LightWorks not-a-manual to be BestSeller

[Anonymous]

One reason I took the ferry over to the mainland last friday was to stop by the Iconography Studio on West 47th in leafy Kerrisdale and get my mitts on a copy of " LightWorks in ArchiCad". Dwight said that it was "literally hot off the press," and he was serious, that most functional wire binding that the author says accounts for about one-quarter the cost of printing was still warm. I can attest that the bubble envelopes were stacked up ready to be mailed. You'll probably receive your copy shortly after you read this. If you don't, because you haven't ordered one, TOO BAD! My advice, be gentle, try not to trample innocent bystanders in the hurry to obtain yours! This is CLASSIC, be advised.

After the initial rush about LightWorks when 9.0 debuted I decided the prudent thing to do was wait for Dwight's book. I had investigated the Photorendering Settings Pallet ( "what's the big deal? You couldn't possibly come up with more than two pages about this, eh! ") read about the short-comings in the ArchiCad implementation, and realized that It was beyond my ken. Besides, and I suspect that a lot of ArchiCad users are in the same boat, the quality of renderings I could simply manage did not inspire me to pursue the topic further on my own. Better to wait for Dwight. What can be taking him so long ?

Well, now we know.... 208 pages. Dwight says this book in not a manual. As far as I have delved into this I can agree with him. It's not a manual, it's a MODEL MANUAL. Chapter One, with of course the introduction, would have exceeded my expectations alone. I've read a couple of books on photography, but "Think Like a Photographer" really opened up the topic. You can't help but be inspired, in my opinion, and challenged.

For anyone who is concerned that the future of ArchiCad is under the cloud of a heavier, stronger competition this book will be very restorative. They might have the base and the money, but do they have the Dwights and the other ArchiCad Gurus. Do they have not-a-manuals like this, Nooooo...

Thanks Dwight,

Wally

[Thomas Holm]

Dwight wrote:
That would be your "Dwight's Quick Start Guide" Chapter One, page 27.

OK, OK I'm getting there. Yesterday I got to that page. And I think I'm beginning to get it, as well... maybe you could stamp the cover with "START AT PAGE 27" all over for us short-sighted impatient pundits 😉

Dwight wrote:
Sorry for the delay to all who ordered early and waited. Thank you for being patient. I hope that the discount was worth it.

It's Ok Dwight, I'm not unhappy, but as I pre-paid, I don't think I've seen any extra discount. No problem, I think the book is worth both the wait and the cost. I hope you're getting paid for your work in addition to your expenses. Now I'm trying to promote our distributor to order a bunch of copies. It answers some questions nobody over here has been able to before. But as I said somewhere else, I think they're Scottish by origin. I realise they thought your seminar was too expensive, despite my efforts to persuade them. Maybe next year?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Got mine today...Thanks Dwight
and except for a very small typo which is my fault, not Dwight's it is a very good read and a lot of the tutorials do apply to other rendering packages which is a plus

[Karl Ottenstein]

My copies were waiting for me when I returned from a trip yesterday.

Dwight, the print quality is just beautiful. Paying for the high quality paper and printing was well worth it, as all forms of subtlety in the images are easily visible. The lay-flat spiral binding is great too.

The quality and size of all of the images is excellent, especially when compared with the too-small and half-tone-visible images in your book that Graphisoft Press printed - Illustration in ArchiCAD (still recommended!). The images in the new book appear continuous tone to the naked eye - no half-tone grid visible to me. Makes a huge difference in appreciating the affects of different parameters, and of the final art.

Your hundreds of hours of experiments will save us all those same hours.

Thanks for the huge effort that you put into this beautiful and highly useful book. Anyone planning on rendering within ArchiCAD itself should own this book!

Karl

[Rakela Raul]

please dont take this comment wrong!!!!

every time i buy a tool in home depot or best buy (my favorite stores), there is a quick assembly instruction and a more in depth instruction along with it....of course i use only the quick instructions...

is there anything like it for lightworks?? or it is just impossible to cover so much in just a few pages ?

regardless of my time limitations and my bad eyes, the book content
is incredible

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rakela wrote:
is there anything like it for lightworks?? or it is just impossible to cover so much in just a few pages ?

I think Dwight answered this earlier: pages 27 through 35, the "Quick Start". (Not that the preceding and following material isn't important of course.)

The challenge of 'quick assembly' for an illustration is that it is art and not mechanics. As explained by Dwight in this and his previous book, no rendering program is likely to automatically produce the illustration one desires by simply plugging in a lighting setup and material list. If it simulates light exactly, it will not produce an image that corresponds to how a human 'remembers' a scene, because our eyes do not work like a camera aperture. If it fakes it (which nearly all do), then it may not fake it in a way that produces the result we want.

I think his 9 QuickStart pages approach this reasonably concisely. These are the bare essentials of getting a reasonable exterior rendering with LightWorks in AC. Try working through it and see what you think? And have fun doing it! 😉

Karl

[David Collins]

I was one of those who ordered Dwight's book about thirty seconds after he announced he was working on it. I'd taken a quick look at the Lightworks engine in ArchiCAD 9.0 and realized the only way to make sense of any of it was going to be by investing countless hours of frustrating trial and error. Better let some other fool do it and who better than Dwight? (Oops, that didn't come out quite right...) I ordered the book and ignored Lightworks completely until it arrived a few days ago. I figure I'm still a few months ahead of the game.

Most software manual authors start out by stating that its not their job to to teach you the basics of good architectural design or illustration. The result is that they wind up teaching you practically nothing at all. Dwight makes a similar statement at the start of his book, but then he goes ahead and teaches you anyway. Being wonderfully opinionated, he simply can't help himself.

He not only tells you what each setting does, which takes exactly three pages, but goes on to tell you whether it's a good idea to use it, whether it works at all, whether it works but produces hopelessly tacky results, whether it works but its a complete waste of time and can be done better some other way, what's a mistake and what's not, what needs to be achieved and what needs to be avoided, and what's laughable and what's critical, all of which takes the remaining 205 pages.

Every bit of information, every piece of zen advice, every paragraph of heaped disdain and abuse, every specific button and setting, is aimed at getting you to think about how to produce the best possible image in the most reasonable amount of time, something I don't think I've ever seen before in a software manual.

Thanks Dwight.
Now, go have a talk with Abvent, would you please?

[Rakela Raul]

I think his 9 QuickStart pages approach this reasonably concisely. These are the bare essentials of getting a reasonable exterior rendering with LightWorks in AC. Try working through it and see what you think? And have fun doing it!

now we are talking, thx Karl

[Anonymous]

Dwight, you've really out-done yourself this time. This book is incredible. If you have any intention of rending with ArchiCAD you should own this book!

Thanks for all of your hard work putting this together.

[Anonymous]

Kudos Dwight for a damn good book.

+pablo

[Anonymous]

Woops.. didn't know "damn" was a bad word, just an expression we have here in Texas. Sorry folks!

+pablo