Mstn+Luxology vs 3dMax: Preferred AEC rendering app?

Good story  dwy.seah,

I think MicroStation could indeed be improved on some points, but if you don´t have to model, materialize and render a dinosaur, or make advanced animations, why should you already buy an expensive 3D studio Max licence next to MicroStation? Does the extra costs of the program weigh up against the few extra functions you maybe use? 

I think that for architectural or engineering visualization MicroStation is an excellent 3D application. The quality of the end product is in my opinion, already comparable with advanced 3D applications like 3D studio Max. The biggest influence is the knowledge of the user. Look for example in the Gallery to images of Kurt S.

Regards Louis.

Louis,

" why should you already buy an expensive 3D studio Max licence next to MicroStation? "

I can only speak from the architectural side, and I would say that most firms do NOT use Mstn, even those who are Mstn shops, as their viz application. The most popular package is 3dMax.

I have always thought this to be a problem, as there was always the translation barrier and the coordination headache, because last minute changes tended to be done in Max and the rest of the CAD info would fall out of sync, among other problems.... not very BIM-my.

Regards

Dominic

3D pixels and raster particle systems very cool, huge potential.

Jerry thanks for the tip.

Seeing I'm using a bootcamp partion I don't have a ton of extra "local" space.  All my data resides on my network server.  This huge amount of data was getting sent to my file server and wreaking havoc with my backups process.  Plus the speed hit of processing them over the network.    Will have to try plugging in an external drive or pushing it to the Mac side of the drive next time.

Aren't most of these large "BIM" projects on a network.  Wondering how some of the others here are rendering.  Local or from data on the network.  Do they storing frames local or on the network?

Regards,

DavidG

Once again about learning resources. Here is nice example of simple set of tutorial videos for Vray for Sketchup:

www.cgarchitect.com/.../newsfeed.asp

Now tell me. How much easier it would be for all of you to get familiar wit Luxo renderer in Microstation

if you had this kind of set of tutorial videos for Microstation/Luxo?

This set was made by one man. Wou it be problem for Bentley to prepare similar set of videos for Luxology renderer?

Jozef

Hi David,

If you are serious about animation you really should get a drive to use for your animation frames. I hooked a 1TB drive for this purpose.

JF

Jerry,

I have a stack of 4 1TB drives however they are only accessible to Windows over the network.  I do my post editing on a Mac with Final Cut.  I just point my output to that machine.  That worked well in the past but not so well with how things are processed.  

First one of these I tried to do locally died after it maxed out my drive.  I figured I had plenty of room but didn't account for Frame size x 10!

Not a major deal to work around.  Just need to get a handle on this new method of processing frames.

Thanks,  DavidG

Hello

Must admit I'm not as involved in the viz/rendering side of things as many of the people in this thread ...

'I'm not sure how Bentley will deal with UV mapping. In Max, you select an element and add what it called a UWV map modifier. This then gives the user a plethora of mapping orientation, size, rotation & scale options and also allows a user to set different settings with the same material without affect other usages of the same material. From what I recall, you can't do that in MS and you would have to duplicate the material in the editor and change its scale there I don't think is a good idea as it just increase the list of mats you have to browse through which can be annoying on a scene with lots of materials.'

This was definitely and issue though .... to have to create a new material just because the pine/timber boards on the stairs run at a different angle to the ones on the floor, ..... seems excessive ... and was very off putting

....

Post production in Photoshop ..... I would say this is very common (in fact pretty much standard practice) ... output to multi-layered Photoshop files is something as far as I know most (all?) high end (and some mid range ... Bryce anyone?) have had for years .....

In fairness .... yes there are more high end images around from other viz apps ..... but they are on the whole produced by people who have been doing it for  ..... a lot years and those apps do have a mature 3rd party chain of companies/developers providing extra content/materials/models and so on

MS + Luxology is very nearly there IMHO for still images ... haven't done any animation for several years so can't comment

Better/more complete tutorials and videos would certainly help !!!!!

Hello

Must admit I'm not as involved in the viz/rendering side of things as many of the people in this thread ...

'I'm not sure how Bentley will deal with UV mapping. In Max, you select an element and add what it called a UWV map modifier. This then gives the user a plethora of mapping orientation, size, rotation & scale options and also allows a user to set different settings with the same material without affect other usages of the same material. From what I recall, you can't do that in MS and you would have to duplicate the material in the editor and change its scale there I don't think is a good idea as it just increase the list of mats you have to browse through which can be annoying on a scene with lots of materials.'

This was definitely and issue though .... to have to create a new material just because the pine/timber boards on the stairs run at a different angle to the ones on the floor, ..... seems excessive ... and was very off putting

....

Post production in Photoshop ..... I would say this is very common (in fact pretty much standard practice) ... output to multi-layered Photoshop files is something as far as I know most (all?) high end (and some mid range ... Bryce anyone?) have had for years .....

In fairness .... yes there are more high end images around from other viz apps ..... but they are on the whole produced by people who have been doing it for  ..... a lot years and those apps do have a mature 3rd party chain of companies/developers providing extra content/materials/models and so on

MS + Luxology is very nearly there IMHO for still images ... haven't done any animation for several years so can't comment

Better/more complete tutorials and videos would certainly help !!!!!

"Post production in Photoshop ..... I would say this is very common (in fact pretty much standard practice) ... output to multi-layered Photoshop files is something as far as I know most (all?) high end (and some mid range ... Bryce anyone?) have had for years ....."

Agreed, and speaking of layering, How many of you users would like to have the option to use Luxology's Shader Tree as an alternative to the current Mat editor?

"In fairness .... yes there are more high end images around from other viz apps ..... but they are on the whole produced by people who have been doing it for ..... a lot years and those apps do have a mature 3rd party chain of companies/developers providing extra content/materials/models and so on"

Just now Material's and Models can be imported and any mapping issues should be (in future - I hope) be able to be corrected in MS so I don't believe that's an issue. I think there are a lot of us who having been doing this for a number of years (in other apps and getting good results) but we can't match the output of these other apps so I don't believe the problem is due to user skills. Yes improving documentation and creation of new tutorials is going to help new users though many will pick up the knowledge quickly, settings for a particular scene type become familiar (ie physical camera exposure for interior & exterior scenes). Eventually they typically don't refer back to help files once they have feel they have a comfortable grasp on the package. Once we have a more complete tool set, material composition interface, simpler/better camera control etc... then users should be able to provide the tutorials for other users and not have to rely on Bentley. We need them to keep working hard on giving us the more modelling features and render options if they seriously want to compete with the more established applications.

1. PSD output: I hear that PS Extended can import a stack of files automatically. Not sure how swapping individual layers would work if all the passes were bundled into one psd. Sure there are solutions for this out there.

Another example of useful render pass info for compositing.

Let's not forget the output from normal Mstn views... there should be an option to export to a layered .psd as well so that LX and Mstn print or QV views can be aligned/composited with minimal fuss.

2. Shader Tree: Mstn should leapfrog Modo and go with a node-based system. ST has got a pretty lukewarm reception.. I suspect LX are moving this way as well, once they get their heads around how to handle 'history' ?  

Why not use the GC / ex-Kollabnet symbolic view? Rendering, materials, lighting, environment, camera / DV's, animation should be proceduralised as GC features, so that a proper end-user automated/scripted compositing pipeline can be built. The time savings would really provide the incentive to 'render' from Mstn/LX.

3. Materials and mapping: lots of work to be done here, AEC probably has more 'precision' or specialised requirements, but need to be able to access max's .mat material libraries. Their procedurals or more complex ones will probably be too difficult.

AEC materials will need to handle more precise placement and tiling. Vector-based or vector-like behaviour? Designs would probably need to emulate or take its cue from drawn CAD info like lines etc or patterns. Modo's ability to bake or imprint a projection of vector elements onto a surface as a normal map and attach that map onto it is very applicable. Once defined as a map, it's then open to the usual enhancements and layering techniques. We have also seen how 3d position info, generated by a 'positional' render pass, can be stored as RGB values in a bitmap. Maybe this can be used to store 3d positions for reconstruction of the vector info or generating further levels of detail?

Also, the DWG design link should be fixed urgently so that material assignments are automatically updated. We always have to feed the visualisers info on what elements (or sub-elements like faces) have what materials. Its an annoying time waster because its always changing. BIM/coordination-wise, you want to do this in Mstn and not on the visualiser's side of the interoperability barrier.

What about FBX, is this a better translation format than DWG?

Physical camera parameters:

- film gate (DSLR, full frame DSLR.....)

- focal length

- zoom factor

- horizontal offset

- vertical offset

- f-number

- vertical shift

- horizontal shift

- vigneting

- white balance

- shutter speed

- shutter angle

- shutter offset

- latency

- film speed (ISO)

- bokeh-number of blades

- bokeh-rotation

- bokeh-center bias

- bokeh-anisotropy

f-number/shutter speed = real depth of field

There are so many advantages of using real world camera. I just need to know parameters of

my DSLR and position from whitch the shot was taken, set the physical camera parameters

by values from EXIF data of my shot and..... Perspective of my scene fits to backround and

brightness of render fits too.

If you have just little photo experience, if you set only 3 parameters - f-number, shutter speed

and film speed - result of rendering is very predictible.

Jozef