The move to AC Lightscape and it's future

[Anonymous]

I can't find clear answers to these questions from the forum or GRaphisofts site.
Any redirect appreciated.

Currently LightscapeAC doesn't do raytracing (P. Archer's closet view test.jpg). Is there a commitment from Graphisoft to corral this part of the engine or are we just hoping they will?

I assume that the new engine uses LS materials. Does that mean that projects from 8.1 need to be manually re-jigged, changing all the materials thru more endless clicks?

Or is the common wisdom still in effect "Don't move a project up a full version" for AC9?

If LS uses the AC textures, how much does radiocity loose to the old-style textures? (The red rug doesn't bleed red light onto the white walls?)

I own LS 3.1 from the AC6.5 days. Are the shader libraries usable in AC9?


Sorry to take time as these questions are answered somewhere around here...

[Laszlo Nagy]

The rendering engine in ArchiCAD is called LightWorks. That's a different one from LightScape, as far as I know. Are you talking about LightWorks?

[Anonymous]

Gazzooks!
I thought Graphisoft licenced the LS engine & called it Lightworks
Humility is always a good lesson.

[Djordje]

Walter wrote:
Gazzooks!
I thought Graphisoft licenced the LS engine & called it Lightworks
Humility is always a good lesson.

FYI: Lightscape was bough and subsequently built into VIZ by Autodesk. Effectively killed as a standalone.

LightWorks is a different engine. It does have raytracing, it does not have radiosity.

If you Lightscape still works, great - IMHO it is still the best!

For the modern and up to date raytracing/radiosity solution, try Art•Lantis R; still unsurpassed speed and ease of use!

Bottom line: Lightscape is regrettably dead. Lightworks is very much alive, but not implemented with all the bells and whistles. Art•Lantis is again worth at least trying, after a few years of regrettable stagnation, with reasonable pricing.

[Anonymous]

I assume that the new engine uses LS materials. Does that mean that projects from 8.1 need to be manually re-jigged, changing all the materials thru more endless clicks?

Or is the common wisdom still in effect "Don't move a project up a full version" for AC9?

If LS uses the AC textures, how much does radiocity loose to the old-style textures? (The red rug doesn't bleed red light onto the white walls?)

If we change LS to LW, the question is still, practically, how much change of texture libraries & rewoaking of models is needed to get the benifits of LW?

[TomWaltz]

Walter wrote:

I assume that the new engine uses LS materials. Does that mean that projects from 8.1 need to be manually re-jigged, changing all the materials thru more endless clicks?

Or is the common wisdom still in effect "Don't move a project up a full version" for AC9?

If LS uses the AC textures, how much does radiocity loose to the old-style textures? (The red rug doesn't bleed red light onto the white walls?)

If we change LS to LW, the question is still, practically, how much change of texture libraries & rewoaking of models is needed to get the benifits of LW?

The older textures do not look much different in Lightworks, mainly because the LW engine has a bunch of settings that are independent of the texture bitmaps.

If you start a new project using the latest Graphisoft templates and library, the materials work pretty well. If you are upgrading an old project, you would have to do some Attribute Manager work to import the new materials, and switch libraries so you have all the right textures. I've not actually tried this, so I cannot say how wel it would work. I seem to remember someone mentioning a bug in importing materials in AC9, but not the specifics of it.

You technically CAN move a project up a full version, but unless you really plan to do a lot of rendering with it, it's probably not worth the effort.

[Dwight]

Yes, bringing in ArchiCAD textures can be a challenge: texturemaps can flip around, and odd color masks occur - see Roof 1 for example.

The ArchiCAD 9 implementation of LightWorks does not include the radiosity features, just its poor cousin Ray Tracing and his brother Skip.

But the clear advantage of LightWorks is in materials like stucco and concrete where seamless and unrepeating surfaces are made mathematically with "shaders" instead of texture maps.

Also, ray tracing induces sophisticated reflectivity like wet concrete - from the LightWorks archive at : www.lightworks-user.com

that actually looks like wet concrete!

But they still don't have fuzzy purple polka dot fur for Djordje's sofa.

[Djordje]

Dwight wrote:
But they still don't have fuzzy purple polka dot fur for Djordje's sofa.

Matches the cover of your book that I am reading slouched on the same ... 😉

[Karl Ottenstein]

TomWaltz wrote:
If you are upgrading an old project, you would have to do some Attribute Manager work to import the new materials, and switch libraries so you have all the right textures. I've not actually tried this, so I cannot say how wel it would work. I seem to remember someone mentioning a bug in importing materials in AC9, but not the specifics of it.

This was a bug in the first release of AC 9. Material transfer via attribute manager works fine now (build 2045).

You can tweak your old materials of course or import better ones, and the benefits will be noticeable. But, even with old materials, the effect of the SunObject (soft shadow edges) and SkyObject (more intriguing ambient) ... to say nothing of window light and other lamps results in a huge improvement to old models. These light objects are compatible with old versions of the libraries ... folks can unpack the PLA and copy just the LW lights into the project library and proceed from there. All of Dwight's tips on other forums are required for success, though...

Karl

[Anonymous]

So much good information.
Thanx 2 all.
This is what I needed.
Non-repeating texures! Oh, my...