CORONA render add-on for ARCHICAD in the making...

[Anonymous]

Hello to the ARCHICAD Community! New to this forum but an old-timer AC user, since v. 6.5...

It was on last month's CHAOSGROUP totalCHAOS event that an announcement was made by Renderlegion representative Mr Adam Hotovy that they are already working on a CORONA plug-in(add-on) for ARCHICAD.

You may forward to 50:50 in the video on ChaosGroupTV youtube channel. It is called: Total Chaos 2018 — Opening keynote and below is the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd5JYd69lBU

As you watch, take a look at what is happening on the video display wall in the back.

You'll probably notice the CORONA guys wanted some feedback but I am more than sure that they didn't get it on this venue as totalCHAOS is for CG dev's and CG artists. So making CAD/BIM announcements on CG events is a good idea but stands zero to no chances to catch up.

I think it would be massively great if the ARCHICAD Community and/or GRAPHISOFT provide some meaningful and useful feedback that could boost up this CORONA project.

A top performance BIM + a top performance render engine sounds like dynamite to me.

So, I'd repeat Mr Hotovy's question 'What do you think?'

[Mats_Knutsson]

Bricklyne wrote:
Interior renders for a small unit in the same project....
...
...

very high key but I really like the middle one. WIll do a kitchen render when I'm done with the design (it's my own kitchen I'm designing so I have some trouble with the designer...hahaha)

[Anonymous]

Bricklyne wrote:
There's one other project (not previously posted) where I was also able to test the Corona-AC plugin and once again do another side-to-side comparison with the 3ds Max version:-
....
.....

how do i get to make the glass reflect

[Bricklyne Clarence]

femi5foot wrote:

how do i get to make the glass reflect

Under the Corona Material (Surface) Settings, in the Reflection setting, make sure the Color is white, the Level is anywhere between 0.5 to 1.0, the Glossiness is 1.00 and the Fresnel IOR (<-most important) is between 1.5-3.0 (you decide how reflective you want it to be by adjusting that).

And then you can adjust the Refraction values to adjust how much you can see through the glass, so values of Level - 0.75, Color - White (or light greenish-white) and Glossiness of 1.0 and IOR value of 1.52 (the real world Refractive index of glass) should give you realistic looking glass.

If you want to change the color of the glass, you can change the Diffuse Color value but more effectively it's better to change the Refraction 'Color' to a slight tint of the color you want, or the Reflection 'Color' the same way to see more of a reflective tint on the outside.

But the most important values are the Fresnel IOR (higher values mean more reflection so maximum value gives you a mirror), Reflection Glossiness (better to leave it just at 1.0 unless you want a glossy blurry reflection in which case use lower values than 1).

In the same way if you adjust the Refraction IOR (higher value gives you more refraction and bending of light) and the Glossiness to lower value, you begin to get a frosted glass look (best value is something around 0.5-0.75 for realistic looking frosted glass with higher IOR of around 1.8-2.0. Try to avoid putting the Refraction IOR higher than 2.0 or 2.5 because that's the Refractive index of diamond and you'll get strange results)

So to summarize:-
From you menu:
Options -> Attributes -> Surface (Settings) -> Select your Glass material -> change the Engine settings to 'Corona Renderer' -> make the changes in the 'Reflection' and 'Refraction' sections.
You should see the changes in the material sample slot right away as you change, and if you want you can turn on the interactive renderer while you're changing the values (or before) to see the changes in the render model AS you're changing the material value.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

thanks it did help.............

[Anonymous]

What trees are you using?
Default Archicad trees do not work properly with corona.

[Anonymous]

what trees should i use then if not an Archicad tree, kindly advise, thanks

[Anonymous]

I was wandering what trees are you and other using, because default Archicad trees looks not so great when rendered with corona.

[Erwin Edel]

The default trees don't look great with cinerender either

We've dropped photorealism from our renders long ago, since entourage (trees, people etc) is so simplified in the standard libraries.

We had some VB Visual library for Artlantis, that looked alright (just) at the time. I believe they also had ArchiCAD library back then. For current standars their trees and plants might be a bit low poly.

I think Corona has scatter and proxy options, but I have no experience with either. Maybe that will be included in the final release for the ArchiCAD plugin? Would keep the viewport navigation of ArchiCAD usable and allow for (3rd party) high poly trees and such.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Erwin wrote:
.......

I think Corona has scatter and proxy options, but I have no experience with either. Maybe that will be included in the final release for the ArchiCAD plugin? Would keep the viewport navigation of ArchiCAD usable and allow for (3rd party) high poly trees and such.

Yes, the developers have said that they do plan on implementing a proxy solution to handle high poly objects like trees and grass, as well as a scatter system for things like grass.

The current alpha version actually does have a proxy object (it loads with ArchiCAD's library) but it's broken or buggy and doesn't display right. They are aware of this issue and I believe they've fixed it for whatever next release they have.

They have also talked about implementing a sort of asset sharing system (through tools like the proxy files) where you can share and use objects and assets from across different programs that have Corona plugins (like 3ds Max, Cinema4D) and can save proxy files and use them in ArchiCAD.
So for someone like myself who already has a significant proxy library of trees made in 3ds Max (and textured and everything), it would be massively useful.