VR Object Quality Questions

[Anonymous]

I am having some difficulties trying to do a VR Object and I don't know if I am asking too much or AC 12 is has some undocumented features affecting VR Objects or some combination of both.

I am trying to do a VR object of a large house. I am using a sphere size of about 180 feet with 30 meridians and 15 horizontal segments. I am using the Photorendering window with Lightworks set as the rendering engine and all settings set to best. I am having several issues with it. The rendering is taking a long time to do: about 10 hours which is to be expected with those settings While the individual frames look good on screen as they are being rendered, the movie I end up with does not look anywhere near as good. It exhibits a softness not found in the still frames and the colors are sometimes patchy and pixelated. I am also having trouble with the sun not tracking with the viewpoint. While I think it looks about the way many VR Objects I have seen look, my client is not happy with the results and is debating wether to show it to his client.

I would like to try to improve the look of this VR Object to get rid of the splotchy color in places and sharpen it up. While rendering time and file size is to some extent not an issue, I have only so many more tries I can make before my deadline. Here are some questions/observations I could use some help with:

1) I am using the Lightworks Sun & Sky lamp objects and have the AC sun turned off. I have the setting checked off for the sun to track with the viewpoint but it does not do this. Is this a result of using the Lightworks lamps instead of the AC sun? Is this an undocumented feature (bug)? Anything I can do short of turning on the sun? I was wondering if turning on the AC sun and setting it to say 1% would get this working?

2) What could be causing the blotchy colors? I am doing a sphere twice the size of the default settings and I have added more cameras. But is this odd colorization effects the result of Quicktime not having enough cameras and the interpolation it is doing looks bad as a result? I've more than doubled the sphere size, should I therefor quadruple the number of cameras?

3) Does the setting for pixels in the Photorendering window have any effect at all on the final VR? Or is a VR, where it is a movie, simply created at 72 DPI. The amount of pixels definitely affects the time to create the movie as my times went from tens of minutes to 10 hours. But the finished product hardly looked much better. Right now my VR object file size is 54MB which hardly changed when I changed the DPI which is why I suspect 72 DPI is my end product.

4) Would using a different compression codec besides the recommended Cinepak help? Would turning off compression altogether help? Or will I end up with a file too big for most CPUs to handle. With compression it is 54MB now. How big might it get?

5) This last item is one I don't know if anyone will know: An odd thing happens when I go from Final to Best on the Method and set antialiasing to Best, the rendering only uses one core. When I had the settings turned down while I got the camera positioned, Lightworks pegged all 8 cores at 100 percent. This rendering took 40 minutes vs 10 hours for the final. The odd thing is the rendering didn't improve much which is why I suspect the conversion to a movie is part of the issue. But is this normal behavior to only utilize 1 core at high settings vs 8 at lower quality settings? Seems backwards in a way.

Sorry for the long post. I guess to sum up: what will help me improve the quality of the VR Object?
-More cameras?
-More DPI in Lightworks settings. Or is this a waste of rendering time?
-Turn off Compression or use a different one.

-Also is the sun supposed to track with the viewers position using the Lightworks sun object (Lamp)

I looked on this board to see if a previous post had covered this to no avail. I've only got a couple more shots at this and at 10 hours a pop I don't have time left to experiment.

Thanks in advance for any insight(s) anyone can give.

Jim Mahoney

Gear:
AC 12 latest build
Mac Pro Early 2008-2.8 GHz Eight Core
RAM: 16GB

Settings in Photorender Window
Size: 1200x800
Resolution: Tried 72, 150 and 300
Method: Final
Antialiasing: Best
Effects: All on
Light Sources: Ambient (60 percent), Lamps. Sun and camera off.
Shadow Casting: By Lamp Setting
Shadow Resolution: By Lamp Setting.
Shadow Casting: By Lamp Setting
Background: Is blue color using the internal engine

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Jim in 'Chemsfud',

Hope all's well.

Most of your questions have been answered over the years in various posts here. Searching the forums using:
http://archicadstuff.blogspot.com/
may help you find more information - since searching for "VR" will not work with the forum search, but with the google search via the link above, it will.

On your points:

1. Do not use the LW Sun object. In AC 12, the Realistic Sun is preferable. See Dwight's posts and/or book. The Sky object is not necessarily needed either, as the ambient value in the rendering window can be fine. Tracking with viewpoint works fine.

2. Blotchy colors is your compression codec settings

3. Yes, your VR pixel dimensions are important ... and the dpi never matters. Be sure not to generate too big of an image (e.g., bigger than the client's monitor). QT will display anything, so there is no need to use any kind of standard video pixel dimensions, just something that balances image size and file size. 1200 x 800 is way too big IMHO unless the client definitely wants a really big image and has a 1200+ pixel wide monitor. 1024 x 768 should be big enough (or whatever - consider using a standard 4:3 or 16:9 ratio as people are accustomed to seeing TV images in that ratio). CERTAINLY use something small - like 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 to generate a test object first to verify your settings/etc ... it will be dramatically faster than the big render which should be done once you find everything is otherwise perfect.

4. Yes, a different codec will affect the color and image appearance dramatically. No compression will be really huge. Neither a VR Object nor a VR Panorama is really a movie. A QT panorama is a single special image and a QT VR is a sequence of individual images. Use JPEG compression for each of these things. (Cinepak is NOT "recommended" ... it just happens to be the bizarre default.) With JPEG selected, one notch less than highest quality is probably a reasonable setting. Be sure you select millions or millions+ for colors before generating the object. Do not check 'dithering' for the jpeg options, nor fast streaming (only appropriate for a single image). You will be surprised at how small the final file will be.

5. This has been talked about many times by Dwight. That is how it works... top settings use a single core. So, don't use top settings. Once notch less is probably good enough. It'll be so much faster - especially if you do a test object with a reasonable size image and fewer longitude/latitudes to check your results first.

The sun followed the viewpoint just fine for me in my tests just now.

Consider not using a solid blue/internal background. The LW background offers a gradient between an 'upper' and a 'lower' color - for example blue fading to white or whatever.

Again, the reason you could not find other posts for most things (other than the single core with best LW settings) is that the forum search will not search on any terms with fewer than 3 characters (e.g. "VR").... so use the link at the top of this post when searching. But, I think I have your questions covered.

Good luck with it!

Cheers,
Karl

[Dwight]

Just my luck to actually go out on a date on Friday night and have a question with, basically, my name written on it [right there between the lines].

While Karl has addressed the main issues, let me suggest that if you are wanting a top quality circular tour of your project, VR is NOT the way to go. NOr a fly-thru.

I'd be using a multi-media slide show of high quality uncompressed images where, as we circumnavigate the structure, the multi-media application [powerpoint or keynote] does the crossfade/dissolve between images.

This approach is top quality and serene. AND needs fewer images in total.

The rendering method settings merely control the number of overlaid transparencies - If you only have plain glass in a project, a notch down will deliver.

Or do it with an Artlantis demo in a fraction of the time at top quality.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Karl & Dwight for the speedy replies. I didn't expect to see anything when I got up at 5:00AM after posting this around 11:00 PM.

Dwight:
My client is another architect who wanted a VR Object type thing for his client so I am doing that. But I am going to keep your idea in mind for my own future use. Oh BTW I'd take a date over answering my question.

Karl:
Things are hopefully going a lot better after getting your replies. A couple points of interest and a follow up question if I may. I actually searched for VR object and got about three pages of links which didn't really cover my question. I used your link to search for Realistic Sun today and did get some more helpful info.

-I guess I'd missed the memo where the Lightworks sun and sky objects were no longer the way to go. Thanks for the Realistic Sun tip, it worked to fix the shadow tracking issue.

-Part of my problem is my client wants lots of detail. The reason I was doing the relatively large 1200x900 (800 was a typo I am using 4:3) is if I did 1024 x 768 all of the lines for the siding were lost. My client didn't feel it looked "real" enough. There is horizontal and vertical siding on this house and at the distance I had to set the VR objects dome to get the building in, I was loosing most of this detail. There were also lots of balusters which were smallish at this distance and the anti-aliasing was helping here.

My question is this: Is there some other way to hold this type of detail other than adding more pixels into the mix and using higher anti-aliasing settings which seemed to help keep more siding lines visible?

-RE: The Codec. While I suspected some of my problem was the Codec the reason I was thinking of turning off compression is because in the ArchiCAD help for VR Objects they talk about compression and specifically say "Apple and Graphisoft recommend Cinepak". So if the codec they recommend wasn't cutting it.....

-This morning I used the search link you provided and found out more about two different topics: the realistic sun and the number of core used in Lightworks. Unfortunately one of the things that sets you back to one core is actually the Realistic Sun.

The sun is following the view point so that part is fixed. I just need to figure out a way to hold some of the detail in the siding while keeping the size and time down. I've been doing experiments since I got up, which is why I didn't post a thank you to you and Dwight sooner.

Jim

[Karl Ottenstein]

Glad that's helping some, Jim. Thanks for noting the realistic sun forces you onto one core ... I had been wondering about that. A shame.

On the detail - keep in mind that with a VR Object, you can zoom in and out. Maybe zooming in lets the siding show well enough. Otherwise, it does sound like you need the resolution you're looking at... although, again, get everything else set up and working at a small (fast) resolution first before letting it grind overnight.

Good luck!

Karl

[Anonymous]

Hmmm. While the Lightworks FAQ I read said that Realistic Sun switches you to one processor, reality is something else. If I set anti-aliasing one notch down from the top I get all 8 cores going. The textures don't look good though. But thanks to the help here I now know what my limitations are.

Jim

[rengarch]

Jim, Here is a VR movie that I made of a house renovation in SC. I always having trouble with the settings for these movies. When I click on the "Sun Moves with Viewer", it never illuminates the model enough, so I checked the box under Light Source/camera which seems to help.

Double click to download
http://homepage.mac.com/rengarch/filechute/WERBER.zip

Your comments are most welcomed as well as Dwight's and Karl's.