topic Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems in Visualization

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Ben Odonnell — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:01:43 GMT

That there is no radiosity module.

That none of the "normal ArchiCAD" lights work as the 3 other Lightworks lights work.

That you don't get real time feedback on materials(Yea I know that you get direct feed back in the preview window but may be make it a tad bigger), they don't show up when OpenGL is used. I know that this is also hardware driven, but hey you can always whish for it.

Well that's it for now.

Cheers.
Ben

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Rakela Raul — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:19:21 GMT

no book to learn from

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:29:07 GMT

Not to provide a defense, are you aware that the lights in "General Light Sources" and many of the lamps themselves are updated to cast soft shadows? The falloff controls are quite sensitive....

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:30:20 GMT

Rakela wrote:
no book to learn from

I can fix that, Mr. Early Adopter.

Anything else?

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

TDabney — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:18:01 GMT

I haven't spent much time rendering w/the Lightworks engine, and I know this has ben talked about before, but - the material editors and basic controls are a little on the cumbersome side. It's pretty tedious to run test renders w/different materials and settings. Not the best for efficient work.
Tom

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:21:56 GMT

Some LW complaints/problems in no particular order:

1. That GS put some of the usage documentation (and GDL documentation) in the developer libraries (free download – but not included in the distribution) rather than in the help files and GDL manual. Even that documentation doesn’t cover all user controls / parameters in all LW-related dialogs, but it helps the GDL developer. GDL coders will want to get the Basic Library files from
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/developer/documentation/index.html

2. That the LW material preview in the archive loading dialog is so small as to be meaningless; you have to select the material, then look at it in the main dialog (or apply to a surface and render). Then when you go back to the archive, you have to find your place once again, as it doesn’t remember where the shader came from.

3. Similar to the last one, I would like an option for a cube rather than the sphere in the Material Settings dialog, since I almost never apply materials/shaders to spheres, and the distortion makes it difficult to judge the appropriateness of settings, for example, for a shader-defined wood or stone. The effects of grain size aren’t seen until the material is applied and rendered … time consuming. Then consider reflectance, transparency, displacement etc … Really need a quick-render of just a cube or sphere (at a known scale) that is large enough to judge the result.

4. As Tom Dabney said, the material editor controls are quite cumbersome. I never want to hide controls, and am tired of clearing the checkbox for “Show Essential Only” each time I go into the material editor.

5. I want a way to easily make sure the size/aspect of my texture image matches that of my mask and/or bump images. (I rarely use different pixel-dimensioned images for the different functions. Give us a ‘lock’ button so we can use different sizes when needed, but otherwise keep things in synch.)

6. There is a ‘match to internal engine’ button, that is useful. But, once you start really working in LW, you want the reverse … an OpenGL/Internal “match as close as you can to LW”.

7. LW window light behavior is frustrating: as you vary the intensity, the number of lights changes, but there is another parameter that changes the number of lights too. I’ll probably just reprogram this object myself, as I’d rather pick my light resolution and then adjust the intensity without altering the light count.

8. No radiosity, as mentioned by Ben Odonnell

9. Can only use some archives … AC LW is not certified for archive use. We should be able to open, for example, the Benjamin Moore paint archives.

10. Light behavior sometimes gives artifacts: I have seen mysterious dots reflected in glass from a window light, and strange waving patterns on walls and ceilings, like the guy with the plaster was bouncing up and down with his trowel, drunk, or both.

11. There is no way to visually align LW textures in 3D since the 3D OpenGL window uses the internal textures. If you ‘match to internal’ this is not a problem. But, if you use a LW shader, you can only guess (AFAIK – perhaps a tip in Dwight’s book) to get the alignment where you want. Then render, and re-render. Very time consuming.

12. Light intensities combine in what seems to me to be an unpredictable way, resulting in extra renderings and time. For example, with the sky object and sun object present for an exterior rendering, it is easy to overexpose surfaces, such as the ground/lawn. So far, it has just been trial and error for me to find settings that are satisfactory and expose things adequately.

13. Soft shadows just don’t work AFAIK. If you adjust shadow softness for the sun in the LW Environment of the Photorendering Settings, there is no meaningful change. Nothing produces shadows similar to Art*lantis, much less C4D. I just modified the Sun object which calls for hard shadows in its 3D script, to instead call for soft shadows and there was no effect. My guess is there is some bug in the integration of LW in AC 9.

14. The material selection pop-ups don’t have any visual clue (icon) to let you know which materials have LW definitions that are other-than ‘match to internal engine’.

In spite of all of this ... I use LW as my engine of choice with AC.

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:37:56 GMT

1: my book will be condensing the cumbersome geeky documentation ito useful phrases
2: yup.
3: yup.
4: I heard tha this is the most hated non-feature
5:yup
6: yup
7: should always have this low anyways.
8: true
9: unreliable response form GS on this - "ifn'n it don't work, don't try to use it!"
10: less liquor required - reflection very bad when close to parallel....
11: pure shaders still start from an origin but where is it??
12: every rendering takes at least two tries [ruleofthumb] and you need a quarter stick of dynamite for every 4" of trunk diameter.
13: I have established a compromise on this and a fix may arrive fro HQ.
14: yup

Thanks.

Now, how about some artistic challenges users face?

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Rob — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:48:29 GMT

1.missing implementation of ALL LW light source types such as a linear light etc.

2.Light lib parts that allow precise light definition by lumen/lux values or at least bulb type/wattage definitions (like 100W incandescent, MH, Halogen etc) for beginners.

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:55:00 GMT

Oh yeah:
15. Default color of sun object in library is blue...rather than yellow-ish.

Artistic problems: perhaps tomorrow. 😉

Karl

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 03:04:14 GMT

I am glad to see such a list, but it is not quite on the topic I had hoped for. These issues are largely implementation issues - how few of the actual LightWorks capacities have failed to get into Archinine.

And these shortcomings lead to operational challenges all right.....

For instance, there's a problem where a slight roughness of material falling in the sun object penumbra has its coarseness really amplified.

This is the kind of thing I mean.

see left and right of attachment

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Ben Odonnell — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 07:35:44 GMT

Dwight wrote:
Not to provide a defense, are you aware that the lights in "General Light Sources" and many of the lamps themselves are updated to cast soft shadows? The falloff controls are quite sensitive....

Not at all.
To be honest I had no idea that the General Light sources were updated. Excuse my ignorance.
I'll have to check them out. Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers.
Ben

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

fuzzytnth3 — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:22:21 GMT

Other than what Karl has said here are the things I've found

Off topic
Opening an ArchiCAD 7 file in ArchiCAD 9 seems to cause the Lightworks objects to be ignored. If instead you merge the old file into a new AC 9 file then it behaves correctly

On topic?
Using the marquee tool to view your model in the 3d window and then photorender is ok the first time. Go back to the 3d view adjust something and then render again and the result is an overexposed rendering. To solve it you have to go back to the 2d window select an element, 3d view it go back to the 2d again and use your marquee.

On topic
I've seen weird shadows on some renderings where they partly disappear and or go spotty. I think this may have been early on in my trying out Lightworks so I think it was caused by using the ArchiCAD sun as well as the Lightworks sun object.

Off topic
Being able to set the ArchiCAD sun with a colour temprature is nice but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for the Lightworks sun object, or did I miss something?

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 21:37:08 GMT

wr1nkles wrote:
i think that graphisoft should make it that the materials in lightworks are no different to that of the internal engine. There have been many a time when i have rendered something using the lightworks engine to only find out that lightworks has substituted my material with something else

Nik,

This is what the "match with internal" button is all about. It matches as closely as possible.

If all materials could be no different than the internal, then many of the benefits of LW could never be realized. LW is much more powerful and flexible than the internal engine.

But, maybe I misunderstood your wish/problem?

Karl

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 14:42:32 GMT

what about the old-timers?

all those old projects still around, that, for whatever reason, the user needs just one more view, and doesn't want to be guest-singing on Sesame Street "One of these renderings is not like the others..."

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:13:26 GMT

Not sure if this is a wish more than a problem...

There should be a short cut key for the materials attribute edit window. Seeing that you go backand forth to it so much.

Re: Top Ten LightWorks Problems

Dwight — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:27:15 GMT

Many cumbersome aspects to the material dialog.
What else is new??