topic Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad? in Visualization

Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 10:41:00 GMT

I used to use Autocad/Microstation and model and render in FormZ. Everybody here talks non stop about cinema4D. I am a new Archicad user and would like to know which render app i should use to achieve best results.
Thanks!

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:35:20 GMT

Hi, when i see your mesage i took my archicad, model this garage, export it in the lightscape and this is what i get in 30 minutes.

I have tested artlantis 4.5 it is fast but dont have radiosity and new artlantis 5 will have it and i think that artlantis 5 + piranesi is something best for archictect becouse u will get fine results in no time. It is not good solution when arcjhitect must spent days for one fine image.

Archilumos 1.51 for ac is something that i never use cos it depends on archicad material browser and finish it in archicad is the biggest pain of all.

CD4 is very fine program, and this program cooperate with archicad but u will have to spent some time to get familiar with this program, but results are the best.

So if u are architect who wants fine images there are two solutions for u. First is to get on program from above, spent some time to learn then and then produce images for u.
Second is to find somebody who allready knows this, pay him to do it for u.

This second is ok if u have good running buisnis and u want to get best results, no lose of time, etc.

I will stick with lightscape, and only program that i will use. I think that in the future artlantis will be best solution for us, architects.
Fast - good - results.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:46:27 GMT

one more from me.

archicad - lightscape - photoshop

I just love these white people

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 18:14:16 GMT

LIGHTSCAPE one of the true original radiosity programs. Here is a link to more Lightscape examples.

http://www.3dlinks.com/GalleryDisplay.cfm?softwareID=45

Where is the product page for Lightscape, price, demo, etc?

Mark Burginger

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:26:48 GMT

Hi Burginger,

Intresting thing about lightscape is that LS is dead for many years and my lightscape is from 1999 year. Autodesk buy that program then kill it becouse Ls was competition for 3ds, and all autodesk programs. LS is good becouse u have adaptive mash and it simply do the lighning. This program dont have special efects like new programs (volumetric lightning, etc) I love it becouse it is fast, easy, cheap, u can get it for i think 100 $ if u look at ebay. This program has IES suport and u can export lightscape solutions to 3dstudio and then render it there. Autodesk make a promise that new ver od their ver will have adaptive mesh but Lightscape is only program that have real adaptive mash.

If someone could buy this from autodesk and just imrove a little bit this program i m sure that this program would be one of the best.

So i m driving old retro car and i just love it

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:55:51 GMT

Yes, no doubt about it - Lightscape was king, however today there are other solutions that work just as well. It is hard to find copies of the program, they probably are not legal copies, support is not available. It is not available to Macintosh users, etc.

I feel it is more productive for new rendering artists to use a current program. Then hopefully sub groups can form under ArchiCAD-TALK for support among peers.

Use what ever you feel comfortable with then link up with other users on this discussion board and really advance your talents.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:49:55 GMT

lightscape was good.
I didnt think the learning curve was bad either., great results too.

Just dont try and use it with Win XP Pro.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:42:32 GMT

why doesnt it work with xp pro??

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

stefan — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:46:06 GMT

Integrated
Use ArchiCAD + the new LightWorks rendering engine
Alternative (will there be a new version for AC9?): AV_Works, which is the rendering of Art*lantis integrated into ArchiCAD.
+ you allready have it in ArchiCAD, no conversion
- you can only render the things you can model in ArchiCAD

Easy & fast
Art*lantis. Wait for version 5 if you want radiosity.
+ price, speed, ease-of-use
- rendering quality is limited

More involved
Cinema4D using the connection plugin, so the model is transferred automatically. This is a full new program, so you need to learn about it to get good results. That said, once you can work with it, the sky is the limit.
+ reasonable price
- a full new program to learn

If you do this fulltime
Any of the full 3D-animation software programs: Cinema4D (from $500), 3ds max (from $3500), VIZ (from $2000), Lightwave (from $1500) , Maya (from $2000), Softimage|XSI (from $495), ... and then you still have options on the rendering engine: integrated, plugins (VRay, Brazil, Mental Ray), external (Renderman)
+ power & quality, animation, modelling... everything is possible with much control
- price, learning curve, you need to convert your scenes

Freeware & you like programming
Radiance or POV-Ray or BMRT or Lightflow or Jafray or many, many other standalone rendering engines.
+ free & sometimes very good
- complexity, you need to convert your scenes

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 15:03:46 GMT

I don't understand Lightworks Render. I use FormZ as well as Archicad and they are both meant to use the Lightworks rendering engine. But the quality in FormZ is much better! Why is that?
Also, just out of curiosity - adding up the apps you are using you must have spent $10.000 plus on software.... how the hell can you afford that?
The 3D software market is very strange. I wish the integrated Archicad 9 rendering would be better. I think it is well below par, it compares to applications that were out 7 years ago. Why would a company do that???

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

stefan — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 15:13:43 GMT

patricprz wrote:
I don't understand Lightworks Render. I use FormZ as well as Archicad and they are both meant to use the Lightworks rendering engine. But the quality in FormZ is much better! Why is that?
Also, just out of curiosity - adding up the apps you are using you must have spent $10.000 plus on software.... how the hell can you afford that?
The 3D software market is very strange. I wish the integrated Archicad 9 rendering would be better. I think it is well below par, it compares to applications that were out 7 years ago. Why would a company do that???

It's actually about $7180...
ArchiCAD commercial -> $7000 (yes, it was that much)
3ds max 6 -> $150 (student version)
Cinema4D 6 CE -> free with a $15 magazine
Maya PLE -> free (I don't use it)
Softimage EXP -> free (I don't use it)
Art*lantis 4.0 -> free with a $15 magazine
And the others I don't use/have or are free... There are free demo-versions of most of these applications too.

The Lightworks engine inside ArchiCAD doesn't have the radiosity included.

It has it's limitations, but it's good enough for regular use. If you want something better, you can always add external software for rendering.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:49:49 GMT

How do you get cinema 4D free with a $15 magazine?

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 03:26:28 GMT

This was how.

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/news/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=18181&subsectionid=841&subsubsectionid=0

Mark

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 14:28:30 GMT

Art-lantis have radiosity?! It's incredible! But I heard it is testing now. Do somone know the date of sale AL 5.0?
& no radiosity effect was found in Light work + AC9. It's disappointed!

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Dwight — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 21:04:13 GMT

Hey, Mr Weird Avatar:

Many of us are on the Shakedown Train as authors and some of us are educators. The sad fact of human life span is that one can only get good at a solitary visualizing software, no matter what one "owns."

The issue with many softwares, as I have, is confusion - you might make a great material in one software and then lack it in another, but forget. Dang.

LightWorks is a little old style, especially since Graphisoft didn't implement the radiosity aspect, but it is capable of fine results with a little learning.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 18:04:00 GMT

IMHO, if you are an architect, you should go straight to Art*lantis.
It is not a perfect rendering package (far from it), although version 5 promises to be something else, but you can do some decent looking images and movies REAL fast.
As an example, a first design approach, on a small size project, can take me from 8 to 20 hours to model in ArchiCAD. Then, on Art*Lantis, with 20 to 30 minutes more, I can churn out some 3 to 6 images, with enough quality to impress my client. I am not aiming at high end renderings (although I have done a few, which are great practice to learn tricks).
And it is VERY fast to learn. If you have someone to tech you, half an hour is enough to learn the basics (50%).
I have tried in my time some heavy duty rendering programs (remember Vue De Sprit?), but they have such a steep learning curve, and are so difficult to master, you have to spend weeks learning them and then practice constantly so as not to forget the commands....it just is not worth for us architects.
Anyway, here is a pretty picture done with Art.lantis 4.5. Notice that the lack of radiosity or caustic or whatever is not noticeable, specialy if you aim is not to make a perfectly realistic image, but only to explain to your client what wiil your design look like.[/img]

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

fuzzytnth3 — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 19:56:43 GMT

I've just spent yesterday and today using AC 9 for the first time. I had to produce 2 images of our design montaged into existing site photos.

Previously I've used either ArchiCAD and Strata 3d or just gone straight to Strata to produce competition images.

As we are about to receive our upgrades to AC 9 and having seen AC 9 demo I was aware of how much faster and better the photorendering is in AC 9. Our AC reseller let us have a loan of his dongle so we could produce the images for this competition using AC 9.

I feel doing all the photorendering work in AC 9 is such an advantage now that I won't be bothering to use anything else for competition work. Up until this afternoon I had to make modifications to the model and due to the fact it was only taking 15 mins to create a render this wasn't a problem.

I will still use Strata for work that needs radiosity etc and obviously has more time allocated to it to produce an image of high quality. Compared to when I'm doing competitions which need a convincing image but doesn't need all the bells and whistles.

I found a couple of problems with AC 9. One of which is the alpha channel glitchhttp://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=4663 and the other was Lightworks misbehaving as far as I could tell with rendering textures on a random basis in a very strange way. I will post some images with some more info but for now I'm away home to catch up on some sleep as I've only had 4 hours in the last 36 hours

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:04:13 GMT

I have done my first visuals in Archicad and i think it is really all you need (Lightworks) for the everyday use. Choosing textures is a bit clumsy in my opinion - I like the FormZ setup for Materials much better, but i suppose i ll get used to it in AC. And if i really need a "special" image i ll use 3DSMax.
Thanks for the input.

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:29:45 GMT

Patricprz,

Try the tip (in this rendering forum) about placing the special LW sun and sky light objects in the scene, making the sun warm and the sky cool (perhaps), and turning off the sun and ambient (and turning the camera light down or off):

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=24646#24646
and subsequent posts that give workarounds to the questions that I raised ... but don't worry about that, just place the two lights and take a look.

Takes seconds to do... then re-render your scene. I think you will be most pleasantly surprised with the results of the softer shadows and more natural ambient.

Karl

Re: Which 3D Rendering Application with ArchiCad?

stefan — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:39:07 GMT

If you are fast, you can buy Vue D'Esprit 4 for only EURO 49 / $69

This is the download-only version, without objects & sample scenes...

www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue4esd.php
www.e-onsoftware.com/buy/vue4

And it is available for Mac OS too !