- last edited on by
Noemi Balogh
we are looking at upgrading to a new visualisation software for presentations of our mid-high end architectural projects
We currently use the latest Archicad and we are using Artlantis studio 4.1
but arent impressed by the latest offerings from artlantis 5 of the upcoming 6 as rendering times appear to be even longer in each subsequant version
We came across Lumion 3D and thought it looked like a good option for us.
http://lumion3d.com/#popup2/1/
Also had a look at Unity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXZ-xAa0UcI
We currently use artlantis 4.1 to produce Photorenders + Animations
as well as the VR object (not many programs allow the use of a VR)
however we could look at dropping that feature for breathtaking realistic movies.
Currently Artlantis is taking 4days(on a single high spec machine) to render a 1280x720 with Low Anti-Aliasing (ideally we like to use high but dont due to time constraints) and Normal Radiosity (also as opposed to high)
To produce a 1min 40sec single path movie animation
And up to 1hr to produce (15mins at best) a 4K Photorendered Perspective
3840x210 (200dpi) High-Antialiasing, Normal Radiosity
attached is the latest renders I have completed on our last project
to give you an idea on scale and complexity of our projects
Ideally we are wanting something that is more realistic in terms of lighting
and also good more realistic tress cars people & objects
but also something that takes a bit less time to render if possible.
Has anyone used Lumion in conjunction wtih Archicad that has any feedback about it like how long rendering takes? or any other preferred software?
Not to downplay on Artlantis or Twinmotion, which are excellent software in their own right, you do no need to know all the bells and whistles to get a quick render out of cinerender, nor do you need to render the whole image to see what you get.
To start with the preview, there is a preview window when you open the Photorender Settings dialogue. If you make this palette bigger, the image will get a bit bigger too. There is no live update, but if your render settings are reasonable, the preview is quick.
There is also the option to use marquee tool in 3D to render small sections to see how surfaces are behaving.
On to surfaces: ArchiCAD comes shipped with a lot of preset surfaces to add to your projects, that can also be easily adjusted by ussually swapping out a texture or changing some colours in the procedural shader settings. These have all been optimised for Cinerender and will look nice out of the box. A bunch of them will already be present in your template, the rest you can easily add by creating a new surface from catalogue.
As for render settings, I've posted some quick render settings that for me look like what I used to do in Artlantis 4, witch similar render times.
My ussual approach:
Pick the daylight physical fast preset (interior or exterior).
Pick a nicer sky from the presets (I like the midday one).
Make sure you enable 'use archicad sun' to keep your camera settings for sun active.
Now go in to the 'detailed settings' (don't worry, they're not scary!):
If you are using any lamps to light up bits of your model, make sure you tick the Lamps under Light Adjustments.
Go to Environment > Physical Sky > Clouds and turn off 'cast shadow'. It doesn't look good and takes time to render.
Go to Options >General Options and change these 3 settings:
Ray treshold to 0, this means that you get all reflections in your render and makes it look a lot better and more alive.
Ray depth and Reflection depth both to something more like 12. These control how may transparant surfaces are rendered (along with reflections on them). This is set way too low by default, resulting in missings bits of your model or alpha channel images (trees, leafs) looking off.
If you are doing interior render and find that there are a lot of spots on surfaces, go to Global Illumination and change the Preset to Interior High.
For exterior I am ussually happy with Exterior Preview settings there.
If you know your photography stuff, you can also go in to the Physical Renderer settings and adjust ISO values, shutter speed, f-stop to play with how much light is shown in your renders.
There are indeed, way more settings you can go in to, but if your approach is 'the artlantis way', this should get you going with cinerender.
P.S.
Twinmotion looks awesome though, but it's another software license to have
To start with the preview, there is a preview window when you open the Photorender Settings dialogue. If you make this palette bigger, the image will get a bit bigger too. There is no live update, but if your render settings are reasonable, the preview is quick.
There is also the option to use marquee tool in 3D to render small sections to see how surfaces are behaving.
On to surfaces: ArchiCAD comes shipped with a lot of preset surfaces to add to your projects, that can also be easily adjusted by ussually swapping out a texture or changing some colours in the procedural shader settings. These have all been optimised for Cinerender and will look nice out of the box. A bunch of them will already be present in your template, the rest you can easily add by creating a new surface from catalogue.
As for render settings, I've posted some quick render settings that for me look like what I used to do in Artlantis 4, witch similar render times.
My ussual approach:
Pick the daylight physical fast preset (interior or exterior).
Pick a nicer sky from the presets (I like the midday one).
Make sure you enable 'use archicad sun' to keep your camera settings for sun active.
Now go in to the 'detailed settings' (don't worry, they're not scary!):
If you are using any lamps to light up bits of your model, make sure you tick the Lamps under Light Adjustments.
Go to Environment > Physical Sky > Clouds and turn off 'cast shadow'. It doesn't look good and takes time to render.
Go to Options >General Options and change these 3 settings:
Ray treshold to 0, this means that you get all reflections in your render and makes it look a lot better and more alive.
Ray depth and Reflection depth both to something more like 12. These control how may transparant surfaces are rendered (along with reflections on them). This is set way too low by default, resulting in missings bits of your model or alpha channel images (trees, leafs) looking off.
If you are doing interior render and find that there are a lot of spots on surfaces, go to Global Illumination and change the Preset to Interior High.
For exterior I am ussually happy with Exterior Preview settings there.
If you know your photography stuff, you can also go in to the Physical Renderer settings and adjust ISO values, shutter speed, f-stop to play with how much light is shown in your renders.
There are indeed, way more settings you can go in to, but if your approach is 'the artlantis way', this should get you going with cinerender.
P.S.
Twinmotion looks awesome though, but it's another software license to have
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