Quick renderings suggestion
I upgraded from Pro Architect 2 to Pro Architect 15. In the process, discovered that renderings now take WAAAYYYYYY longer. A 15-minute PA2 rendering is now a 90-minute PA15 rendering…with the same 3D TrueView options, on the same PC.
From what I can see from the material properties in the Library Manager, the big difference added somewhere between 2 and 15 is the added rendering goodness of bump maps.
Bump maps in Envisioneer! Yayyy!! Used to be if a material was even a tiny bit reflective, it might as well be a mirror. Happily, those days are gone.
But…
I’d like to be able to turn off bump maps (and/or anything else that’s keeping me from doing 15 minute renderings), because the rendering workflow goes like this–
- Generate a quick, low-quality rendering to catch the uglies we missed in 2D or non-rendered 3D.
- Fix the uglies.
- Generate another quick, low-quality rendering to catch more uglies and make sure the 1st batch of uglies are fixed.
- Repeat as required.
- Generate high-quality rendering. Overnight, if needed.
Please add a “Use Bump Maps” checkbox to the 3D RealView/Options dialog.
A matter of perspective, Conrad.
You are doing this for a living and there’s ROI for you in investing in a fire-breathing rendering machine. Awesome!
I’m an ex-architect who dips my toe in the architectural waters every 5-7 years when the remodel bug hits. There’s zero ROI for me for anything but a productivity-software-oriented computer. Office 365, Quicken, QuickBooks, and the like.
Others that might be in my situation are hobbyists, students, architects just starting out. That last group is one that Cadsoft would do well to court.
The very fact that all the other time vs. quality variables are present in the Options dialog box make clear there should be a checkbox for bump maps joining them.
Other options: Let me install on 2 computers so I can tie up my 7 year old laptop with renderings while I use my Surface for other things. And/or split off the rendering part into a separate executable–can be command line if necessary–and let me run that on the other computer in batch mode. Back in my architect days there was a 3D program our rendering guy used that let him set up a rendering farm at night on PCs whose users had gone home. (486’s and Pentiums in those days!) Same idea. (The rendering farm feature can follow in a later version 🙂 This same program, BTW, allowed bump maps to be turned off for “quick” renders. Can’t remember the name of it any more.
I’m OK with waiting for a “final” rendering, just need options to make a “quick” rendering quick, within the software.
Finally, I worked with support on this a week or so ago. They rendered my model in a few minutes less than an hour on their computers. My computer was right at an hour. That tells me I really shouldn’t invest in a computer with more video RAM, which is what they said the issue was. (I have a Surface Pro 7; video card is not upgradeable.) You evidently had a different experience. I set all the options to lowest/fastest values; perhaps the difference would be larger with higher/slower settings.
for some reason i can not answer this post it just blocks me. will try editing this and post my reply to jrv like this for some reason it does not let reply to your post.
Conrad
Yes Jrv i totally understand, I wouldn’t even have thought about it if i wouldn’t be that i’m doing a lot of renderings. It’s just that like right now i have quite a few projects (around a dozen) that will be getting 4 high quality exterior shots these are advertising projects that will be go online so i want to get a very good quality pics of them. and its just that it takes to long for my current computer, and with 48 ext. renders and by letting it run over night it would take 48 nights which is to long, it will require some day time renders and i just thought it makes sense for me to get a good one that will crank them out fast. And i wouldn’t have done it either if most of my work would be doing floor plans and not 3D.
Conrad
