ArchiCAD 22 can't do sun study animations using 3D window

[Paul King]

As usual, the very first thing I experienced after installing a new ArchiCAD version (in this case AC22 v3009) , was a bug

ArchiCAD 22 it seems has lost the ability to save out normal sunstudy animations from the 3D window - the resulting animation file outputs (either mp4 or wmv format) now just play a completely black animation (as in every frame being solid black).

While the animation is being generated, the 3D window in ArchiCAD displays the normal moving sun and shadows, so the problem lies with the movie file generation process, rather than the model content.

AC22 can still save out a series of still frames from the 3D window that are not solid black, but these omit the time stamp info for each frame (making them useless), and AC22 can still save out a Maxxon rendered animation, with the timestamp present, but this is not a practical alternative when lots of sun studies are required to investigate multiple options.

ArchiCAD 21 on same PC meanwhile continues to generate normal sunstudy output from a copy of the same file - demonstrating that this is not just a system or video codec issue.

What a comprehensive disaster!

Perhaps Graphisoft should proactively invite some of the older more productive testers back on to the beta testing team again, rather than leaving it to chance as to who discovers when testing is open in time to actually join....?

[scom570]

I have the same issue and this is actually a very painful work around, however, I have an alternate solution.
My setup is a large hi res monitor as my main and a secondary monitor for e-mail, browsing, etc.
The main is set to 125% so I can actually see the icons while the second monitor is at 100%.
So I simply move the AC window over to the second monitor and run the sun study and it works. Still annoying but better than changing display settings IMO.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it indeed looks like this is caused by the scaling of the OS: if it is anything but 100%, the result will be completely black. The workaround is actually pretty simple:
Right before you would export the MP4, you change the scaling to 100%, do the export, and then you can change it right back to 150%. The video should be fine in this case (I tested it on several machines). We will try to fix it in an update as soon as we can.

Thanks Daniel - Scaling of monitor was the culprit. Changed the scaling to 100% and the sun study saved out fine. Thanks for posting

[Anonymous]

scom570 wrote:
I have the same issue and this is actually a very painful work around, however, I have an alternate solution.
My setup is a large hi res monitor as my main and a secondary monitor for e-mail, browsing, etc.
The main is set to 125% so I can actually see the icons while the second monitor is at 100%.
So I simply move the AC window over to the second monitor and run the sun study and it works. Still annoying but better than changing display settings IMO.

Cracking Idea! Cheers

[Anonymous]

Did this ever get sorted? This is the first time that I've tried to do Sun Studies on AC22 and the MP4 is all black. I did see that it was going to get sorted, but it obviously hasn't. Any suggestions? What is the 100% that was mentioned? The screen percentage?

thanks for any help.

[Paul King]

Geblues wrote:
Did this ever get sorted? This is the first time that I've tried to do Sun Studies on AC22 and the MP4 is all black. I did see that it was going to get sorted, but it obviously hasn't. Any suggestions? What is the 100% that was mentioned? The screen percentage?

thanks for any help.

The '100%' in this case refers to Windows 10 desktop display scaling

[Daniel Kovacs]

Hello Everyone,

Just want to let you know, that we plan to release a fix for this in the next update of AC22 (build 70xx). You will find it in the release note as fix #250854.

Until then the scaling solution seems to be the best option still.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Did this ever get sorted? I don't want to have to change the screen resolution from 125% to 100% just to do a sun study. My main computer is still Windows 7. I don't know how I could change my second monitor to 100% as suggested earlier.

There was mention in April about a fix... It is now Sept, did the fix actually happen? Or am I one of the few that it actually affects?

[Paul King]

Geblues wrote:
Did this ever get sorted? I don't want to have to change the screen resolution from 125% to 100% just to do a sun study. My main computer is still Windows 7. I don't know how I could change my second monitor to 100% as suggested earlier.

There was mention in April about a fix... It is now Sept, did the fix actually happen? Or am I one of the few that it actually affects?

Not fixed in my testing.
Here in NZ we are still on patch 6.xxx, and the roadmap for a fix noted above was for not until 7.xxx.

Suspect it may be not be fixed in time to beat the changeover to AC23
.