Artlantis 4.5 Billboards (vs Piranesi Cutouts)

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thomas wrote:
I think you'll have to buy a Mac after all. I found this

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/billbobuilder/

program to build masked and cropped billboards for Artlantis 4.5.. The hitch is it's Mac-only!

which was moved to the tips forum where we can't talk about it...
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=529#529

The link is to one of the ugliest web pages I've ever seen (!) ... but it is wonderful that end-users can finally create their own billboards at a very reasonable cost. The example of a Jack A*ss being placed into the living room of an Artlantis tutorial is hopefully not an editorial comment on anything! 😉

Nope, probably won't get me to buy a Mac over this one, Thomas 😉 ... and now that you've introduced me to Piranesi and the cutouts there, I'll be using them instead - much more flexible, smarter and more powerful than Artlantis billboards.

Does anybody out there with Piranesi bother to use Artlantis billboards?

Karl

[MMontgomery]

If you have Piranesi available, I don't see a need for the Art*Lantis billboards, except for animations (at least I *think* billboards are usable in animations - haven't tried)

For still images, Piranesi does a terrific job of placing cutouts, and making cutouts is a breeze.

To make a cutout for Piranesi, take an image and black out everything you dont want to show in the cutout. Then save it out as a .BMP. (other formats may work, I just use this one)

Open your project in Piranesi, grab the Montage tool and browse to the image you just created.

Voila! It automatically masks out the black areas and shows only what you wanted to place in the scene. It'll even throw a matching shadow down if you desire.

[Thomas Holm]

As I've been promoting Piranesi for a while here, I'm not arguing for Artlantis billboards being better. But i thought this utility might a way to impove them. I haven't tried it. And the website is so ugly (I agree with Karl), and despite the developer is Mac-based, the site doesn't work in Safari, which makes me suspicious - perhaps this utility is full of bugs and will screw up your mac?

However, in the same post
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=529#529
I also mentioned a source of free billboards. Some look quite good. And there are lots. Those might be useful in any program - good tree images are always useful, for example. I'd say it's easy to download and convert them to Piranesi cutouts, if you like.

The moderator moved the post to the tips section a bit early. But he's promised not to do that again. 😉
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=559#559

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thomas wrote:
However, in the same post
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=529#529
I also mentioned a source of free billboards. Some look quite good. And there are lots. Those might be useful in any program - good tree images are always useful, for example. I'd say it's easy to download and convert them to Piranesi cutouts, if you like.

Thanks once again, Thomas. I was a bit too quick and didn't check out the other link. I downloaded one (a tree) to verify that it works perfectly (and is nicely masked). Will have to grab the others.

Thanks for finding this resouce!

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

Karl wrote:
Does anybody out there with Piranesi bother to use Artlantis billboards?

I found that the answer is "no", you do not want to use Artlantis billboards if you will be exporting to Piranesi:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=319#319

Thought I'd better include the cross-link above for the record. I'm finding Piranesi cutouts way too easy and flexible in comparison anyway.

Karl

[Anonymous]

I have downloaded the billboards and created a subfolder under /art4.5/shaders called 'extra images' and unzipped each file into this folder. But it will not show up in Artlantis. I have shut down and restarted still no joy. Was there a step i missed?

I would like to use the extra billboards because the Artlantis ones are very average. Lots of white around the edges. Piranesi does a much better job but is another step in the chain!

[Anonymous]

as the maker of the "billbobuilder" I would like to thank you for encouraging me in Web design ! No I'm joking, .. I must recognize that I have hardly seen
such a ugly site as the one I did myself !!
To tell you the truth, I had no time and no knowledge about it, but wanted to let my program be shown. So I just did a layout in InDesign, a little trashy though, and saved it as HTML. What the hell it became !!!
OK I have no excuse, but I was still a little proud to dare it.
I made now a more neutral site, and that is much easier actually to do a correct site than an ugly one. I almost miss the old one !
About the donkey in the living room, you can find a little explaination on the site.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/billbobuilder/

About the program: don't be afraid of trying it, it will not mess up your machine. Then see if you like it and find it usefull. I won't say it is perfect and without bugs, but I think it is usefull.

Olivier

[Karl Ottenstein]

genghis wrote:
I made now a more neutral site, and that is much easier actually to do a correct site than an ugly one. I almost miss the old one !

Very nice site now, Olivier, and great to see a Windows version as well as Mac now. Congratulations! 😉

About the donkey in the living room, you can find a little explaination on the site.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/billbobuilder/

Karl

[Anonymous]

Living in a Southern country, I hate to see renderings with blond people.
So I started to collect images of persons in the street, at parties (specially weddings, where they dress up real nice).
So now I have a regional database of bb, which I recommend to anyone who does renderings.
I have been doing them by hand, but am willing to give this bimbobuilder...sorry, bilbobuilder (why not frodobuilder?) a shot.
I think it is nice of genghis to develop and provide this program.
Good work olivier.