The title might be a bit over the top but the sentiment is right on. I always look forward to attending Jerry’s session and this year’s Bentley LEARNing Conference ones did not disappoint! This time, Jerry brought his wealth of visualization knowledge to bear on civil design projects with great tips and stunning results.As always, Jerry finds ways to adopt the powerful visualization tools delivered with MicroStation to create real works of art. In this too-short 45 minute lecture, he covered a lot of ground from how to stripe roads to lighting techniques, to just plain fun!
One of the key points Jerry reiterates over and over is the need to be efficient in using your computing resources. He finds the most best method for obtaining realistic results without “breaking the bank” in terms of time it takes to render any given image. Case in point, Jerry revealed that one trick he uses to improve render time while still getting outstanding results is the use of glowing material instead of point lights. He demonstrated this with red tail lights on rendered vehicles that were very realistic but took only a fraction of the time to render (4 minutes versus 16 minutes for point lights)
Another example: “Billboard geometry plus fur materials equals extremely realistic landscape materials” This is especially relevant to roadway and bridge designs where there is a lot of landscape to be placed/rendered. Jerry demonstrated how quick and easy it is using combinations of visualization content placement and interesting methods of application for creating a natural look to the final product.
There is so much Jerry covers that I definitely recommend a followup (see bottom of this article) to get started with producing great images.
A few final words of wisdom from Jerry:
“3D mouse… get one”“You can never have enough [computer] cores… or memory”“Displaysets in MicroStation… use it!”
To share in the #Bentley15 learning, take the on-demand course available in the LEARNserver. Click here and scroll down to see “Civil Visualization in MicroStation V8i (SELECTseries 3)”.