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]

Should I write another book?
_________________
Dwight Atkinson

But of course! But probably we would get it when artlantis "R II" gets out.
Keeping the pace for program releases is no easy task...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Dwight wrote:
Should I write another book?

Absolutely! Even if there were a complete user manual (which there is not), using Artlantis vs operating it are two different things.

Do it. Also consider the number of SketchUp/etc users that also use Artlantis...

Go, Dwight, Go!

Karl

[David Collins]

Dwight wrote:
Should I write another book?

You mean you aren't already?
The market's there, I think.
You could then have it translated into really bad French.

[Dwight]

This week's winner of "Dwight's Joke-Of-The-Week" is:
David Collins for his skewering of yet another European software company that sweats the code but neglects the instructions.

[Thomas Holm]

Miguel.

Thanks for all help. Here's the same scene with your glass, soft shadows and some objects as well. Much better, thank you. The white stripes are gone too, don't ask me where to. It seems your glass was simply more realistic. It is also more reflective, which of course means the interior is more obscured. I don't understand how to control the transparency - in the Shaders inspector, there's only a color field under that label?

I want the 'plastic' looking walls - they match the softness of the antialiased picture, which shows a limewhite-painted house. And the image really transcends the slightly cold quality of our Nordic light in late summer mornings. Some Photoshop has been applied to the grass as well.

But 3D tree objects make my hardware choke. Is there some way to make the 2D billboard plants to throw more 'accurate' shadows? (I mean the 2D shadow casting mask would have to face the sun at the same time the 2D picture faces the camera - I have a slight recollection I've heard that's possible to do? Maybe not in Artlantis?)
Billboard vegetation is mostly much more realistic anyway.

I used "normal" glass (the procedural Art4.5 kind) for the balcony, but your glass is in all the windows. Also, the horizontal sun shade thingy above the windows at the right is presumed to contain some kind of less transparent glass, and that works quite well.

I'd also like to know how ArtR actually handles reflections. It seems that it assumes that the background picture in fact is cylindrical. It streches it all around the perimeter and calculates the reflections from that assumption. Could be slightly problematic, I think.


And PS:

I really do like this software - it's clearly worth both money and effort, despite my comments on Abvent. but some manual that goes into a little more detail on how to handle the advanced shaders and "expert" materials is really needed. I think a book from Dwight is a good idea, although if I were him, I'd try to find out about Abvent's plans before taking on such a task.

I will post this in the Artlantis forum as well. But I thought the Archicad users who read my late postings should see how the story ended, and also how useful this software can be with a moderate effort.

[Karl Ottenstein]

David wrote:
You could then have it translated into really bad French.

That would only be fair!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thomas wrote:
(I mean the 2D shadow casting mask would have to face the sun at the same time the 2D picture faces the camera - I have a slight recollection I've heard that's possible to do? Maybe not in Artlantis?)

Perhaps you're thinking of SketchUp 5, Thomas. AFAIK, this cannot be done in Artlantis.

Cheers,
Karl

[Dwight]

I've been making trees with OnyTree Pro - now with a garden plug-in.

It allows for reduced polygons and a fully unique 3D tree.

Yes, they do take time, but they are worth it!

Especially in skteches or artistic images where the diaphinous nature of real plants must be precise.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Nice, Thomas.

As to the background, this raises one of the many poorly documented features. You can drag a background image into the background thumbnail of the inspector seen in the attached screenshot. By double-clicking the thumbnail, you get the dialog shown which allows you to alter the way the image is handled.

(Note also that there is a foreground image - onto which you can drag an alpha-masked image with, for example, your company name/etc, or perhaps even foreground vegetation. I haven't played with that much.)

While I'm at some not-obvious interface controls...do note the following that applies to any color swatch control: if you left mouse on the control, you get one style of color picker, but without much feedback or control. If you right mouse / cmd-click, you get the system color picker with much more control IMHO.

You've probably also noticed how you can duplicate your camera position, and assign different 'sets' of heliodon/lamps to it, in order to get different illuminations of the same (or of course different) shots... which can then be batch rendered.

Have fun!

Karl

[Thomas Holm]

Karl wrote:
Perhaps you're thinking of SketchUp 5l

Yeah, obviously. My memory failed me. What happens if you export such a Sketchup view to ArtR?