Rendered views of all elevations on one sheet?

[P Retondo]

Has anyone been able to get rendered views of a model, seen from all sides, on a single sheet? I have set up 4 visible layers, inserted a link to the model in each layer, set each layer to a different elevation view - so far so good - but when I render with OpenGL or Renderworks, the rendering seems to create white fill around the building so that only the top layer shows. Am I missing something?

[CipesDesign]

Hi Peter,

Have you tried setting the fill of each rendered link to none? I'm not sure it is possible, or if it will have any effect, but thought maybe it would work in a similar way to imported images which always seem to come in with a white mask around them.

Please let us know how you end up solving this as I would very much like to use rendered elevations....

Peter Cipes

[Kristen]

You could try doing it with just one layer. Create a layer link, unlock it, duplicate it 3 times, and rotate and move each to the right position. Hmmm.... you might have a problem, though, with one model casting shadows on another... but maybe you could tweak the light direction.

[Guest]

If you have Architect 10 - use the Model View tool.

This allows you to place several layer links on on model each set to a different view.

They will all render at the same time.

[P Retondo]

Katie, Kristen, thanks - I'll try it.

[ 04-19-2003, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: P Retondo ]

[P Retondo]

Worked pretty well, except for light direction. Both approaches are essentially the same. I set up my four links in top view, then maneuvered them in front view to be a 2x2 layout on the sheet. In top view again, I moved some of the links "back and forth" (up and down the screen in top view) until no shadows were cast by the upper objects on the lower ones. Since the final view is a pure orthogonal elevation, this fore and aft movement had no effect on the size of the objects on the sheet.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be possible to light each view/link separately. This means that we can't get a realistic position for the sun, since all "sides" of the building are lit more or less identically using this technique. There might be ways to finesse this by using a series of spot light sources that decay with distance, diminishing the effect of one link's lights upon another. The problem, though, is that all four links exist in the same 3D and light space.

This experiment points up some differences between links, as applied by VectorWorks, and AutoCAD's viewports and xrefs. Links, I think, were originally created to allow the assembly of a 3D model on a single layer. This means that they were designed not to be separate "views" of a source object, but to create a coherent single view from an assemblage of objects.

Viewports and xrefs are essentially 2D tools to allow the assembly of a working drawing from different snapshots of drafted objects. Both viewports and xrefs can be clipped and bounded, where links cannot. Perhaps if VW could come up with a way of isolating/bounding links without compromising the original concept, we could solve this problem with displaying multiple views of an object, and at the same time allow them to be more flexibly used in the 2D context.

Another approach might be to make my original attempt work - i.e., set up the different views on 4 different layers. The only problem I was having was that each rendered layer created a completely opaque white background, so that only the top layer was visible after all were rendered. This white background effect, by the way, was not present in forms of rendering other than OpenGL or RenderWorks.

[ 04-19-2003, 10:52 PM: Message edited by: P Retondo ]

[Kristen]

Not sure if this would solve the problem, but if you're looking to, say, light the building only from the southeast, you could put the directional light in the model layer rather than the layer it's linked to.

That was a good idea to move the links back and forth to avoid casting shadows on each other -- I'll have to try that.

I've had no luck getting more than one layer to show rendered at the same time. You have to be careful with layer order if you just want one layer to be rendered and the rest wireframe.

[P Retondo]

"if you're looking to, say, light the building only from the southeast, you could put the directional light in the model layer rather than the layer it's linked to"

Kristen, thanks for the suggestion - but I had tried that to no avail. The result on the layer combining 4 views of the building is that 1) you get 4 times the light you want, and 2) all four lights combine to light all views of the model from 4 directions.