realistic sun in AC10

[Anonymous]

Realistic sun in AC10 works very similar with heaven light.
Is it right?

[Thomas Holm]

Then I guess someone will have to post an Undersun in the ArchicadObjectRepository (wink wink nod nod

[Dwight]

Let me confirm that there is a real difference between these two objects and I'm alarmed that one English language version of ArchiCAD lacks a key benefit.

I'll see what I can do about getting the superior SkyObject circulated, or to discover the reason why it isn't in the USA version. One possibility is that the metric values of the European sun will cause ArchiCAD models constructed with imperial dimensions to burst into flame, regardless of their real fire ratings.

Or, that in some way, not having this fancy foreign sun somehow makes the homeland more secure.

In the meantime, here it is.

[Anonymous]

Some info:
LightWorks soft (shadow mapped) shadows are fast, can use a lot of memory (because of the shadow map), and buggy (light can leak through walls).
Realistic sun and sky (ray traced) are slower, but easy to use, use very little memory and not buggy.

You can get used to the namings if you know their properties (hard = one ray traced, realistc = several rays traced, soft = shadow mapped; ray tracing = no memory, shadow mapping = lots of memory).

[Dwight]

I assume that when the PhotoRendering Settings are set to use the Sun Shader (not "Realistic") that those settings are the ones that call the LightWorks shadow maps.

If so, can you clarify what the Sun Shader shadow map parameters mean?

[Rafal SLEK]

Regarding SkyObject.gsm - note that this object is buggy 🙂
GS prevent us from making too good shadow resolution - on WinXP Archicad shouts that has got no enough memory when setting best parameters (2GB on board and four walls to render 🙂 )
regards
Rafal

[Dwight]

but dreamy effects possible.

[__archiben]

Dwight wrote:
but dreamy effects possible.

they haven't got that translucency shader working by any chance have they dwight? haven't had the time to put lightworks through it's paces just yet. by the way, how do we get the archicad 10 supplementary for your book? did i miss the instructions?

~/archiben

[Dwight]

In view of the inconsistency - sky object - in ArchiCAD 10 features that we are discovering on ArchiCAD TALK, there isn't much point in issuing an update just yet.


I am "pursuing inquiries" at the moment, but am disappointed in Graphisoft's non-response.

Registered owners of my book will be advised when the supplement is ready. If you already have my book, look on page 3 to see the secret registration method.

[Dwight]

As for running out of memory - on mac this does not happen nyahnyah - but to ask for 1024 samples from the skyobject and 512 samples from the Realistic sun sure do take more time and will not tolerate being backgrounded on a dual processor machine - so, snotty, too.

When you drive the sampling raet up to the max, it takes two hours to make a two minute rendering. And so it goes.

Of course, shadow edges are really soft and smooth this way, but most users should be putting roughnes sinto their surfaces, and this action obscures the perfection of shadows.

[Dwight]

~/archiben wrote:

Dwight wrote:
but dreamy effects possible.

they haven't got that translucency shader working by any chance have they dwight?
~/archiben

The transluceny shader is a Reflectance Class shader. By itself, it posesses NO transparency, an aspect we expect from translucent materials like polyethelene sheet, say.

To make a proper translucent material requires combining both translucency as a reflection behavior and transparency to see through the element.

However, I feel that this solution doesn't address the disruptive effect of frosting or other mechanical translucency and use a small pattern on the surface - too small for the rendering engine to resolve - like the transparent grid shader, for instance. This makes a disrupted surface that is more effective.

Look, for instance at the leaf treatment on page 161 using a texture map as a mask to fool the rendering engine into making translucent leaves.