and set it's fill opacity to 50%. Here's the result: And here's the kind of thing I'd like to (and have to) accomplish in the end: I think I'm getting closer... do you agree? Does anyone have any advices for me on how to improve' 2 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 1 hour ago, Phileas said: @Benson Shaw @zoomer I'd also like to ask a question: what is the difference between a directional light source and a heliodon? Both are directional Lights similar to real sun light. But Heliodon offers angle control by time, date and position (and solar studies) and this also controls : - the light intensity - the light color - the Skylight and color (More advanced than simple ambient light) 1 Quote Link to comment
Phileas Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 @zoomer ok thanks! Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Matt Panzer Posted April 8, 2019 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 8, 2019 6 hours ago, Phileas said: I tried to use Hidden Lines as a main rendering mode, but somehow once I do that I can only chose from a few variations of Hidden Lines as a secondary rendering mode, which makes it impossble to add shadows. Maybe I'm doing this wrong? I use the OIP of the VP to control this. Use OpenGL for the background Render Mode and Hidden Line for the Foreground in one viewport. Make sure to turn off "Show Edges" in the OpenGL Background Render settings so they don't muddy Hidden Line linework. Also, to get lighter shadows, experiment with the Emitter Brightness and the Ambient Brightness settings (in the Lighting Options dialog) to get the amount of lightness and contrast in the models and shadows. 4 Quote Link to comment
taliho Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 (edited) I use a different technique: 4 separate directional light sources. each is also 45° to ground I play around with which direction looks best on the elevation Light Source on Floor Plan - labeled 1-4, classed separately, Rendering On Sheet Layer Background Render: Artistic Renderworks Background Render Settings: Lines and Shadow - this takes the shadow direction from the light source in the class that is turned on. Edge color and shadow color are the same so there is no visible line. Foreground Render: Hidden Line Foreground Render Settings: Sketch (Or not....) Edited April 10, 2019 by taliho 1 Quote Link to comment
taliho Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Sorry- I can't delete the duplicate images... Quote Link to comment
Matt Overton Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 On 4/8/2019 at 11:39 PM, Matt Panzer said: Use OpenGL for the background Render Mode and Hidden Line for the Foreground in one viewport. Make sure to turn off "Show Edges" in the OpenGL Background Render settings so they don't muddy Hidden Line linework. Also, to get lighter shadows, experiment with the Emitter Brightness and the Ambient Brightness settings (in the Lighting Options dialog) to get the amount of lightness and contrast in the models and shadows. Yes works best and means associated hatches on textures show up. Still sure would be handy to have sunlight be a viewport setting instead of a bunch of classed light-sources. 😉 4 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 9 hours ago, taliho said: I use a different technique: 4 separate directional light sources. each is also 45° to ground I play around with which direction looks best on the elevation Light Source on Floor Plan - labeled 1-4, classed separately, I agree that the answer for this thread are Directional Lights. Not Heliodons. As their features and complexity isn't needed nor wanted in that case of Shadows on 2D plans. Directional Light + Ambient Light is much easier and better suited to control Elevations. (I just live in my limited 3D and RW Render Style world, where Heliodons are super cool of course) Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Matt Panzer Posted April 10, 2019 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 10, 2019 12 hours ago, taliho said: I use a different technique: 4 separate directional light sources. each is also 45° to ground I play around with which direction looks best on the elevation Light Source on Floor Plan - labeled 1-4, classed separately, Yes. This is what I've typically done as well for elevation views. Also, simple directional lights can be controlled per viewport via the Visualization palette, so no need for classing. Heliodons, however, cannot be controlled in this way. Quote Link to comment
Popular Post TomKen Posted April 10, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted April 10, 2019 Matt. I use 4 Heliodons on a layer called suns. I have one in each of the four directions then use the Visualization pallete to control which Sun is on in the Viewport. Although I didn't do it in the attached image I usually set the time or date one minute or day apart. ie. 9:00 a.m. = south 9:01= west, that way I know which suns to turn off in the viewports. 6 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Matt Panzer Posted April 10, 2019 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 10, 2019 @TomKen, Ah! Thank you! I don't think this was always possible. Great to know it is now! 🙂 Quote Link to comment
JMR Posted April 13, 2019 Share Posted April 13, 2019 I tried to use this with 2018 but in the end had to use classes. Great if it works now. We use heliodons since that way we can determine the right amount of solar shading for summertime. However, I've had some difficulty in getting consistent color with heliodons and different facades - even though there is no environment lighting, only the heliodon with proper rotation set. Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted April 14, 2019 Share Posted April 14, 2019 (edited) 21 hours ago, JMR said: However, I've had some difficulty in getting consistent color with heliodons and different facades Haven't looked at that so far, but basically it should be the same if you use the offset angle for north direction (!?) Or in general as the color is only influenced by the angle to Z axis, which means how far the sun light has to travel through atmosphere. (Which eats the blue parts of light) Edited April 14, 2019 by zoomer Quote Link to comment
JMR Posted April 14, 2019 Share Posted April 14, 2019 Exactly, I was a bit baffled by this. I had set all environment lighting to none. I have to give it another go. Quote Link to comment
JMR Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 Well, the color issue is still there. Obviously something is wrong. I have two exact same heliodons, on two different classes. The other one is rotated 45 degrees in the OIP, the other one -130 degrees. Tried to set environment lighting to one. No help there. Where is the setting that causes this...it cannot be by design...? Quote Link to comment
Phileas Posted May 7, 2019 Author Share Posted May 7, 2019 @JMR If you rotate the heliodon that causes the color issue to the angle of -180+45=-135°, do you still get the issue? I'm wondering if the problem is simply caused by the angle. Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 I find heliodons to be generally temperamental and that they sometimes start doing weird stuff. I suspect this sometimes to happen when I've duplicated one. I quite often just delete the troublesome one and make a new one; sometimes that fixes things. Quote Link to comment
JMR Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 Phew...it was the heliodon FILL in the attributes palette, apparently that determines the color of the light! It was accidentally set to yellow and not white. Now things are normal. Quote Link to comment
line-weight Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 On 4/10/2019 at 2:03 PM, Matt Panzer said: Yes. This is what I've typically done as well for elevation views. Also, simple directional lights can be controlled per viewport via the Visualization palette, so no need for classing. Heliodons, however, cannot be controlled in this way. I control Heliodons this way... and it works (I think). I'm using VW2018. Quote Link to comment
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