Sketches with color on surfaces

[Anonymous]

Is there any way to get sketches with color on the surfaces? I know how to change the pen setting so the outlines or the sketch lines are a different color but how do I get the material color to show up? Why wouldn't this be an option? Any ideas? We wanted to keep as much in Archicad instead of taking the file to another program for touch ups.

Thanks,
Michele

[Dwight]

With all due respect, there's a whole world of great things you can do with ArchiCAD images in an image editor, and combining layers from different sources is one of them. You would use your sketch render as an overlay on a solid model image.

This can be done in ArchiCAD by using the solid model image taken from the 3D Open GL window [with texture and/or colors enabled] as a background to the sketch render.

The background must be placed in the ArchiCAD library.

I tried this as a "What if" and am not that familiar with the sketch render, but here you go. As exagerrated as this one is, perhaps it has potential for you.

[Dwight]

Here's my first real sketch render - with photoshop work throughout defining planes, shadows and highlighting.

This is very satisfying for describing an idea and relies on a standard sketch style.

[Anonymous]

Very nice examples from Dwight. Here are some good images from a Cinema4D user.

http://www.acmedigital.com/


Also

Behind the scenes - look at the some of the process:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=5853

Mark

[Anonymous]

As you can see. The artistic quality of the Acmedigital images owes plenty to the watercolor filter in photoshop. Post processing a sterial rendering with PhotoShop can quickly add the touch of class you want to convey to the client.

Here is one I did called, Point Pleasant. Enjoy.

Mark

[Chadwick]

Dwight -

I've been trying the technique you describe using the 3D window image as the background image to the sketch render, but for some reason no matter what image I use as a background image it refuses to show the sketch render on top of it.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it?


Thanks

[Dwight]

It seemed flakey to me, too, but after two tries, it worked.

This might have something to do with making a view with the internal engine with shadow vectors and contours turned on first. Just to let your machine know that you are up to something.

The sketch render uses images from a folder in the library for backgrounds - all those paper textures are just pictures - so it must not be impossible.

[Chadwick]

Ok, I got the sketch render to work over those paper textures - but any other picture and it wont work. Those paper textures are .tif files whereas the other images are .bmps or .jpegs - I tried to save the 3D window as a .tif and use that for the background and it still didnt work.

I have the internal engine with contours and vectors on. I've used Open GL as the 3D window as well - both end up the same way, with no sketching over the image.

Is it possible there is a transparency issue with the images? In the ArchiCAD library they are titled as 'Alpha Textures' and there is an option in the sketch rendering dialog that says: 'Use alpha channel for transparency'

It didnt seem this difficult when you explained it

thank you for your help

[Chadwick]

Ok, I think I have had some progress. The Alpha Textures are .tifs with an alpha channell added to the RGB channells in photoshop. I saved the 3D window as a .tif, opened it up in Photoshop and added an alpha channell based upon its already existing RGB channells. When I use this modified .tif of the 3D window as a background for the sketch rendering, it works wonderful ... so far.


Thanks again for your help

[Dwight]

In the case of Mac, I saved as pict and enabled alpha channels in the dialog...