Surface library in AC - external render engine or self-made

[Anonymous]

I am making a template and would like to add a lot of good surfaces.

Rendering is certainly not my core business, but while I'm preparing surfaces, it makes sense to have them prepared with bump-maps as a mimimum.

For every surface I would like to have:
1. a vectorial hatch to scale for 3D documents - isometric views - see e.g. the brickwork in the attachment
2. a good quality texture for viewport rendering, printscreens (I use those a lot!), bimx export
3. a render material with bump map and more

I'm considering two options:

1. expand my old sketchup texture collection with free and/or bought libraries and implement them one by one in AC.
This option is free (except for the bought material collections), but is rather time-consuming.

2. Buy a renderer like Maxwell render (or Octane), build a material library with mxm textures, convert those to the Internal engine using the Match Setting option in the surface settings.
This will cost me more, but will get me a good material library.

I did a test of Maxwell Render. The render results are very good compared to the Internal Engine, but it adds extra steps in the process because it renders in an external app. So you cannot just put your predefined renders in the layout and have them updated if the project changes.

Octane seems too complicated for someone whose main focus is not on rendering...

Before I do further testing - can anyone advise me on this? Am I over-complicating thing by taking the Maxwell route?

Ideally, I would just pay for a good AC surface library optimised for cinerender, but I can't find any. Any help would be appreciated!

[DGSketcher]

I don't know which version you are running, but have you looked at CineRender which is available in AC?

I have an external library of textures from Sketchup days but rarely need them as the hatches / built in / CineRender options are pretty good for most things and couldn't see any justification for another render package.

[Anonymous]

I did use the catalogue and cinerender before. The cinerender needs tweaking to get good results, but I'll have to learn how to use it effeiciently I guess.
I'm not fond of the standard textures and most of the additional catalogue, as there are lots of more traditional, old-fashioned materials imo.

For my last projects I had looked at bricks and roof tiles and was not impressed with the choice and quality of the textures.
I do have the 'additional surface catalogue 20' but all the names are in Dutch, I'm not sure if this is a local (Dutch rather than Belgian) catalogue, or the universal one with Dutch naming.

The roof tiles and bricks are old-fashioned and the choice is limited. Wood flooring is also limited. However, the rest of the material types seems more elaborate. So as a whole, the catalogue might be a good starting point.

I guess I'll start by adding some textures in bricks, wood cladding and roof tiles and use the rest of the catalogue to start with.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Anonymous]

I just looked a bit deeper in the additional surface library.

Another reason I was hesitant to go that route was the lack of bump maps.
For roof tiles, the texture image itself is used as the bump map, which is not how it should be done..

But I also found some bricks with proper bump maps now. So the treatment and quality of the materials is not very coherent.

Screenshots attached - is that a local library?

[Anonymous]

and the bump for the roof tiles

[Anonymous]

Admins, I put this in the 'Other products' because I was considering an external renderer, but it might have been more suitable in the Presentation department. Feel free to move the thread, thanks!

[Laszlo Nagy]

I have moved it to the Presentation forum.