methy wrote:
Removing an artlantis texture from a wall - ... i have whitewash walls from archicad and applied a brickwork pattern, i now want to remove the brickwork and return it to the whitewash it was previously however i have made many changes since so undo is not an option.
Open the 'drawer' if it isn't - so you can understand what is happening with each surface. Artlantis shaders are in blue on the same line as the surface; textures (typically from AC, but you can add as many as you want and overlay them with different translucencies) appear in green below that.
ArchiCAD materials come in as applied textures - not shaders. So, when you drag an Artlantis shader onto a surface, it is not replacing the AC material. To see the Artlantis shader, you have to make the AC texture transparent. So, to get the AC material back, just make it 100% opaque. AC's Whitewash material from is just a color, so applying a shader replaces that color. No way to just bring it back that I know of.
The best bet could be to save a "Postcard" of your scene before you start changing things (e.g., the brick). You can then drag-and-drop elements from the postcard back into your scene. Find a whitewash surface and drag/drop it back to where you want whitewash.
You can delete any texture by selecting it in the 'drawer' and either pressing the Delete key, or right-clicking and 'delete'.
Again, you can apply as many textures as you want to a surface, but only one shader. So, you can apply multiple grass textures, for example, and repeat them horizontally and vertically and then change their transparency so that you blend them; scale individually, add a 'mix' color to any or all of them and create the effect you want. As an example, I might have a site mesh with a color satellite image applied to it from Google Earth in ArchiCAD. In Artlantis, I might apply a grass shader to the mesh and change the Google Earth texture transparency (from the fully opaque default) so that it makes the grass just suggestive. (That's all off topic, but related to this 'delete' business since any texture can be individually deleted.)
(A non-repeated texture is a motif - scale and move onto the surface where you'd like it.)
AC Materials - is there a way to eyedropper materials on other objects and apply them to other objects in artlantis?
No eye dropper, but you can option-drag (Mac) / alt-drag (Win) a texture (=AC material) in the drawer from one surface to another. You'll see a "+" sign to tell you that you're making a copy.
Or are there shader thumbnails like there is for the artlantis shaders
for archicad materials?
No, because AC materials are really just textures - they aren't shaders. But, you can create your own shaders from the Tools menu (Create Shader From...) - save these in your own folder structure. Add the root of that folder once to the Library (via the + button) - any other created shaders in your folder(s) will show up immediately for drag and drop use.
The easiest way, though, to have AC-equivalents (where you don't have separate bump, normal, etc images) - is to create postcards. Create a model that has slabs/walls or whatever with the materials you'd like, open in Artlantis and save as a Postcard. You know have a drag and droppable palette to use those textures/colors in your scene.
Heliodon - what is the best way to hide the black region below the sky around my house? to i pad it out with trees? or extend some ground out hundreds of meteres towards the horizon in archicad prior?
I have tried having the infinite ground switched on and off doesnt seem to make much difference, is there a way to apply a colour or texture to this 'ground' ?
Yes, you want to turn on the infinite ground (usually) - cmd-I/ctrl-I - but be sure to set the altitude properly so that it matches or is below your model ground. The 'usually' is because if you have part os the model below your ground surface and set the infinite ground to match your own model ground, then your subterranean model elements will be hidden by the infinite ground. In those cases, one option is to model the ground in AC as a huge circular slab.
Yes, you can drag and drop any shader onto the infinite ground.
One way of dealing with the horizon is a lot of trees. If they're close to the model, not many trees and hot a huge polygon penalty. Not reasonable to model a whole distant forest. Instead, in that case, you can create a 'cyclorama' - a round wall around your model in AC that you will apply a 360 degree panorama to in Artlantis. Dwight has various (very) old posts about this using ArchiCAD itself.
If you are just trying to make the horizon go away (after adding the infinite ground), look at the 'fog' options - making a low, distant fog of either sky or grass color blurs the transition between ground and sky.
is it easier to use an hdri background instead?
In some ways, yes. Unlike a cyclorama with a 360 degree panorama image, you won't be able to do animations with a background image - the image won't move. Good for static images though. Does not have to be HDRI - any image will do. You'll still have the ground-to image transition, and fog is sometimes useful there (but can look odd with an image and without plants/etc filling in).
HDRI image can be used as an alternate lighting source, and the results are often quite good. See the Artlantis forums.
We have noticed that any materials with a texture applied in archicad
cannot be changed once you bring into artlantis
Ie i cant change stone to a plain plaster finish.
Sure you can - just drag an Artlantis plaster shader onto the surface and the stone will disappear unless you make the plaster transparent. You can't change the stone to plaster as a texture though in the same way - you'd have to drag the plaster texture image (from the AC library or elsewhere) onto the surface, check the boxes to repeat horizontally and vertically, scale it, etc. Optionally delete the old stone texture. It would still be there, but underneath - so you can optionally have both and turn the plaster 100% transparent to see the stone, and 100% opaque to see only plaster as you experiment.
Also im guessing it is better to use artlantis textures to all surfaces instead of relying on archicad materials and textures
Yes, in most cases this is true. The ArchiCAD textures are quite low quality compared to those that are associated with Artlantis shaders and the available (additional cost) Artlantis libraries such as the Dosch shaders.
Other more experienced Artlantis users will hopefully chime in. But, I also encourage you to spend time on the Artlantis forums. Not much about your questions is really related to the ArchiCAD-Artlantis workflow, but more with getting the most out of Artlantis. (Consider purchasing Dwight's book, too, if you haven't. Available as PDF it is an excellent reference. As you've discovered, no doubt, the Arltantis "Help" isn't all that helpful.)
Two essential things to learn also: (1) saving from AC using a 'reference' file (your last Artlantis session is typically the reference) so that your modified model goes into Artlantis with all of your prior Artlantis work intact, and (2) the polygon selection tool (arrow button in the Shader drawer - and associated drop-down for how to select surfaces / masses) to let you apply a unique shader to surfaces that ArchICAD exported as associated with a single material.
Cheers,
Karl
[Edited: various corrections]
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier • macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Noemi Balogh
