Remember AC7 Viewpoint GraphiSketch Renderer?

[Anonymous]

Do you remember the AC7's Viewpoint GraphiSketch Renderer?

It was a marvelous sketch renderer with a real artistic touch! I used it a lot for presentations and front pages of my projects. I would gladly trade the whole AC12's Sketch Renderer for it!

I want it back! Do you?

[Rod Jurich]

Kliment, PhotoRender Settings using the Pen & Ink sketch render from 12.

[Rod Jurich]

And the settings. Let me have your opinion.

[Anonymous]

kliment wrote:
Do you remember the AC7's Viewpoint GraphiSketch Renderer?

Oh yeah. Now I remember them. A bit too cartoony for my taste, and not the best clean up as I recall. I think that software was by ThinkFish and was bought up or otherwise vanished from the scene.

Perhaps you could get close with the sketch renderer and then apply a filter or two in Photoshop. Of course it might be quicker and better to do a sketch render by hand overlay.

[Dwight]

We often overlook the simplest and fastest way to make a sketch from Archicad, if you can stomach Photoshop. This is just a crude example of the approach - a small investment of time will let you make a personal sketch style with accuracy and speed.

Three steps from a 3D Window screenshot:

Desaturate - lose those ugly colors.
Find Edges - outlines
Texturize - puts a canvas texture under the image

Why i recommend this approach:

1: It is a five second process: no rendering at all, since we are shooting the screen.
2: The steps can be varied for personal preference AND SAVED as Photoshop Actions [macros] so you never lose the settings.

Sure, there's an investment of time, but it is way less than messing about with the no-preview sketch settings....

[Anonymous]

I think I got a bit misunderstood! My idea is not to make a sketch presentation - such presentations are not popular in my country and Europe. If I make a linear presentation I use the Internal 3D Engine, which is perfect and I don't have to leave AC!

I want an artistic presentation for the front page of a project documentation or a web-site. The hand-drawn approach is the best but it is really time consuming - print, draw scan, manipulate....

Dwight, I am familiar with the Photoshop tricks but they give you exactly a sketch mock-up. No artistic touch, unless I draw it myself.

Rob, this is a fine example of sketch, made by an Architect! At the university we called it "Architectural Drawing". But, I want something completely different - artistic drawing, where lines are not the same thickness, where lines sometimes do not touch or parts of the drawing are obscured.
And, Rob, this is a very nice house! I like it a lot!

Do not forget - we had this engine inside AC, there was no need for another application!

Below is an aexample, made by a colleague with whom I worked together on a hotel extension. He didn't know Photoshop. I showed him this engine and this is what he did in a few minutes:

[Anonymous]

Yes, I remember this engine. It was a cool option I admit. One could probably get close to something like this with specific settings. "Close"....not "exactly" though. I vote to throw it back in with AC13. It would be interesting to see this over a lightworks rendering.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Kliment,

I agree that restoring that old engine, or perhaps improving the Sketch engine would be very helpful.

I tried to reproduce your style sketch by modifying Sketch engine settings - but the line overshoot made windows and railings a mess of linework. Very ugly.

So, I exported my test model as 3DS and imported it into Google Sketchup (free version). While I was missing some of the control of the Sketch Engine, the Google style options provide what is missing in ArchiCAD: more intelligence when lines are close together (as in window trim and deck railings), a level of detail slider, and more. The result was still not ideal (lots of extra edges are created during the 3ds export) - but it felt more natural than what ArchiCAD achieves.

I think that if GS made Sketch more aware of edge distances from each other in order to scale down the line weight and extension for, e.g., window frames, provided a 'level of detail' slider as in Sketchup (and Artlantis navigator for that matter), and allowed the 'air' setting to be more dramatic, it would be a good step forward.

Or, providing GraphiSketch might be a good step backward. 😉

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
I agree that restoring that old engine, or perhaps improving the Sketch engine would be very helpful.

I believe the old engine was licensed and is no longer available. Improvements to the present sketch renderer would be very welcome.