My impression is that Mstn may soon be able to offer itself up as an alternative to 3dMax/Design as the preferred stills rendering app in the AEC market?
3dsMax users... what is still missing in Mstn that is fundamental...?
Plug-in infrastructure? Fully scriptable?
Procedural materials editor? BIM-aware materials assignment ?
Hardware based preview windows?
Better integration with Photoshop..render to layers? Include 3d plane / depth info so that PS extended can 'paint' like Piranesi?
Other question would be if there any AEC specific functionality / opportunities for Mstn to consider?
Photo based or 'infused' workfkows?
Image based 3d modeling, texture /decal acquisition....?
Point clouds are becoming popular.. but mashed up with particle shaders for rendering? Laser scanners can also capture colour inf0.. convert to textures?
Something that is aimed at rendering landscaping / foliage? Mesh? Particles? Voxels?
Geo-referenced / Verified View Montage tools
Environmental ?
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
"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 ?
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?
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