Redshift, anyone?

[Kevin K]

I believe I heard that VW 2022 was going to include some incarnation of Redshift?

That would certainly be a good thing.

 

I recently upgraded my Cinema 3d software to version 23, then to use Redshift, I also had to update to Big Sur to take advantage of using GPU processing.

 

All that said, after exporting a VW file to c4d and firing up Redshift within c4d,  I was stunned!!  For several reasons, incredible rendering speed being at the top of the list,

But.... beyond that....the IPR ( interactive preview rendering) window updating immediately in realtime as I moved the camera around, etc, was quite a thing to behold.

This helps enormously in quickly seeing how lighting, reflections, etc will look in the final Rendering. As opposed to having to spend 30-40 minutes for a Custom RW Rendering to complete, only to find there were a few things that needed refining or slight tweaking, etc. Needless to say....a lot of wasted time.

 

So.....For the "Roadmap" crew....any thoughts about some form of Redshift actually being planned for VW 2022??

 

 

[grant_PD]

I have to agree, Redshift is a game changer.  And while I don't think Redshift for VW would really work (how do you do all of those node based texture operations inside of vw???) I also have certainly found that Enscape is a fantastic Look/Dev tool inside of VW.  Since it is also practically realtime, I can work in VW, and get a good "rough" of what's going on in realtime, and then head on over to C4D/Redshift for the real heavy duty renders.  

[Kevin K]

@grant_PD Well, as was the case with VW using 'some' of c4d's Render Engine, regarding Redshift, they most likely would not get the whole enchilada included within VW.

So....as you know, pertaining to the whole 'node' paradigm within Redshift, you can still just use the basic material setup, without having to go the 'node' route. 

Sorry to anyone who thinks I am speaking in Greek, but grant_PD knows of what I speak. :-) 

 

I am a Mac guy, so Enscape is not an option for me.    :-(

 

[grant_PD]

@Kevin K agreed with the watering down of RS for VW.  It is unfortunate that it has to be that way, there a lot of great features.  I do know of what you speak with regards to nodes, I often go the simple route as well. 

 

Lumion is for mac?  I don't follow the developments on that front.  I would just say, that adding ANY of that type of pre-vis to VW is so helpful that it's hard to imagine we came so far without it.  

[Kevin K]

Amen to that!

[zoomer]

1 hour ago, grant_PD said:

(how do you do all of those node based texture operations inside of vw???)

 

Marionette 😁

[grant_PD]

@zoomer lol.  Don't get me started on marionette.  

[Kevin K]

Well, I suppose so, "Mr. Marionette" :-)

 I am just now getting jiggy with the whole node based paradigm because of Redshift, but Marionette has always terrified me. ;-)

 

Maybe now I can wade in a bit.  

I could never find good tutorials or videos about learning Marionette.  The tutorials and such for learning about nodes in Redshift, etc was explained well and

although still a bit arcane, like anything....once you know, it is all pretty simple.to wrap your head around.

 

[grant_PD]

Vectorworks University < Greyscale Gorilla+, Cineversity.  

[Kevin K]

@grant_PD Ok, thanks for that.

Is that how you learned ? OR..were you Marionette literate from around the age of 5 ?  :-)

 

[grant_PD]

@Kevin K on good day I can make a rectangle in marionette.  Most days I stare at the myriad of nodes like a first timer at Home Depot..."so many options and I have no clue what I'm looking for..."

If I could find the time I would absolutely seek out a marionette master and pay them good money to teach me how to use/think in marionette.  I know the things I want to do, I just can't get there from where I am. 

I pointed out GSG+ and Cineversity because I feel that I have had a much better experience learning from them than from Vectorworks U.  They are granular and accessible, and watching pros do their work is a really great way to learn.

[Brandon PT Davis]

@grant_PD I agree that it will more than likely be a watered down version. With that being said my hope is that rendering power becomes better in VWX in the near future. I have given this company close to 8 thousand dollars in the base 6 years and there is a lot more competition since I started with service select. 

[fabrica]

the redshift trello has no mention of vectorworks.....nor have they started on SDK for third party plugins !  vectorworks 2023??

https://trello.com/b/QASr74yB/redshift

 

[willofmaine]

On 2/23/2021 at 2:33 PM, Kevin K said:

Marionette has always terrified me. 😉

 

 

Embrace the terror.  Hang on to it.  Marionette is awesome!  I put a lot of time into it and created a bunch of extremely useful plug-in objects.  And there was actually a brief window in time there - I think it was Vectorworks 2018 - where they actually worked!  Now none of them work.  At all.  Embrace the terror.  Let it guide you away from Marionette.  Run!

[Kevin K]

HAHAHAHAHAHA...........Sage advice for sure!!!  :-)

 

[Jesse Cogswell]

I've had a lot of issues with opening drawings in VW2021 with Marionette objects built in earlier versions because of broken connections within the network.  These broken connections appear to be entirely random, not constrained to any one type of node.  What's the most infuriating, is that half of the time, those connections are still drawn, so the only way to find the breaks is to literally "wiggle" every single node to make sure the connections stick.  On complicated networks, this can be a huge bummer.

 

I showed Marionette to my brother, who is a technical animator and CG rigger for film and used XSI Softimage which pioneered node-based scripting systems with their ICE system (RIP, another great product killed off by Autodesk), and he was horrified by the clunkiness of it.  A list node only populating with two items until you edit the python code behind it, but radio button and popup list inputs populating with three?  No way to really set stacking order of objects (as of 2019 anyway, they may have worked that one out since then, I used Ordered List nodes to try to solve it, but they weren't bulletproof)?  What a nightmare.

 

I find it faster to script out plug-in objects and menu commands, but Marionette is still the only way to reliably get a plug-in object to live with a drawing without needing to go through the process of installing and maintaining plug-ins (I can only imagine the way the eyes of some of my clients would glaze over if I told them that every user of the drawing would need to install a plug-in to effectively use it), so it's what we have for now.

 

At least they fixed the bug where having a lot of Marionette objects in a drawing would cause the file size to balloon out to 300mb+.