Rendering Programs

[Anonymous]

Hello. I am new to this forum, and have a question. I have been using ArchiCad since June of 07, and with no training have pretty much become fluent in it. My problem is that my Boss has decided we need to do Photo Rendering. I have played with the Lightworks, but can not seem to get the lighting right. Arrrrrgh. Does anyone have any suggestions on:

a.) Training
b.) Other rendering programs / training.

I am positive my boss would send me to a seminar, but which program do you all think s best? Thank you.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Jeff wrote:
In looking around the office today I found a copy of ArtLantis v. 4.5, and am playing with it right now. It does seem easy enough, but I have no training material, so it will be slow going at first. I tried saving one of my buildings as an .atl file, but it would not open in artlantis so I saved it as .3ds and it opened but was very dark. Any suggestions on training materials? By the way, thanks for all the feed back.

Yikes. Artlantis 4.0 and 4.5 have almost no relation to Artlantis R (static images only) or Artlantis Studio (images, vr, animations). Notice the copyright date on the splash screen or box? 2002. Dark ages stuff with an interface that only a mother could love.

Download the free trial of Studio instead and try it.
http://www.artlantis.com/download/demo/
There are training videos on the Artlantis/Abvent web site as well, and a book is now available too.
"R" videos for basic stuff related to fixed imagery:
http://www.artlantis.com/community/tutorials/
"Studio" videos for VR, animation, etc:
http://www.artlantis.com/community/tutorials_Studio/

Additional high-res shader samples:
http://www.artlantis.com/download/medias/

Book:
http://www.cadgarage.com/arrstmibo.html
(Has anyone seen a copy to know if it's any good?...and up-to-date?)

The export from ArchiCAD to atl works with R and Studio. Not just the interface, but everything about the rendering engine is new compared to 4.5 and earlier.

Studio is around $900 street:
http://www.cadgarage.com/arst.html
including free upgrade to Artlantis Studio 2.0 'soon'. There was an upgrade price from 4.5 the finally ended a few months ago. 😞

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the feedback. I printed off Karl's last post and gave it to my boss. Hope Hope.....

[Anonymous]

Karl is generally right, but I don't think that ArtLantis 4.5 is as bad as he describes. It was after all for many years the preferred rendering solution for many ArchiCad users, as the present releases were so long in coming. Of course the new "radiosity" features have made the lighting much easier to set up in comparison. The old interface was weird, loosely based on very old Mac conventions, I think, but still it was quite usable. And it had better documentation than R and Studio.

Anssi

[Thomas Holm]

Anssi wrote:
Karl is generally right, but I don't think that ArtLantis 4.5 is as bad as he describes. It was after all for many years the preferred rendering solution for many ArchiCad users, as the present releases were so long in coming. Of course the new "radiosity" features have made the lighting much easier to set up in comparison. The old interface was weird, loosely based on very old Mac conventions, I think, but still it was quite usable. And it had better documentation than R and Studio.

It's true that Artlantis 4.x was better than R and Studio regarding documentation. Something is better than nothing! The old interface was mostly based on Abvent's own old conventions, from programs like MacSpace, Space Edit, and Zoom. It was good for it's time, but not anymore. "Was" is the word that counts!

Karl is right, as always, and spot-on today as well. If you don't want to invest in an additional program today, use Archicad's built-in Lightworks. Just buy Dwight's book on how to use it. You'll get much better results than Artlantis 4.x was ever capable of, despite that LW in AC also lacks radiosity.

If you want good and fast results without a steep learning curve, buy Artlantis R for still images, or Studio if you want animation capabilities as well. It renders extremely fast, its radiosity works and gives life-like results without the need to tweak lighting as much as you have to do in Lightworks in Archicad. And it's animation is also very easy to use.

Despite that it lacks a written manual from Abvent, the demos and tutorials are good and cover most issues. And there is a lot of user tips and docs in Abvent's forums, as well as here.

Karl wrote:
Book: http://www.cadgarage.com/arrstmibo.html
(Has anyone seen a copy to know if it's any good?...and up-to-date?)

If you need a written manual, buy this book. I've got it. It's not extremely deep, but is what it's called! It covers the essentials of the program's commands and options. Invaluable if you want to look something up and don't have access to the video tutorials.

[Anonymous]

Despite that it lacks a written manual from Abvent, the demos and tutorials are good and cover most issues. And there is a lot of user tips and docs in Abvent's forums, as well as here.

Right but everybody forgets that the help function is written as a manual and contains ALL aspects on how to use ArtLantis.

My 2 cts

Sjaak

[Anonymous]

Sjaak wrote:
Right but everybody forgets that the help function is written as a manual and contains ALL aspects on how to use ArtLantis.
Sjaak

Not quite. I am not at the moment at an ArtLantis machine so I could give concrete examples, but I found the version 1 R help very lacking in explaining the fundamentals, in comparison to the v. 4.5 manual. It also has no images to illustrate what result you should expect from using the controls. Many topics are limited to a tooltip-like explanation of type "use the radiosity button to turn on radiosity"(example of my own invention)

Sjaak, it is great that the ATL forum has got a moderator, and that it is you! I have learnt a lot from your posts.

Anssi

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the kind words Anssi. I will do my best to serve the ArtLantis community.
That is why I joined this forum. I will also answer questions here, whenever it is in my power.

I do not totally agree with your remarks. Yes the help file doesn't tell it all. Isn't that what manuals are about? The help function in R, Studo and Version 2 handle every button, with illustrations. I never had a manual for software in my hands that tought me how to get a 'pro' in using it. So every time this discussion comes up I am surprised by it? Why does the ArtLantis community expect this from Abvent? I do not know any software publisher writing down a full course in a manual.

On the other hand. Abvent is open for the sounds in the community. Ask Dwight...... And they asked me to help the users in the forum.

My 2 cts

Sjaak

P.S. Good to see some familiar names here, doesn't make me feel like a complete stranger 😉

[Anonymous]

I hope this question is not too broad, but how does Artlantis compare to Maxwell as a rendering engine for Archicad 11?
I have been using Maxwell 1.6 for a while and it does a better job than LW in Archicad, I don't mind the time it takes to render . . . but the noise and the extra work to remove it is very annoying. Artlantis looks like it generates a high quality render very quickly.
The galleries on both web sites show quite a differnce in realism (in Maxwells favour) but the only way to compare is to render the same model with both engines.
Any ideas?

[Dwight]

Maxwell is exciting because of its finesse for which one pays an enormous cost in time - if you are an artist, who cares about time?

You'd use Artlantis when you really needed to get something done, like render an entire city block's worth of towers, townhouses and 3D entourage as 4000x6000 pixel renderings, expecting to get all the elevations, sections and a dozen perspectives completed overnight driven by just one machine. I have the proof.

If Bruce Springsteen was to write a song about software along the lines of his raunchy ballad "Red Headed Woman" it would be about Artlantis.

[Anonymous]

I don't mind the time it takes as I do mainly exterior renderings with plenty of light.
I can honestly say that I cannot produce 'art' even if I had a month of Sundays, but I'm confident that I have the right equipment and I want to spend time learning to use it properly (I'm after photorealism, like everyone else) rather than having to learn another program.