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

"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

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

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