Rendering with ArtLantis!!!! but which ArtLantis?

[Anonymous]

can anyone tell me which version of artlantis should i use
i dont know which one does what and which should i buy?
i have ARTLANTIS 4.5 and Im waiting for v. 5.0
but i heard that there are versions like ArtLantis R and ArtLantis classic
what are all these and which one should i use?
is there a version that compines all these?

thank you

[Anonymous]

Consider yourself lucky, you will be operating with version1.1, which is incredibly stable, when compared to former versions (incredibly meaning it does not crash more than one time every hour...)

[Karl Ottenstein]

Krippahl wrote:

Thomas wrote:
I have the whole Art4 extra Shader package. Do I have to buy new shaders now, or can they be used with Art R?

Nope, you just drag the folder into the catalog shader window, and Bob's your uncle.

Yes, most of your old shaders will work fine with Artlantis R.

The one nice thing I've seen about the newer shader packages from Dosch for Artlantis R is that the images are higher resolution, and have separate bump map images - so they can be easily used in other software as well (such as LightWorks in ArchiCAD).

The original for the attached is 1024 x 1024 pixels and has a corresponding bump map. The bigger image/sample means fewer noticeable pattern repeats in the rendering. The brick walls, etc. are all pretty huge in the Dosch CD, which is reasonably priced. (For some reason, this content hasn't really been discussed by many people on the Artlantis R forums)

Some of the Dosch textures are pretty bad though, for example some of their wood plank floors that are basically an image of continuous wood grain with a photoshopped 'embossed' plank edge pattern overlaid on them. But, the good ones outweight the bad as far as value I think (though, I wish they'd fix the bad ones).

Thomas - please do join us on the Artlantis R forums. Because of the lack of manual, lots of tips and tricks are shared there. The postcard usage that Miquel posted being one such thing.

Also - explore how you can drag and drop images from Finder right into your preview window. You can then decide if the multiple images will be layered into a texture, of if some will be tiled, and others be 1-offs that are just visually positioned in the scene. (For example, you can apply an asphalt texture to a road and then drag an alpha-masked manhole image onto the road and position it where desired.) Lots of fun stuff.

Cheers,
Karl

[Thomas Holm]

Thanks guys, for all help. I'm getting nice (for me) results now, thanks to you, so I'm not unhappy. I'll post an example when I get back to work, along with a question or two. Then I'll go to Abvent's forums. It seems it's good software, despite Abvent!

Edited:
I have to give them credit for this: The version I got now (ArtR 1.1fc12) hasn't crashed once, despite that I've been using it continously for two days!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Another thing that Artlantis R has is a neon shader that can be applied to any surface. In the attached image, which is all ArchiCAD, I just dragged the neon shader onto the fire polygons of the standard ArchiCAD library fireplace.

Not a great image like Miguel's, and the model needs work, but just wanted to show the neon surface (as well as the neon glass). 😉

Karl

[Dwight]

Krippahl wrote:
And you will NEVER forget something that took you half of a working day to figure out.

How can this be so?
Isn't Artlantis automatic?
Here's my first try.

[David Collins]

When I complained to Abvent about the complete lack of documentation, they pointed me to the six or seven tutorials they have on line. These, it turns out, take forever to load, even on broadband, run for about thirty seconds each, and show you how to do things like turn on radiosity by pushing the little button that says "radiosity." To turn off radiosity, push the button again. Thank you, Abvent.

Maybe we've been spoiled by Dwight, but still.....

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
The brick walls, etc. are all pretty huge in the Dosch CD, which is reasonably priced. (For some reason, this content hasn't really been discussed by many people on the Artlantis R forums)

I can only answer for myself, but one look at their prices (3d trees) and I ran away screaming...

Karl wrote:
Not a great image like Miguel's, and the model needs work, but just wanted to show the neon surface (as well as the neon glass)

You are too kind Karl
Fireplace looks great!
About neon glass: It is a dirty trick, so only use it as a last resort (when you can´t get radiosity's sunlight to do it for you, which is mostly big rooms with small windows).

Dwight wrote:

Krippahl wrote:
And you will NEVER forget something that took you half of a working day to figure out.

How can this be so?
Isn't Artlantis automatic?

Sure it's automatic. Just need a click of a button to make it do it's magic.
Bugg*r is, there are hundreds of buttons, so you spend a LOT of time finding out which one does it...

David wrote:
... and show you how to do things like turn on radiosity by pushing the little button that says "radiosity." To turn off radiosity, push the button again. Thank you, Abvent.

I found out that these tutorials are great to get you started, but will only take you about 20% of the way. Without them, you will be utterly lost, as ArtLantis R is so different from other software, even Art 4.5.
For the other 80%, you are on your own. After 4 month of using it, I still dont know how to handle expert materials, fresnel glass, specular/roughtness, etc...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Krippahl wrote:

Karl wrote:
The brick walls, etc. are all pretty huge in the Dosch CD, which is reasonably priced. (For some reason, this content hasn't really been discussed by many people on the Artlantis R forums)

I can only answer for myself, but one look at their prices (3d trees) and I ran away screaming...

The Dosch texture CD's are 'only' US$79 or Euro 69. Ah. But, I see that the versions that were customized for Artlantis R (so that they become shaders in the media library, rather than just textures), are US$95 at objectsonline:
http://www.objectsonline.com/customer/home.php?cat=1029

Yeah, the 3D plants are too much $$ for my budget ($695)... but if I had to do an animation and the client could pay the fee, I'd pick them up! 😉

Cheers,
Karl

PS Dwight: great 'first' image. 😉

[Dwight]

Should I write another book?

[Rakela Raul]

Should I write another book

archicad is not the only one that uses lw..."lightworks for 3d architect"
or etc ...... why not?...u already have the foundation !! a fundamental tool that not even ac has !! so there..