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Unshaded Polygon No Lines render mode needed


Christiaan

Question

We need an Unshaded Polygon No Lines render mode (Hidden Line foreground can be use for lines). Or a Final Unshaded Polygon render mode (which would have Hidden Line built in for lines). 

 

I have a large model with many elevations so I need the most resource-efficient way to produce elevations, while very clearly delineating between materials using flat colour. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this.

 

- Shaded Polygon No Lines doesn't work because it includes shading

- Unshaded Polygon doesn't work because it renders all lines, which are unwanted

- Final Shaded Polygon (which has Hidden Line built into it) doesn't work because it includes shading

 

Renderworks (with everything off except colour + ambient light) is the closest I can get to what I need visually, because unlike Shaded (formerly OpenGL) and Shaded Polygon, RW just mixes in some black for any shading, without changing hue or saturation.

Edited by Christiaan
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@Christiaan I'm not sure why we've never had an Unshaded Polygon No Lines option (probably some historical reason) and it seems like it would be pretty easy to add one moving forward.

 

When you talk about efficiency are you mostly talking about update time or file size?

 

Does it ever matter that RW and Shaded(OpenGL) create raster images whilst the Polygon modes create polygons?  I guess I'm just asking if the images ever get in the way and if users just want only geometry.  We might be able to get the desired effect by adding a unshaded option to RW and/or Shaded(OpenGL.)

 

All of this said it would probably be easy to add an Unshaded Polygon No Lines if that would be helpful to users.  The polygon modes have definitely received the least amount of love as we've been focusing on the others and I'll definitely look into your polygon performance concerns.

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@Christiaan

 

I'm not sure if you mean this with your explanation. But we're missing Hidden line with displaying the textures/colors of the objects. 
A bit like OpenGL but without the need to up de DPI settings of the sheet to get a clean result. 
If we boost the DPI settings, other hidden line viewports take forever to render.

So we mostly just draw colored polygons on our viewport:

 

Left one is without coloring, right one is with manually coloring on the viewport itself.

Would be a big improvement if there was a Hidden line with colors ofcourse.


image.thumb.png.6ed38ee98077f9d4882de54044cdcc1f.png

 

Edited by Bertf
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12 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

@Tom W.Don't even joke about that. I have spent so many hours cleaning up DWG that used hatches like that.  A file with 1,000,000 objects that after deleting the hatches turn down to 200.  Not even funny. 😉

 

Ha ha but you got me wondering. Would such a hatch actually be an issue? Compared to some of the other hatches out there e.g. stone hatches with 798 levels...? My hatch is very simple in comparison:

 

305961371_Screenshot2022-01-22at06_34_05.thumb.png.c1bc2a5517ee060597ad32831923f9a0.png

 

10 hours ago, Christiaan said:

I wondered about using a surface hatch with a Background Fill and pen set to 0 thickness. But it doesn't work.

 

I tried that too, before moving onto doing it with the line. I guess Hidden Line literally just does lines...? And for that reason I don't think Data Viz will work. Data Viz will allow you to swap the texture displayed on an object to a different one but that won't change the fact that Hidden Line won't support the display of a solid fill colour. You could use it to swap the surface hatch displayed but would still need to use a thick coloured line hatch like above to have it look solid...

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On 1/22/2022 at 5:58 PM, Tom W. said:

 

Ha ha but you got me wondering. Would such a hatch actually be an issue? Compared to some of the other hatches out there e.g. stone hatches with 798 levels...? My hatch is very simple in comparison:

 

305961371_Screenshot2022-01-22at06_34_05.thumb.png.c1bc2a5517ee060597ad32831923f9a0.png

 

 

I tried that too, before moving onto doing it with the line. I guess Hidden Line literally just does lines...? And for that reason I don't think Data Viz will work. Data Viz will allow you to swap the texture displayed on an object to a different one but that won't change the fact that Hidden Line won't support the display of a solid fill colour. You could use it to swap the surface hatch displayed but would still need to use a thick coloured line hatch like above to have it look solid...

I tried this and it worked well for what I needed - simple building elevations at 1:100 scale for local a authority approval

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On 1/14/2022 at 7:15 PM, Josh Loy said:

@Christiaan I'm not sure why we've never had an Unshaded Polygon No Lines option (probably some historical reason) and it seems like it would be pretty easy to add one moving forward.

 

When you talk about efficiency are you mostly talking about update time or file size?

 

Does it ever matter that RW and Shaded(OpenGL) create raster images whilst the Polygon modes create polygons?  I guess I'm just asking if the images ever get in the way and if users just want only geometry.  We might be able to get the desired effect by adding a unshaded option to RW and/or Shaded(OpenGL.)

 

All of this said it would probably be easy to add an Unshaded Polygon No Lines if that would be helpful to users.  The polygon modes have definitely received the least amount of love as we've been focusing on the others and I'll definitely look into your polygon performance concerns.

@Josh Loy I somehow missed your response when you posted it. Thanks for looking into this.

 

When I talk about efficiency I'm talking about both update time and file size, but if I was forced to choose one I'd say I'm mostly talking about lightness of file in terms of size and not slowing Vectorworks down once it's rendered and not slowing PDF apps down. Rightly or wrongly, this in my head means not using raster images. Think Top/Plan but for 3D. But it also means fast update time, or ultimately realtime rendering. Again, I'm thinking Top/Plan but for 3D.

Edited by Christiaan
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Hi,

 

greetings.

 

I would prefer a flexible solution, where we can set and save/load our own defined render modes.

 

I don't like predefined settings only, with no customization possiblities.

 

For example: Sketchup (SKP)!

In SKP i have a menu where i can activate or deactivate things i want to see or not

and i can save and load my settings.

 

Edges visible yes / no

Hidden Edges visible yes / no

Endpoints visible yes / no  (we need this in VW too!)

linecolor by axis yes / no (we need this in VW too!)

Color yes / no

hatching yes / no

shadings yes / no

Handdraw look yes / no

shadows yes / no

 

Such a solution would fit the most needs, i think.

 

Greetings

Tobi

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In addition to the last Post by Tobias Kern, it would be also important to set the angle when Lines are rendered, even for the Polygone mode. Or to use 2D Views from symbols to reduce size and render times.

For now the complete Polygone rendering thing is for example useless for us. If there is one object in the appropriate viewport, ist takes dozent of gigabytes in RAM and renders like 20min for one object. not useable for now, if you need to generate Polygones from 3D Objects.

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I wonder how you would feel about Renderworks> Artistic>cartoon, with the line weight set 0.01?

You do get textures - not just flat color, it is pretty fast, WAY faster than unshaded polygons in my test.

Then you can add hidden lines over the top for crisp lines ( if you want them) 

I like to add a heliodon for some nice shadow effects but you can turn off all the lights to omit shadows.

image.png.17dc1861932bd5a7bce2d1a708ff67f7.png

A version with lights and HL over the top

image.png.dcdb3baab38117bc0ded4c91b1e61e21.png

 

Bart

 

 

 

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