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

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 !!!!!

"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.

Hi,

I'll pass your render engine related items over to the luxology folks to get their feedback. IMO looking at the link to the different combinations of GI modes there's a lot of choices which would get you poor final image results, I can see how a thorough understanding of them would allow you to decrease your rendering time as you can choose visually acceptable compromises.

It would be good to import 3dsmax .mat files. That is something we will investigate.

All the evermotion models I found on there website were 3ds max. Unfortunately this is an undocumented format and we cant currently read these files. Does the website produce any other format files ? typically which formats do you import into microstation ? if you have some examples which dont import correctly send them to me and we will take a look.

You can set the focal length of the camera and its f-stop value. Also when manipulating a camera in a view you can see the camera cone with edit handles drawn in other views so you can manipulate it from there.

Our lights allow you to set real world values for the lumens, colour temperature etc, You can pick standard bulb preset types from the light manager. You can also see the lux value of the solar light. You can also set the lux value for the environments you pick. What other real world lighting values don't we have ?

Regards

Paul Chater

Hi,

I'll pass your render engine related items over to the luxology folks to get their feedback. IMO looking at the link to the different combinations of GI modes there's a lot of choices which would get you poor final image results, I can see how a thorough understanding of them would allow you to decrease your rendering time as you can choose visually acceptable compromises.

It would be good to import 3dsmax .mat files. That is something we will investigate.

All the evermotion models I found on there website were 3ds max. Unfortunately this is an undocumented format and we cant currently read these files. Does the website produce any other format files ? typically which formats do you import into microstation ? if you have some examples which dont import correctly send them to me and we will take a look.

You can set the focal length of the camera and its f-stop value. Also when manipulating a camera in a view you can see the camera cone with edit handles drawn in other views so you can manipulate it from there.

Our lights allow you to set real world values for the lumens, colour temperature etc, You can pick standard bulb preset types from the light manager. You can also see the lux value of the solar light. You can also set the lux value for the environments you pick. What other real world lighting values don't we have ?

Regards

Paul Chater

"All the evermotion models I found on there website were 3ds max. Unfortunately this is an undocumented format and we cant currently read these files. Does the website produce any other format files ? typically which formats do you import into microstation ? if you have some examples which dont import correctly send them to me and we will take a look."

I can't recall if there was anything other than .MAX files however given Bentley's 'technology sharing agreement' with Autodesk (who took over from Discreet some time ago now) could you not investigate into creating a .max importer? If not then you are not going to be able to make use of the best source of models on the internet which is going to put you in a less competitive position straight away.

"You can set the focal length of the camera and its f-stop value. Also when manipulating a camera in a view you can see the camera cone with edit handles drawn in other views so you can manipulate it from there."

That's all fine but what you are missing is the control of shutter speed. The combination of all 3 in the vray physical camera control the exposure of a scene which I find far more useful than a simple brightness slider. I find this especially useful working in LWF and getting consistent results. You can take this a stage further and reduce render times by darkening materials to be more physically correct and the image brighteness is controlled via gamma correction. In this render theory, Standard materials are currently overbright thus renders take longer to calculate due to the strength of the photons emitted from the material. darker materials, photon have less power and calcs are quicker. I agree with DavidG on the existing cameras. Why cant you simply have them show as an element at all times, lose the edit handles (other than source and target point) and control the settings other data via a dialog box where (to me) it is makes more sense to do so?

Finally I asked above regarding a render SDK but I have not had any comments so I'd appreciate it if you or Jerry or any other Bentley employee with authority  would answer.

I know someone who is the author of a relatively new render program and I queried if he would be able to import DGN files or exported DWG files into the render application's studio. He tells me he would need a SDK to do so.

a) Is this something that Bentley would encourage/allow or are you not wanting other renderers to interact with your files?

b) Would this be the same as a the normal SDK or different one

c)How would such a person attain the relevant SDK to write such a plugin?

I believe you are comparing two things like a Formula 1 and a Ferrari...

You can't compare two things which are made for different subjects.

For one with a single Microstation licence in my company (the biggest in this small country Portugal that almost everyone uses Autodesk products) I can give response to Architecture/Civil/Structure/Water/Electrical - all the design from the first line till the end of the construction. Now if I want to be the top of the line in a single one of this specialties, Bentley gives me software plugins for Microstation for each one of them.

In top of all this I can use Luxology Engine to give me very good quality renders. Of curse this new engine needs a lot of extra work (Bentley team) to start give us even better results (more quality/less render time).

Your are comparing this to a software written only for the visualization purpose?

In this terms maybe we could all go to Autodesk's forum and start to ask for Max guys to gives us results for tecnical drawings...

Hope that Luxology team gives us rapid and accuartly updates in 3d process (SS3)

I'd love to see plugins/tutorials for Microstation like there are for Max...

Thanks.

Jose,

If you have a scene that you feel is slow to render we would be more than happy to look at it. Our goal is to make it easy to get great results with less effort and to have great rendering performance as well. We are running a private beta of SELECT series 3, we have many new rendering features and many are reporting performance improvements over previous version.

If you want to participate in the beta let me know and I'll send you a link.

jerry.flynn@bentley.com

Cheers,

JF

Yes... the Ferrari vs Formula 1 comparison is interesting. Actually, Mstn probably needs to be a big Scania truck, capable of handling 'big jobs'.

Let's not forget that Mstn is using the LX engine, and LX is a direct competitor to the specialised apps you mentioned. So, there is some justification to 'ask for the moon'.

I suspect, the bottleneck is probably on the Mstn side.

The technology on the viz industry is progressing pretty rapidly. There is so much 'paid-for' tech and expertise out there already. Some of it will trickle down to us in the not-so-glamorous AEC sector, hopefully in an intelligent way.

The neighbours are doing the same. Revit has Mental Ray, which replaced Accurender and unified materials libraries, ArchiCAD and VectorWorks have Cinema4D... I think the Mstn/LX link up is pretty shrewd, especially if LX are willing to develop stuff to solve AEC rendering requirements / problems.... like large urban/terrain/environment scenes, vector materials, pipeline automation etc.

WRT to Max import, that would be great, but I'm not so optimistic, despite Adesk + Bentley cooperation. Max file format is based on the modifiers stack being used and thus it's not possible to re-create it without having Max engine. there is NO other software, that can import .Max file without Max being installed and running on the same machine. all the 3D converters do it that way. what is funny, even Adesk does not have any other software that is able to directly read Max files

p.