Hi everyone
Maybe this thread is very complicated or controversial. I have some questions about rendering:
- We'd like to know what is happening with SketchUp. We can only import or use very, very previous versions of SketchUp
- On the other hand nowadays visualitzations rendering are very important. Sometimes you need basic renders and sometines, the most, you need realistic renderings. We recognize Bentley has made a great step with Luxology and Modo but we think there are still some shortcomings. Everything you can find in internet and everything the companys give us to improve or complete our BIM model in order to get renderings are 3DMax or 3DS models. This is great because you can use them. We can import, more or less, the geometry of these elements into ABD but all these models come with real V-Ray materials - textures/colors/etc - approved by the company/owner and we lose them everytime we import. It is a waste of time trying to emulate them. Is there any plan to solve this? Any converter from v-ray to ms/modo material?
Lots of thanks
Borja
Marc
Answer Verified By: Marc Thomas
Hello,
Well... if Vray is putting together a plugin for Modo, It should be relatively easy for Mstn to leverage this, having the same renderer?
Maybe you should join the Modo Vray beta group and lobby Luxology and Vray to provide a conversion tool at least.
We seem to have too many rendering options at the moment: Luxology, LumenRT/Vue, Maxwell, Muto.
I think that there are quite a few emerging forks in the road for Bentley.
1. Luxology: Civils: There is the large model / low photorealism internally rendered use case. Think of big highway projects. You want to render directly in Mstn. Problem seems to be that animation is still a problem for Luxo in Mstn if you read the Viz forum posts. I bet a lot of civils guys would be keen for Bentley to focus on the inbuilt Luxo renderer.
2. Luxology: Photorealistic architectural visualisation: All that entourage needs to be converted into Mstn format. Constant complaints will materials assignment/attachment problems. Artefacts, long renders due to the Monte Carlo stuff. No UV unwrap etc. None of all that nice plugins that you would have if rendering in Modo or Max. Does the distributed renderer work? I bet a lot of archies would be keen for Bentley to focus on the inbuilt Luxo renderer.
3. LumenRT: Low photorealism but interactive. Early days for translator. I can see this being popular for some civils and architects. But, it's not bi-directional at the moment. Maybe there should be a tool to transfer the materials etc to Vue for high photorealistic rendering?
4. ConceptStation: LumenRT inside Mstn? Or it is Mstn tools in LumenRT? Low photorealism but fast with large models. Design and visualise on the same platform.
5. Maxwell: Ease of use, real life materials, lighting. Less requirements to know the tricks that dedicated users would know... but slow. Poor support due to low number of Bentley users. I can see this being popular with architects who only occasionally do visualisation.
6. Muto: translate from I-models. Need to know Unity. Long leaning curve. Can embed BIM info. VR Occulus Rift etc
I think that when Mstn first incorporated Luxology in 2008, we were all excited to able to visualise in the same platform, avoiding all the translation problems and overheads. This would make us all a lot more productive and give us a much richer and more interactive user experience.
Now, we are noticing that good vis requires a big ecosystem and lots of bug killing power. I think that what is needed is better bi-directional tools. At some point, you will need to export (and round trip) the model. Maybe we need an ISM for visualisation.
Regards
Dominic
Export out to Modo and render there is the quickest option. Even if Bentley or someone does a plugin, it will take time to deliver and years to debug. And everytime Vray makes a change there will be problems.
What would be good is a plugin for MODO that synchs between Mstn and MODO so that changes can be updated bi-directionally.... like ISM.