An old adage

[fuzzytnth3]

They used to say when taking photos "Always have the sun at your bacK" and so it would seem when using ArchiCAD's Lightworks rendering engine.

What I have found while trying to work on quite a large model is that the camera light is contradicting the shadows from the "real" sun position.
So you would think the solution would be to just switch off the camera light. Trouble is that the resulting image is dull as ditch water.

I have tried this on the example house project that comes with AC9 and it doesn't exhibit this problem nearly as much. As far as I can tell it does seem to be related to size/length of the project. Small good big bad.

Below I will post some of the resulting images I have made.

[fuzzytnth3]

Here is what I'm getting with a Sun and Sky objects using Dwight's setting.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I know that you are trying to get lightworks to work but there is an OS X only program that does radiosity and uses HDRI maps besides being a modeler. It is fast and relatively easy, lets you render in the background multiple images and it's price is only $80.00US. You can use it in demo mode and you can save the rendered image but it will not let you save the file. I am working with it right now to find it's limits.

http://homepage.mac.com/mwengenm/Cheetah3D/

[fuzzytnth3]

Nah ha!!! None of the above worked and then I remembered that this job was started a few months back when we were still using AC7. So I did a new and reset and merged the old file in and now the Sky and Sun object are working!

The greased pig (to quote Dwight) is maybe tameable after all

[fuzzytnth3]

ejrolon wrote:
I know that you are trying to get lightworks to work but there is an OS X only program that does radiosity and uses HDRI maps besides being a modeler. It is fast and relatively easy, lets you render in the background multiple images and it's price is only $80.00US.
http://homepage.mac.com/mwengenm/Cheetah3D/

I will check it out but to be honest what I like about using Lightworks in ArchiCAD is that it is in ArchiCAD! The boss here uses cad images like you would pencil doodles or sketches. Great for him hell for us that have to create 10 versions of the same building

I bet you on Monday everything I've done to day will be in the bin and I will be modelling completely diferrent buildings for this job. So the idea of having to import all the materials get their settings the way I want them in a second app is just to much of a pain.

For lovely radiosity renderings I use Strata 3d CX but for most jobs I don't get to use it as it can take to long to render.

Thanks for the heads up though

I've attached the post merged rendering. Lots to do fix the sky, the trees, the glass and replace all the peeps with photoshop jobs

[fuzzytnth3]

Thought I would post the finished version.

The image is made up of two renderings one with the glass very transparent the other reflecting like a mirror. With the two renderings on separate layers in Photoshop with the glass areas set to "multiply" and by using the layer opacity slider I had instant feedback on what the finished glass would look like.

The Office interior was rendered separately and then a layer mask added to the windows with a gradient fill to show some of the ceiling reflected on the glass but not the rest of the office space as I didn't have time to do furniture layouts.

[Dwight]

With all due respect, this is a great way to "fake" what your boss HOPES the glass will look like.

Just like every great illustrator would do.

While the motto of my first book was "Just a bunch of dots," the truth I discovered on this one is "It's all fake!"

Sad when an old man gets cynical.

[fuzzytnth3]

What I'm finding is that the more realistic and accurate I try to get an image the more problems I hit with the boss and so I have to fake it to keep him happy.

In the example above the mullions were originally a realistic size of 50x150mm. The boss wanted them more "slender" the eventual size he liked was 20x20mm! Not exactly realistic but he is now happy.

This leads onto the problem of realistic lighting again in the example above, I had gone down the route of thinking like a photo where outside would be brighter than inside. The bosses reaction to the image "the office space is to dark"

I did an office interior a while back using Strata CX the interior hadn't been built and my visual was to show what it would look. The funny thing was the boss said the ceiling was to dark in my image and so I had to fake in lots of lights to brighten up the ceiling. When the office interior was built we got some professional photos done which the boss didn't like because the ceiling was to dark!

[Dwight]

In our twelve step program ArchiCAD Anonymous, the anonymite needs to acknowledge that ArchiCAD has made his life unmanageable.

Then we give him the twelve punches.

With regard to your boss: Let me do the holding.

Does he have similar problems understanding gravity?

Recently I was involved in a transit station where a high aluminum curtain wall needed to be reinforced with steel sections inserted up into the mullions because the system specified aluminum section was all we could use. Still too shakey for me. Somebody's boss.

[fuzzytnth3]

Dwight wrote:
Does he have similar problems understanding gravity?

It would seem so

A colleague here thinks that the boss knows something we don't as there appears to be a wonder material that can span 20 metres while carrying ten storeys of building, its completely fire resistant, looks like glass or not and its only 2mm thick.

Trouble is our boss keeps designing buildings using it

[Dwight]

I know it well: phlogiston!
Many of Canada's economic policies use it as foundation material.