Piranesi

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thought I'd start a new thread just for Piranesi ... another thread has Sketchup included, and it should be its own thread as well.

It would be useful to hear other people's reasons for purchasing Piranesi and any tips and tricks that they have discovered.

I've convinced myself to make the purchase after several days with the demo and will write more about that later. Neither the Piranesi web site nor comments on archicad-talk were specific enough to explain to me (a hard-sell) why I would want this tool. Now that I've played with all of the tutorials as well as images from ArchiCAD and Artlantis, I understand just how revolutionary a product this is ... very eye opening (just as is Sketchup ... but keep that in a different thread please).

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

The images are there. I must say that I have been using Piranesi for some time now after recieving the demo, and find the results far outweigh must standard rendering presentation results; dependant on the client base.

[Djordje]

Binder wrote:
The images are there. I must say that I have been using Piranesi for some time now after recieving the demo, and find the results far outweigh must standard rendering presentation results; dependant on the client base.

Let us see some!

[David Pacifico]

Here is an image that was modeled in ArchiCAD, Rendered in Artlantis, and enhanced with Piranesi.

Piranesi was used to put in the people, trees and bushes. (the cars came from ArchiCAD.) Piranesi was also used to put the signage on the building, paint the gas pumps with a photo I took of the company style pumps. Piranesi lets you scale the image easily then paint on just the surface you want.

A white was poured over the image, an edge silhouette outlined everything with line work, and then the color was restored back in the areas I wanted.

[Anonymous]

Well done David on your image it looks great.

I have attached an image I have recently done in the same manner.
File in AC8.1, Art 4.5, Piranesi 2 for the 'sketchy' look. This sketch
is the first look at the job for the client and represents 3hrs design
and modeling, half hour in artlantis and 5mins in Piranesi.

I find I tend to reuse the 'tutorial 4' on the Piranesi browser. But the book has lots of other examples. What are others doing? Has anybody ended up doing a decent charcoal or pencil style sketch? Mine all look very
unconvincing.

[Anonymous]

As a newcomer to Piranesi, I'm wondering if there is an easy way to save out the AC model to Piranesi without color or texture (so it's similar to the flat grey tutorial EPIX files) without changing all materials to a flat grey in AC.

I'm having trouble overlaying and tweaking the colors and textures properly within Piranesi when the EPIX files are saved with color and texture.

Any suggestions?

[David Pacifico]

Dale
I suppose you could use the internal rendering engine in ArchiCAD and turn off textures before you make your Epix file.

Or in Piranesi you could dump a flat grey color on the material in Piranesi before you start.

[Anonymous]

David-

Thanks for the response...

I can't seem to dump the flat grey color on the model using the "overlay" method, which seems to be the one that allows the shadows to show through, as it starts to blend with the existing color, as opposed to replacing the existing color.

I would like to be able to replace colors (and textures) in Piranesi, if possible...

[Anonymous]

Have been using Artlantis for sometime and Piranesi for a year or so - most Piranesi users seem to use similar technique (from the tutorials). I either use Piranesi for whole image (pic1) or for adding people trees etc to Artlantis renders (pic 2) which is very fast and I like the way it handles shadows - when you get used to its quirks. Bring on Artlantis 5 and radiosity - also considering Cinema 4D, I like the way it works

[Anonymous]

Post wouldn't except second attachment

[Karl Ottenstein]

Dale wrote:
As a newcomer to Piranesi, I'm wondering if there is an easy way to save out the AC model to Piranesi without color or texture (so it's similar to the flat grey tutorial EPIX files) without changing all materials to a flat grey in AC.

Grey, yes. Flat grey (no texture), trick follows.

First, realize that your EPix file has three layers/channels: RGB, depth and material. When you re-render, you are replacing the restore RGB with the RGB (working) channel. So, to get greyscale, you can use a Piranesi bucket fill with render action set to filter and filter set to -100 saturation to desaturate the image (convert to greyscale). Then, re-render to replace the restore RGB.

Flat grey image: take a look at the material channel: a solid color for each material. You (may) want to make this your restore RGB channel, but in greyscale. You cannot apply filters directly. Instead, export the image (whatever you see is what is exported),, then import back into Piranesi as the RGB channel. Desaturate as above. Re-render to make this the restore RGB. You will be missing edges that distinguish the planes of objects all made of the same material. Use the edge render action to display edges as desired. Re-render if desired. Should be close to what you are asking for?

You will of course lose any shadows or shading with this approach: it will be truly flat.

HTH,
Karl