Chaning the Sun Settings, but the Rendering Remains the Same

[Anonymous]

Hiya,
Yesterday I made a PhotoRendering with the Sketch Engine, and it looked pretty nice. Today I discovered that I had North completely wrong, changed the sun settings, and re-rendered. It looked nice, too. BUT WAIT! It looked exactly the same as the previous rendering! In fact, no matter how I change the sun settings, I get the same rendered image from a given camera. I'm stumped, as the sun settings for any given camera reflect my changed sun settings elsewhere. What am I missing?
Thank you...!

[TomWaltz]

Are you using View Sets at all?

The sun (and other rendering settings) are saving into the View Set, and can easily be changed without you realizing it if you double-click another View.

[Anonymous]

I'd been rendering the views from within the project map. But I just now saved a camera as a view set, with its sun settings, and rendered. Same result. I then opened that view set, changed the sun, redefined the view set, rerendered, and again, no changes. It is weird.

[TomWaltz]

Are you changing the Sun location through the Sun dialog or through the Camera Settings? (yes, as dumb as it sounds, they can be different from one another).

Which ever one you did, try the other 🙂

... and if you do it through Camera Settings, be sure to hit "Apply" or the changes will not stick.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help on this. It appears that the sun WILL ONLY change position if I make the changes in the Camera Settings dialog...and hit Apply. While good to know the technique, what is misleading to me is that all of the other dialog boxes I looked at, including the Camera Settings dialog when I first called it up (and before I hit Apply), indicated that the sun was indeed where I wanted it. But it wasn't! The concern then is how to know when to believe the dialog boxes? How to know if the settings are Applied, as it were? Odd.

[TomWaltz]

Zobi wrote:
Thanks for your help on this. It appears that the sun WILL ONLY change position if I make the changes in the Camera Settings dialog...and hit Apply. While good to know the technique, what is misleading to me is that all of the other dialog boxes I looked at, including the Camera Settings dialog when I first called it up (and before I hit Apply), indicated that the sun was indeed where I wanted it. But it wasn't! The concern then is how to know when to believe the dialog boxes? How to know if the settings are Applied, as it were? Odd.

(shaking head)... yeah.....

[Ted Taylor]

I hit the same problem last week under a tight deadline, which resulted in taking some drawings that were not what they could have been and then again this morning when trying to change the shadows from one view to another of another model. Restarting Archicad this morning, allowed me to finally get the proper results, but my blood pressure meds are going to have to be increased.

Having a few minutes, I decided to see if I can find any rhyme or reason to all of this.

First created a simple model. Placed a camera. Checked 3d settings to make sure everything was set according to Dwight's Quick Start, placed sun object above ground, sun object below ground and a sky object. Rendered scene with OpenGL and then did photo rendering using Lightworks. Everything works as supposed to.

Go back to Plan view, select camera and select "Sun" in Camera/VR setting Dialog Box. Reverse North in the resulting Sun Dialog box, click OK to close it and then the "Apply" button on the Camera/VR Box. The sun icon of the camera icon moves to its new position. I then Rebuild the plan view window and the Lightwork Sun and Sky Objects change to indicate that they have picked up the change. Open the 3d window and it has also changed and for good measure check in the 3d window using the Internal 3d engine and all appears right with the world. Right click on the Camera in the "Project Map" window and select "Modify camera to current view"

Photorender again and the photorendering is the same as the initial rendering and does not reflect the sun changes shown in both the plan and 3d windows.

At this point, I am out of buttons, dialog boxes and menus. Double checked that light objects were set to track sun object even though icons showed that they did. Swear words also have no effect. This morning as I said earlier, saving and restarting worked and this afternoon, I found that if I selected and opened one of the light objects after jumping through all the hoops above, the photorendering would do as it was supposed to. No guarantees on the latter, may have been a one time thing.

Let's hope this has been picked up in v10 and maybe the above ramble will help someone.

By the way, Dwight's"Lightworks in Archicad" Book is the best money I have spent in a long time. The quality of my renderings have improved a hundred fold and I have not gotten into the meat of it as of yet. Highly recommended to anyone that has not made the purchase. (This has been a non compensated endorsement)

[Tom Krowka]

I agree with both the sun settings issue and the book. Ditto for drawing presentation quality.

I deal with the sun issue by making sure all settings are set the same in all dialogue boxes, then shift the camera a teeny bit so it has to regenerate it. Seems to work, although is a giant pain ......

Maybe GS can tell us how it's supposed to work, then make it work that way.

[Chadwick]

I am running into the same problems as has been stated in the previous replys. There is no rhyme or reason to the results I get based upon where or what I am changing for the sun. The weird thing is that everything worked fine yesterday - nothing changed - and now today I'm not getting the same results. I've come to the conclusion that it has to be something I am doing, nobody would release software that was this erratic.

[TomWaltz]

Chadwick wrote:
nobody would release software that was this erratic.

You own a computer that turns on right? EVERYONE releases software that erratic!