Neon Shaders in Artlantis and ArchiCAD 'grouping'

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've already posted this topic in the artlantis forum and the response I was given there didn't work.

I have a few beams that are made with a custom profile. They are all separate however they share the same height and circumference (it's a round beam). When I go to place a neon shader in artlantis, it applies it to all the beams, when I one it to apply to only one at a time (they need to be different colours)

I've changed the colour material in beam settings in ArchiCAD but they still 'group' together in artlantis...

Any suggestions?

Here's the link to the . Artlantis Thread

[Anonymous]

Here's a screenshot of the application of a neon shader... I want to be able to apply it separately to each beam

Thank You

[Anonymous]

Complex profiles are a bit quirky when it comes to the materials. There are the ones applied to the extruded faces in the profile editor and then there is the one applied to the ends in the setting dialog and info box. The latter is considered the "default" material.

I don't know exactly how Artlantis handles this now (it's been years since I've used it) but if you make sure that the profiles you want to apply the different materials to are altogether different in their settings perhaps that would do the trick. You will need to make different profiles for each material (one of my pet peeves about them) and then set the end materials of each to match the profile.

HTH. I don't know from your post how much of this you may already have tried.

[Anonymous]

I changed one of the beams to default profile and sure enough it has separated itself from the custom profiles in artlantis

I will post later how I changed the other beams as there will be around 5 different types

I know you haven't used Artlantis in a while but on the neon lights, I seem to be getting a lot of circular lighting (the link shows this on the artlantis forum attatchment). It could be as another poster said "What you see is what you get" but I'm not sure...

Thank You

[Karl Ottenstein]

Matthew is correct that Artlantis 'groups' all surfaces that were modeled in ArchiCAD with the same material together: dropping a shader on one surface, changes all surfaces that have the same material.

Artlantis has tools that let you reassign materials per-surface, but those do not make sense in this situation - they are best left for situations where ArchiCAD will not allow you to assign differing materials - such as differing edges of a wall.

Do not make your 'tubes' very round, particularly given the view you show in the Artlantis forums - this will create a huge amount of computation for Artlantis for the light emission, particularly if you have radioisity enabled. I believe you will do well enough with a hexagon shaped tube and with radiosity disabled.

The quality of the neon light shader varies with your rendering settings - typically you have to go to the highest quality settings to get decent results. Also, the real time preview window in Artlantis does not give a reasonable preview for neon. Use a render zone to test your settings before doing the full render.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
Matthew is correct that Artlantis 'groups' all surfaces that were modeled in ArchiCAD with the same material together: dropping a shader on one surface, changes all surfaces that have the same material.

Artlantis has tools that let you reassign materials per-surface, but those do not make sense in this situation - they are best left for situations where ArchiCAD will not allow you to assign differing materials - such as differing edges of a wall.

Do not make your 'tubes' very round, particularly given the view you show in the Artlantis forums - this will create a huge amount of computation for Artlantis for the light emission, particularly if you have radioisity enabled. I believe you will do well enough with a hexagon shaped tube and with radiosity disabled.

The quality of the neon light shader varies with your rendering settings - typically you have to go to the highest quality settings to get decent results. Also, the real time preview window in Artlantis does not give a reasonable preview for neon. Use a render zone to test your settings before doing the full render.

Cheers,
Karl

Great, thanks for the info Karl, I know understand why when I change one shader, several other pieces change...

I guess I could just used a default beam instead... I chose to create a custom round profile so it's 'smoother' but on a plan view this isn't as apparent.

I look forward to implementing your tips and seeing the outcome! (just finishing off modelling a city!)

Nathan

[Karl Ottenstein]

You're welcome. Yup, a rectangular beam will probably be fine, too... or even something more simple:

The unusual thing about your project is that you want the viewer to see the illumination from above, as well as what is cast on the ground, but not really much else (no close-up detail).

The least computationally intensive way of doing that would be a simple plane where the bottom surface has the neon shader and the top surface is actually not light-emitting, but is a constant shader (which appears bright under all conditions).

(For interior work, one often doesn't see the neon 'tube', and so just a long rectangular plane with the neon emitting shader and radiosity is adequate inside a valence/etc to generate the light that floods downward on a wall. Using a tube in that situation would slow things down a lot without any real benefit.)

Good luck,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Indeed. This visualisation is to show the circulation within a City. I've not yet decided wether to detail it yet, such as hatching the roof, adding texture on the ground or just keep it simple. If the latter occurs, I will look into your suggestion.

I 'accidentally' deleted the beam material in artlantis which left just the shader, perhaps this is in-line with your suggestion... It's all about experimenting and I'm very pleased with the outcome or Artlantis and I'm learning a lot.

Thank You

[Anonymous]

Ok I've fianlly built the City in ArchiCAD (took about 18 hours in total, excluding the train tracks)

I've run into a problem: The roads were created with the mesh too in ArchiCAD because slabs next to the train track causes huge problems and crashes...

I now have contour lines showing up in artlantis render ( plus I can't get the lighting like I had it before which is also annoying!)

Is there anyway to 'hide' the contours in either AR or Artlantis, bearing in mind all points are at the same level.

Thank You

[Karl Ottenstein]

NStocks wrote:
Is there anyway to 'hide' the contours in either AR or Artlantis, bearing in mind all points are at the same level.

Most likely that can be addressed by adjusting the surface smoothness slider as shown in the attached - at least to midway if not max.

Note that if you select a surface with the Material Inspector, you will not necessarily get the object and thence the slider, but may get the texture mapped to the surface. Open the tray, as shown, to select the actual object and you'll then see the smoothness slider.

Cheers,
Karl