topic Re: bitmap trees strange shadows. in Libraries & objects

bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:10:43 GMT

Hi you all.

Just a small question about a library part in AC 8.1

The bitmap trees are getting rectangular shadows in the rendering view area......I am not sure if there is some option to solve that problem.

It seems to me that in AC 7.0 bitmap objects turned automatically transparent ( rectangular are around the picture), but now....i am not getting any solution....

thank you all

best regards

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

LiHigh — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 01:26:38 GMT

There was an indepth discussion at the link below:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=2984

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 08:18:14 GMT

WELL...there is no answer from graphisoft???' Have i just bought ArchiCAD 8.1 and now i can't use the bitmap trees????

I want my Archicad 7.0 back.....don't mess with me.....i thought the bug version was already solved.....

this is a bug and i demand an answer

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 09:59:28 GMT

What is the tree you have problems with?
Is it a tree in ArchiCAD Library?
Or is it a tree from a 3rd party library?
As a note, you can run AC 7.0 with the AC 8.1 hardware key.
Laszlo

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:41:19 GMT

I am using Archicad 8.1 library only, ( i am using all bitmap trees in this library)....you can read more about this in "rendering and presentation" were other users are blaming about the same.....

Of course i can use archicad 7.0....but you think that is correct?

It's a bug.....you can solve it i hope, preferencially before next version...

regards

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:22:02 GMT

Here is how to do it. I am going to use the "Pine1.tif" bitmap for this. It is located in ArchiCAD Library 8.1\Object Library 81\3. MACROS 81\Picture Maps 81\Plants 81.
Basically, you need to assign this picture as a texture to a material, and place a Wall using this material.

1. In the Material Dialog, select a material (e.g. 'Surface-Whitewash') and assign the 'Pine1.tif' bitmap to it as a texture. In the Edit Texture Subdialog you can see that the original size is 228x339 pixels. Let us say you want a 6 meter high tree. So enter 4035 and 6000 millimeters for the width and height of the texture (4035 = (228x6000)/339).
2. Check the Transparency checkbox in the Alpha Channel Effects field and OK the subdialog.
3. Now the correctly sized alpha-channelled texture is assigned to material Surface-Whitewash. OK the Materials Dialog.
4. Now draw a Wall that is 4035 mm in length and 6000 mm in height. Make this Wall zero thickness. Assign the Material Surface-Whitewash to the sides of this Wall.
5. Select the Wall and go to the 3D Window. Make sure the OpenGL engine is selected for the 3D Window (Image\3D Engine and Mode\OpenGL).
6. Select the Wall in 3D and select Edit\Align 3D Texture\Set Origin...
Then click the lower left corner of the Wall (lower-left from the point you view it). This will align the texture to the Wall correctly as you will immediately see using OpenGL.
7. In Image\PhotoRendering Settings\Effects... check the Sun checkbox under Shadow Casting and click the Options button. In the subdialog check the Use transparency in shadow calculation checkbox. OK them to accept changes.
8. Create your PhotoRendering where ArchiCad will not correctly show the shadows of the bitmapped tree.

Laszlo

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Fabrizio Diodati — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:44:35 GMT

Dear Laci,

thanks for the workaround, but I think our users needs only a simple statement from Graphisoft who can admit this is a bug (maybe solved in the last release...) or who can say the library parts are damaged/wrong (I don't think so...).
Nothing else!

Friendly
Fabrizio

BTW your workaround it less powerful than some object which can follow the observer... following your suggestion, the user should manually rotate the wall anytime he changes the point of view!

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:55:17 GMT

Yes, I know, this is not as good as the Library Object rotating to always face the camera.
Laszlo

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 06:03:48 GMT

Fabrizio wrote:
thanks for the workaround, but I think our users needs only a simple statement from Graphisoft who can admit this is a bug (maybe solved in the last release...)

Thanks, Fabrizio! Well said.

Yes, I appreciate all of the workarounds below, but the point is that the bitmap trees and people that are included in the 8.1 library and which automatically face the camera DID cast proper shadows in 7.0 and before. We don't really want to have to make USERS recode these things to get them to work in 8.1 ... that is GS's job.

Cheers,
Karl

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 20:37:42 GMT

Karl wrote:
Yes, I appreciate all of the workarounds below, but the point is that the bitmap trees and people that are included in the 8.1 library and which automatically face the camera DID cast proper shadows in 7.0 and before. We don't really want to have to make USERS recode these things to get them to work in 8.1 ... that is GS's job.

Karl,
I am in agreement with you that these types of entourage objects should cast shadows as part of the basic ArchiCAD package.

I must, however, respectfully disagree with your "...DID cast proper shadows in 7.0 and before..." statement. I am 100% certain they did not. I have always had a personal preference for producing all of my rendering output directly from ArchiCAD. Because of this preference, I was forced to figure out a GDL way of making this happen...you see, ArchiCAD 6.x,7.x and now 8.x were all unable to cast the shadows I required. Believe me, I would not have invested the time and energy to figure all of this out if it was already possible.

I must admit, I'm not perfect and there is a miniscule chance that I may have overlooked how the shadow casting ability was already there before developing my solution. Can you please provide a rendering produced in one of these previous versions or something that demonstrates this was available? Or for that matter, can anyone else?

I hesitate to say this because I don't want to advertise inappropriately in this forum, but I am working on a very innovative solution that I will make available for sale online. Even if the supposed bug is fixed (which I don't feel is a bug), my solution will provide a more productive way of handling this issue....more on this later when i finalize the suite of objects and figure out the correct place to announce them.

thanks,
Dan K

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Karl Ottenstein — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 04:44:53 GMT

Dan wrote:
I must, however, respectfully disagree with your "...DID cast proper shadows in 7.0 and before..." statement. I am 100% certain they did not.

Thanks for being so kind about my stupidity. I just verified that there are no proper shadows in 7.0R3 for the bitmap people or trees. I have no idea what I was remembering ... and didn't check since someone else had the same (mis)memory.

Best of luck with your object suite. 😉

Sorry again for having my facts wrong, folks.

Karl

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 12:31:40 GMT

Karl,

I think you were probably remembering some third party trees. I don't recall which, but I am sure there were some that worked (perhaps all of them). I have always used volumetric trees of one sort or another so my recollection of the billboard types is limited.

Re: bitmap trees strange shadows.

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 14:42:46 GMT

I have always used bitmap trees in Archicad 7.0 and the shadows always worked, by the way i must say that i used Av_works..as rendering engine.

The question is..that archicad is a great software...but look around....

Do you think it is acceptable that in version 8.0 we have the same rendering quality as in version 5.0.......there's no increase in quality.

rendering is the worse part of archicad, maybe in next version....we can dream on.