New render Add On

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am new in the archicad developer community. I am trying to do a new render add on for archicad 9.0. I just downloaded the API 5 minutes ago. I see that there is a render example here can some one tell me a brief introduction, i am totally new with Archicad. I see that there are some extensions such us gms, lwd, apx, etc. What is the different between all these formats? Is any way to create the project under VC7?

Thanks a lot
Vis lat!

Ignacio

[stefan]

endder wrote:
Hi all,

I am new in the archicad developer community. I am trying to do a new render add on for archicad 9.0. I just downloaded the API 5 minutes ago. I see that there is a render example here can some one tell me a brief introduction, i am totally new with Archicad. I see that there are some extensions such us gms, lwd, apx, etc. What is the different between all these formats? Is any way to create the project under VC7?

Thanks a lot
Vis lat!

Ignacio

Welcome.

VC++7 (= 2002) is not possible. You need VC++ 7.1 (= 2003).

There is a render plugin devkit, but I found it allready hard to get started with the regular devkit.

I was writing a Radiance plugin, but I simply export the 3d-model and render it outside of ArchiCAD (but launched from within ArchiCAD).

[Anonymous]

Ignacio,

A new render add on is a very good news to us. ArchiCAD has a deficiency of options and I´m sure if you have a good product you will be successul. Good luck!

You are from Spain, are you close to Next Limit?

[Anonymous]

Hi Ricardo, Stefan.

Thanks for the reaply.

Yes I work for Next Limit Technologies. We are starting with the porting of Maxwell render to archicad.

Stefan I use VC7.1 2003 no problem with this. Could you tell me wich is the way to create the VC7 .sln file or where to download this devKit that you say in the post?

Thanks a lot
Ignacio

[stefan]

You have to download the DevKit first.
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/developer/

And you have to register to receive a unique developer ID.

With this, you can enable a plugin so it is recognised as a valid plugin. Otherwise it will only work with the demo version of ArchiCAD.

The Devkit on Windows installs an ArchiCAD Add-on wizard, which should be compileable.

The devkit contains a large set of examples, which show different features.

You might take a look at the Rendering Developer Kit, though. This is maybe more directly usable to enable the maxwell export.

What I did to support Radiance (and this is a simple direct conversion, by an architect and not a trained programmer) is simply step through the 3D geometry and export out the triangles into text files.

I guess this approach could work for Maxwell too, but it isn't as integrated as a real rendering plugin.

I am able to export:
sun position (time, date)
camera viewpoint
material list with basic color info
triangulated geometry, with reference to the used materials, but without texture mapping nor smoothing information.

I'm not a real pro, but if there is something that I allready found out, I could share it.

--- Although a NFR-version of maxwell will be accepted too 😉

[Anonymous]

Hi This is Ignacio from Next Limit again.

I would like to contact with the Archicad developer comunity in Hungary to see if there is any Archicad SDK expert who could help me with the new render add on, or even take the whole project. If some one knows about this, please contact me.

Ignacio

[Anonymous]

To Stefan!

What example of the DevKit did you modifiy?

Is it possible to get smoothed normals out of ArchiCad?

[stefan]

chrispy wrote:
To Stefan!

What example of the DevKit did you modifiy?

Is it possible to get smoothed normals out of ArchiCad?

I started from the 3D_Test example. There you can see how to "dump" data read from the 3D model.

I had a hard time to get through it, so I wish you all the luck 😉

I've not (yet?) extracted smoothing and textures. I've dumped the triangulated meshes, though, if that is any help...

[Anonymous]

endder wrote:
I would like to contact with the Archicad developer comunity in Hungary to see if there is any Archicad SDK expert who could help me with the new render add on, or even take the whole project. If some one knows about this, please contact me.
Ignacio

I can offer help with rendering add-ons for ArchiCAD as well as potentially take over the project (if you are interested...). I am not in Hungary but I do have a pretty good knowledge of ArchiCAD API.

Pavol

[stefan]

Maybe just to add something:

I checked out the Rendering DevKit documentation, but it lacks examples! I am interested in checking it out, but it would be easier with a simple example instead of guessing...

And can the Rendering Devkit functions be called from the regular DevKit? Since some of the features are more directly usable from it (e.g. texture mapping coordinates).