topic Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble in Visualization

ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Wokka — Thu, 11 May 2023 11:27:14 GMT

Ok, I've been using the OBJ file format for years to import into C4D and thought, since I have it, I'll give the new plugin a go. Everything comes in nice except that anything curved has had it's geometry hacked with a carving knife

Any ideas???
Thanks

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:04:19 GMT

The plugin won't work with r9 version of ArchiCAD, (they are working on a new version) but I see you are not there - so maybe the update will help you with the r8.1 ArchiCAD.

http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/download_updates_e.html

Mark

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Wokka — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 00:18:32 GMT

Thanks Mark,
Has anyone been successfull with this plugin or has it been a waste of time for Graphisoft? Everyone wanted it 6 months ago.
Cheers

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Dwight — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:57:36 GMT

None of these plug-ins are a universal or transparent solution to exporting ArchiCAD files.

Sometimes curves and other complex polygons just fail to be properly interpreted - usually Add-ons like Profiler make suspect elements.

ArchiCAD remains quite adept at picture-mapped objects - but none of the mapping data will transfer - it must be mapped as a new material - paintings on walls are a good example - easy in ArchiCAD, difficult otherwise. Much remapping of materials is still necessary.

With LightWorks, most ArchiCAD users should be satisfied - to go to Cinema means building a new material library - for Cinema - but delivers better results, especially in complex animations requiring hours of rendering, can be achieved.

For instance, our colleague Burginger is playing with realistic grass in Cinema and he says that it makes you just as mellow as the real thing and has no stems or seeds.

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 05:17:43 GMT

The tried and true method, OBJ file works and should be used instead at this time . Maxon says they are in final beta with the new plug-in - patience they say.

Grass Test Attached. C4D, the ultimate Turf Builder!

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

stefan — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 08:45:07 GMT

Never used the C4D plugin, but I've used *.3ds and *.obj and both carry over the mapping info from ArchiCAD.

I don't use ArchiCAD materials in C4D (or 3ds max) but having the mapping survive the conversion is a huge timesaver. Sure, it is easy to map a new picture in C4D when the model is like a box, but curved or non-orthogonal walls will have to be mapped by hand.

So having the mapping come over from ArchiCAD really saves time.

I usually stick with 3ds-files.

You can reapply smoothing as a tag in C4D to recalculate normals for the geometry (they come over through OBJ and not through 3DS-files). But I guess the picture shoows that the geometry is not detailled enough. I wonder if that is an option in the plugin?

You can increase the RESOL-settings in the appropriate GDL-objects. This is usually set rather low to not slow ArchiCAD down, but C4D can handle more of that.

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Wokka — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:31:13 GMT

Yea, I've used obj for the last 2 years with no problems of curves etc and I prefer the layer structure it gives me compared to 3ds. I just thought I'd give the plugin a go. It seems funny to release a plugin that just doesn't work. I've quered this in several different forums and I don't know anyone that uses it. It reminds me of Archicad R8 first release (AAAAAAAAGH)

Stefan: No option on the plugin for smoothing etc (only scale and layer settings which I tried) and as you can see the geometry is way too poor for smooth shading. The sphere were set to 36 in Archicad and therfore looked smooth in the native program.

Dwight: I have no problem reasigning meterials in C4D, the power of the materials is phenomenal. I'll certainly enjoy Lightworks when I make the move to R9 for my quick and sometimes final renderings (depends on the client and the $$$$ ).

Mark: Is your grass just a noise filter with SPD? Looks great. I'm about to use some for cobblestones up close but I'm also doing some manicured lawn, so I might give it go for that as well. I'm interested in seeing how it goes with radiosity........

Cheers guys, good to be back

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Eduardo Rolon — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 03:50:20 GMT

If it is not too much trouble....

How did you do the grass in C4D????

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Dwight — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 04:27:41 GMT

Wokka wrote:
Dwight: I have no problem reasigning meterials in C4D, the power of the materials is phenomenal. I'll certainly enjoy Lightworks when I make the move to R9 for my quick and sometimes final renderings (depends on the client and the $$$$ ).

Precisely - if time is irrelevant, we can cruise through all surfaces and make sure they are mapped and reassigned correctly. But one needs to rely on surfaces behaving as they do in ArchiCAD, and you will agree that this is not always the case....

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Wokka — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 05:09:39 GMT

Sure there are sometimes differences in the surfaces, but for me, 95% of my work comes out of C4D, so how they behave in Archicad isn't so important but how I can manipulte them in C4D is.
Time is of coarse relevant, but I completly ignore the materials in ArchiCad (as long as they are assigned correctly) and that gives me more time to spend in C4D.
If I start using Lightworks for 'medium quality' renderings, I'll have to approach this differently and make the materials work in AC and C4D.
Cheers

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:58:30 GMT

I want to sit down and write a full review, that will have to be later, but for now I share at least this much.

Looking at the tremendous high quality work at:

http://www.pacificommultimedia.com/architecture.html

Talking with them, they use Max,Viz and Vray and a team of artist- I appreciate the quality provided by those tools, but I feel a crossplatform solution can be found that does approximately the same effect. The 3D grass shown in their animations provided the main inspiration.

The Grass:

I have checked out:

Hair Dept: Free
http://www.maxon.net/pages/dyn_files/dyn_htx/htx/58/00058_00081.html

AND diTools - more about this later

http://www.remotion.de.vu/

Now, the grass in the previously submitted image was done with:

http://www.dpit2.de/

My motion test:

http://www.Burginger.com/DPInstantTree/Grass.mov

It is about the best solution I have come across as of today 12/3/04 - however I have received an email about something being currently developed. When I learn more I will forward the information ASAP.

Another note worth mentioning is:

Model all dimensioned items in ArchiCAD, set up your material structure in ArchiCAD - Layers/Materials - export as OBJ, covered by Michael Rensing in the C4D thread. But here is the Cooking with Gas solution for Materials: (Guys take out your wallet, Gals your purse) This is going to be worth every penny. *** In Beta to be released soon ***

http://www.dunako.com/

CHECK OUT MAT MANAGER!

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Eduardo Rolon — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:14:40 GMT

The link that
http://www.maxon.net/pages/dyn_files/dyn_htx/htx/58/00058_00081.html

refers to is down

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:46:08 GMT

O.K. today it looks like it is down.

This is the problem with free software, share-ware, etc. No guarantees.

When it is up, you might find that it does not work with Mac browsers. Maybe they are fixing that today. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

OSX plugin on a Windows only web site....

Mark

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Eduardo Rolon — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:49:58 GMT

Did try the windows option and No Go...

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 03:14:38 GMT

working now...

+pablo

Mac G5/C4D9/AC9

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Eduardo Rolon — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:22:32 GMT

Still trying with no luck... server cannot be found

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 17:36:19 GMT

The Advanced Render module for AC9 is capable of grass via SPD (SubPolygon Displacement). It is said to be much less render demanding than Hair Dept. for large areas. I got these bits from elsewhere on the net Googling around....

09-30-2004, 07:00 PM
SPD is really no more complicated than a bump map which doesn't just fake raised/lowered surface detail visually, but actually constructs the extra surface detail at rendertime from tiny polys. it does this by subdividing the object further, so if you take a 1x1 plane and apply SPD with a 4x setting to it (which is the default), you get a new poly density equivalent to having that 1x1 plane subdivided 4 times. you can see more clearly how it works if you go into render settings>effects and turn on the 'cel render' effect with edges turned on. it'll show you where the SPD polys are and how dense they get with each setting.

more useful stuff:

- the 0 - 100% slider in the SPD channel determines how round or spiky the SPD looks. make it 100, and you'll get something that looks like fur. at 20% you should see a much more subtle effects

- the SPD height determines how far the SPD go outwards from the surface, or inwards into the surface (negative setting)

- the 'round geometry' thing has the same effect as a hypernurbs object. so if you apply spiky SPD to a polycube with rounding on, it won't look like a spiky cube, but rather a spiky cube with hypernurbs-like rounding.

09-30-2004, 04:47 PM
make a plane set to 1x1
in the displacement channel add a layer shader
in the layer shader make any noise or combination of noise layers you want
on top of the noise layers make a gradient shader set to radial
set this to multiply and perhaps lighten the black to a dark grey
apply material to plane
nothing really noticable happens
now turn on SPD
set subdivision to 4
notice something happening now?
Increase subdivision to 8
now are you seeing the effect?
Try increasing the height value in the displacement channel.

Thats what you need to know for now, don't worry about the different image types and such those are for advanced uses and you shouldn't concern yourself with that yet.

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 17:50:25 GMT

Mark,

Pacificommultimedia.. ! What spellbinding work!! Even a french baguette hand cut!.. When it comes to good interior work no doubt best to contract out.. I'll stick to exteriors only. Wow..

What was the render time for that full lawn (cut the grass and cut your render time down??) Tried SPD?? I intend to do a comparison.. SPD versus Hair Dept..

Re: ArchiCad C4d R9 Plugin trouble

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 23:30:30 GMT

Rendertime not really a problem, C4D can cut through 1.5GB of polygon data within several minutes (4 or 5). It was the memory load that causes the major headache.

My machine is 2.5GB Memory and I could run out when creating a convincing lawn equal to 1/4 acre. If your goal is to recreate the White House Lawn, fill the banks with memory.

I am in no way an expert at any of this stuff, I approach it as an advanced learner. If I can do it within 3 hours the goal can be achieved by nearly anyone. Please pursue the sans plugin avenue you have found, we need to learn more from everyone. Thanks