Dull Materials

[Lachlan Green]

I'm trying to work out all the bits and pieces of ArchiCAD to try and convice the boss to switch over to it from VectorWorks. However I've hit another snag with the elevation/section tool.

When the 'shade with own material colour' is selected the elevation, the elevation becomes nice and pretty as desired. However all of the material colours are extremely dull and completely off from what they look like in Element Attributes - Materials window. And when the sun shadow is turned on it gets even worse.

For example, a material with surface and emission colour set to pure white, and ambient and diffuse set to 100%, looks pure white all over in the Materials window. However, in a section or elevation it comes out as a mid to light grey.

How can I get these materials to come out brighter and more like the colour I set them?

[Anonymous]

I can't see any way around the dull colours, but would like to hear from someone who has a solution.

The colour of a material in shaded elevations is derived from it's Internal Engine - Surface Colour (in Exposure to light tab in material settings). The materials shaded colour appears to be related to their angle to the sun. If you want shadows you need your sun at an angle; if you want bright surfaces you need your sun perpendicular to walls etc (and then you don't get shadows).

I tried some experiments with More Sun settings in 3D Projection settings with different ambient and contribution to ambient levels, none of which seem to have an effect on the shaded elevations.

[Anonymous]

The shaded elevations are not intended (AFAIK) to provide high quality, presentation grade renderings. They are only to add some depth and color to the sections and elevations. As such I think the function is a bit limited in its usefulness.

One solution would be to tweak the internal engine settings to get the best results in the elevations. Probably using mostly light colors. The sun angle is also important. I haven't tried it much myself but from what I've seen it seems possible to get it to work well enough to make presentable drawings.

To make better rendered elevations use the 3D window and render using Lightworks. The material settings can be entirely different from the internal engine so you can adjust for the desired effect. Keep in mind that tweaking the material settings this way will involve quite a bit of trial and error so it could take a bit of time to get what you want. Once you do, be sure to save the material attributes for reuse and possibly as a company standard.

Other possibilities are overlaid renderings assembled and tweaked in Photoshop, or using Artlantis and/or Piranesi, or printing and watercoloring.

[Anonymous]

Our firm uses Piranesi. They selected a look they liked as far as the settings on what the "painting" would consistently look like and ran with that. Came up with a company "style" to call our own.

I think they rendering guy here takes an extra 2 hours to convert and assign and no one has complained about the process yet. So far everyone is pleased....which is a feat

[Lachlan Green]

Thanks for all of the replies, however as we are small business, 2 people, buying another program isn't really a good option, and I'm not too sure how to get the elevations from the 3D window.

I did find a solution tho, which was staring me right in the face the whole time... why does that always happen. Instead of selecting 'use material colour - shaded' I needed to select 'use material colour - non shaded'.

Well another step closer to getting the boss to let me use ArchiCAD

[Link]

It's quite easy really:

The Shaded method will use the Sun's settings to determine the shade (brightness/dullness) of the materials in the Elevation.

The Non-Shaded method will use the exact colors as per the Material's Surface Color, disregarding any sun settings.

Having said that you can use the Shaded method with a Sun Azimuth of 0 degrees to make the colors appear at full strength too.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Link wrote:
Having said that you can use the Shaded method with a Sun Azimuth of 0 degrees to make the colors appear at full strength too.

...but doesn't that project your shadow on the elevation? 😉

[Anonymous]

LGreen wrote:
Thanks for all of the replies, however as we are small business, 2 people, buying another program isn't really a good option, and I'm not too sure how to get the elevations from the 3D window.

I did find a solution tho, which was staring me right in the face the whole time... why does that always happen. Instead of selecting 'use material colour - shaded' I needed to select 'use material colour - non shaded'.

Well another step closer to getting the boss to let me use ArchiCAD

that's what i do too for technical drawings (which is what elevations are at the end of the day) but with a bit of colour to give them some definition. I also have the sun shadows on, so the depth is shown with the shadow but the material colour is 'flat'. These are then used in conjunction with 3D renderings to give a better idea of the building. HTH

[Mats_Knutsson]

Is this what you're looking for?

Fill uncut surfaces with own material color non shaded AND select custom shadow (doesn't work with shadow generated with system sun).

/Mats

[Anonymous]

xristina wrote:
that's what i do too for technical drawings (which is what elevations are at the end of the day) but with a bit of colour to give them some definition. I also have the sun shadows on, so the depth is shown with the shadow but the material colour is 'flat'. These are then used in conjunction with 3D renderings to give a better idea of the building. HTH

A hybrid option is to use the material colors-non shaded, but turn the elevation shadows transparent.