Photo Rendering Preview and Actual Rendering View Dont Match

[Gus]

I am trying to set up several views that are photo renders so that I can place them on a sheet and do "batch" rendering of those views onto that sheet. This way I can set up all the renderings then update that sheet while I go to lunch or something. The problem is that when I set up the view and preview the render it looks one way, and then seems to change the time of day when it does the actual rendering. See image below. I have looked at every single time and date setting that I can find in ArchiCAD and I have them all set to the same date July 21 at 5pm in Wisconsin. I watched the following youtube video as my guide to this process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tluXEVPayYI It seemed to work for him. I can't figure out why it's not working for me. I am using Eric Barbarow's Master template 17 if that makes any difference. I'm starting to think I should have never gone down that road. It's like trying to fix a custom motorcycle that has no stock parts. Any thoughts anyone might have would be greatly appreciated.

[Karl Ottenstein]

If 'use AC sun' is checked, and the sun position was properly memorized per view as Eduardo discussed... then if the sun position isn't used in the renderings when they are batched onto a sheet... then it sounds like there could be a bug related to how the sun position is communicated to the background rendering process.

If so... will test/verify in order to report it to support. But, at this stage, we should make sure there isn't some setting that is being missed somehow...

[Gus]

FYI I have Drawn a North Arrow into this Screen Shot as a reference to where the sun should be directed at around noon (give or take daylight savings time). I do this because strange things are happening with the time of day as well. For example when I set the Photo Render Settings Time of Day to 2 Light is streaming into the East Windows for some reason. Doesn't 2 Represent 2 in the morning? I'm sure my location settings are correct because when I check them on Google Earth it drops a marker right on top of my building.

[Gus]

I think I figured it out because my last attempt worked for the first time. What I did differently this time was that I kept going back to the View every time I made a change and Redefined the View and every time I made a change in the photo render I redefined the changed photorender settings. It seems that if you don't do this in a very aggressive manner when changing things (like every time you make a change) it is very easy for it to slip back in to a previous setting? Still have not wrapped my head around it completely but at least I know it is possible to do it right if you stay on it for a couple days. Now I need to figure out why I have light coming in the window on some models but not on others. It's nice to have at least a little progress once in a while to keep me sane. Thank you so much for your encouragement.

[Gus]

OK, I figured this out.
My problem was that I was not saving settings and/or redefining settings every time I made a change. This saving and redefining needs to be done in both the PhotoRendering Window and also in the View Settings Windows, and if you forget to do this one time, then it seems to revert back to previous settings very easily or just not save the settings that you changed? Something like that. Since I was setting up a "batch" rendering on a sheet I would think I had everything set up, but the view or photo rendering setting wasn't saved or redefined and when I went to render the sheet it would go back to the pre-change settings because I never saved or redefined those settings. To make it worse, I couldn't remember which ones I had not saved or not redefined.

In Summary: Don't forget to save or redefine your settings every single time you make a change in both the View Settings and the PhotoRender Settings.

This was a longer journey than I had planned on taking, but I'm all the more happy that it's over. Huge thanks to Karl and Eduardo for all your help, and patience.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Glad you got things to work, Gus! What a painful journey. Credit all goes to Eduardo... I was just going to jump in to help diagnose but you got it. Good that you can move forward. 🙂

I/someone will have to test this further, as redefining the view makes sense... but having to redefine the CR settings doesn't. The 'use AC sun' checkbox SHOULD read the sun synamically as set by the current view... but if you are having to redefine it every time, it sounds like it could be reading the sun position and saving it in the settings, which would be a bug.

Good point about noting your project north location... there could be some communication bug related to that as well that I/someone should test.

[Gus]

I understand now that you can't save sun and date settings in Views (as far as I know) because if I change the sun in one camera view it seems to change it in all the others as well. Is this true?

Also, I have now decided that since I think the above is true, that I should be saving different photo render views with different photo render time and date settings. This means I would not check the box to "use ArchiCAD's sun position." Instead, setting up each view to use different saved photo render settings that have different sun settings in each one. Maybe I will start adding date and time to my saved photo render settings.

All this being said, please see the attached image, and the one to follow. They show that the sun is not doing what I would expect the sun to do. In one of them the time is 2am with a location Lattitude of 47, and the sun is shining in a SE window. In the other image it is 3pm with NW and SW windows but no sun at all.

Is this a glitch?
If so, do I fix it or just adjust my times so that they work even though they don't read correctly?

[Gus]

Attached another image at supposedly 3pm at Latitude 47 with windows to the NW and SW.

[Gus]

Sorry about my duplicate post above. Is there any way to delete duplicate posts?

[Gus]

When I try to edit my post above it doesn't let me and it says "you can only edit your own posts" I think this is my post though, so I don't understand why it thinks it's not my post.

Anyway, I figured out that when I turned off "Use ArchiCAD's Sun Settings" (at least I think this is when it happened) the Latitude and Longitude were changed as well. So I updated those and I'm getting some light in the room as I should. What's funny is that I don't see why this worked. I only changed the Latitude by 4 degrees (which wouldn't change the lighting any where near as dramatically as it did). It seems like changing the Longitude although it changes the time the sun rises relative to GMT, it shouldn't change the time that the sun rises relative to the Longitude setting. It's probably not worth figuring out why. I should just accept that it works now and make sure that when I create new photo render settings that the location is adjusted to my site location rather than to the default ArchiCAD location.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I removed your duplicate post so that might be the problem. Could be that you have found a bug?