Improvements to Physically Based Rendering

[Illes Papp]

The Physically Based Rendering Experimental Feature is improved with the following new features:

1. Procedural Sky - The newly introduced Procedural Sky generates a sky dome with an accurately positioned Sun disc which affects not only the background but also the lighting of the scene.
2. Shadow Mapping - Shadow mapping produces much faster results than shadow volumes, with soft shadow edges.
3. Automatic Exposure Control and Bloom Effect - Exposure is automatically controlled, similar to real life cameras. High luminance regions generate a so called “blooming“ effect.
4. Improved Ambient Occlusion - Previously certain areas of 3D scenes introduced some artifacts, and with the improvements these are not appearing any more (available from Archicad 27 Update 2).

For more details, please read the following reference:
Visualization - Graphisoft Community

Looking forward to having your much appreciated feedbacks, questions and insights.

[Jim Allen]

All software development is based on cost/benefit analyses, when done 'properly'.

It would have been perfectly possible for GS to have employed a new graduate who could have had a cool idea and implemented it fairly quickly working more or less individually. Simple evolutionary enhancement, and something a bit prettier - what's not to like?

The difficulty comes when the simple thing 'grows legs' and you get scope creep because people ask for all sorts of other things based on it.

Anything which is easy to implement because the new code supports it should be easy. Tonemapping a physical sky is (or can be) easy - I've done it. Working out how to devise the interface in a simple intuitive way for end users is actually a lot more involved. I've done that too.

From what I know about 3d development, particularly with render engines, is that things like wire frame edges are possible but will take a bit more work.

If the display code implemented didn't have the feature because it purely displays shaded planes, adding it is going to be somewhat more complicated and time-consuming, so will require a lot more resource allocation.

As for saving png or jpg output - that's not part of the 3D styles methodology. Don't forget, we are not talking about rendering - it's a workflow enhancement not an output option. It would be pretty easy to create a means of capturing a saved view as a raster image, but that would need integrating into the core of how views are managed and organised. That's more complex.

It ought to be possible to get this display style used in the same way all the others are i.e. in sections, elevations etc..

It's much more complicated however because as far as I can tell the mode uses shaded planes and doesn't use edges, so you can't snap to elements.

So what I suspect started as a simple enhancement that would have been fairly quick to implement (relatively speaking) has the potential to become something a lot more involved and demanding in terms of resource time that would have to be balanced against the opportunity cost.

So my guess is that we'll get some enhancements to the feature that are quick and easy to implement, but that nothing more meaningful will happen for quite a while.

If GS is contemplating to moving to a different 3d engine, that's a major undertaking and unlocks all sorts of other benefits, but I suspect won't happen.

[rickharlan]

@Illes Papp I've tried this out, and I kind of hate it. But, now I can't find anything in Help to see how to turn it off.

[Jim Allen]

Not the most intuitive - here:

 

[Jim Allen]

There's a problem with this implementation in terms of surface colour rendering.

In the image below you can see how the Stucco - White Rough surface displays as you would expect.

The Paint Titanium White surface however absolutely doesn't. 

It's the same thing with some other surfaces. 

I'll try and create a test to pinpoint the issue.

[Edit: I thought I had seen an object which displayed an array of blocks with all the available surfaces. That wasn't the case - it was the building materials and modifying that GDL object to display surfaces is way more time than I can spend on this.]

[abdelaziz]

Hi, @strangeday 

I completely uninstalled the drivers from my computer using the DDU application and I reinstalled the 24.1.6 driver and it still does not work with my RX 6750 xt card. Can you tell me what the problem is?

if my scene is empty without any 3d element the old physical port works just undraw a wall in 3d or 2d and archicad bug

[SeaGeoff]

@Jim Allen I appreciate your experience and insights but must disagree with this comment:

---

@Jim Allen wrote:

As for saving png or jpg output - that's not part of the 3D styles methodology. Don't forget, we are not talking about rendering - it's a workflow enhancement not an output option.

The hardware accelerated 3D engine needs to work as both a modeling environment and a source view for drawings and image export when high quality renderings are not required. For myself, and most firms I work with, that constitutes the majority of our "rendering" needs. We just want to place 3D views as auto-update drawings on layouts, or export PNGs to drop into emails. Offering these options via a simple, built-in workflow is a basic requirement. Archicad is close to delivering this now, but as others have mentioned we are missing contours, DPI control, and some simple color and exposure adjustments. ideally the engine will be made available for 3D documents as well.

[strangeday]

Hello, I've made some other tests with a native AC28 file and I haven't encountered any problem, at this point I don't know where the problem could stay, I hope that someone at GS could get in touch with you to try to resolve the problem

[Jim Allen]

Actually I think you mean "You (or some people) would like the hardware accelerated 3D engine needs to work as both a modeling environment and a source view for drawings and image export..." 😉

No-one needs that functionality - it's purely a 'nice to have' isn't it?

It absolutely isn't a 'basic requirement' no matter how much you want it.

You can already screenshot and embed images in AC - so how important is this really? Arguably with the print screen button on Windows or Cmd-Shift 4 or 5 on Mac it's easier than letting AC deal with it.

In fact you probably want to tweak the image balance anyway, in which case AC isn't the tool for the job. 

You are confusing 3d models, vector images and raster images., and what you are advocating is a much, much larger task.

Adding these things into Archicad is completely possible, but it's a cost/benefit isn't it? What's the opportunity cost?

Every single software enhancement comes at a cost of what development could have done instead.

[abdelaziz]

Hi, @Jim Allen 

I completely agree with you, if there is an improvement in the Archicad visualization, it will have to be located in the 3D document, elevation and section and I am talking about a vector document, not a raster.

[Jim Allen]

But the physically-based display view is a raster document not a vector one. It's like creating a rendered elevation.

You can't mix raster and vector displays easily. Applications like Affinity Designer and Illustrator do it, but they work very differently.

It would be possible to superimpose a vector view over a raster one, but the vectors would probably have to be rasterised because vector views of 3d documents are live, and update with the source view. 

Updating a combined raster and vector view would be possible, but that's quite a bit of work.

As things currently stand, you can export hybrid and vector versions of a view and overlay and combine in an image editor to get results like this:

 

It's pretty neat and is simply this:

Overlaid with this, with 50% opacity in Affinity Photo:

You are not going to be able to get this kind of thing from AC natively with display styles without quite a bit of development effort - unless someone much more knowledgeable than me can do it with graphical overrides. 

But realistically - how often is anyone going to actually need this kind of image?