I know you can add in an image of your house or something, but can you add multiple images into your drawing?
like i want to add in images from my property on all sides.
Is there anyway that I can do this?
-Christian Murphy
Hi Christian,
Yes you can use multiple images but not stitched together as a background as it floats and will always be same regardless of the angle it is viewed from. The Office building in these posts http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,758.0.html (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,758.0.html) and http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,759.0.html (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,759.0.html) uses one image for the background and two for the reflections in the windows.
Import your images as a Photoboards (File/ Import/ Photoboard Wizard), set to 'fixed' not 'billboard' (billboard swivels to always face the camera), and position them opposte the camera angle for that side of the house. You may have to play with the sun angle, because, unlike the background which just 'floats' around the model, these are fixed so must have the sun on them, so they are not in a shadow and so that they do not cast a shadow over your model. To avoid the shadows on your model you may have to use them one at a time, or be prepared to move them out of the way as each scene is rendered.
You can push images up to each other (or through each other as I did with the 'reflection images' in the office building windows), so they 'join' at angles to each other, but you have to get the lighting such that the join is not visible and shadows are not cast onto the model. Putting the image on a curved surface causes it to break into vertical strips, so that does not work.
Using the images separately is not ideal, but does work and very realistic rendered images are possible if you position the photoboards correctly.
Allan
Have not tried this in TFP but works in other 3D programs...
Make a very large cylinder....big enough to surround the whole property....and paste a cylinder panorama usually in ratio of width = 2x height to the inside of the cylinder surface....and rotate to suit the scene
thus all views looking out thru a window will see the background correctly.
Hi Doug,
Unfortunately I have not been ableto get this to work in TFP. Because the curves are really a series of straight surfaces, the image seems to break up in to strips of the image repeating the leading section each time. If you were to split the image into separate strips and size them to fit the straight sections of the curve it may work but would take a lot of experimenting and I suspect the joins would still show. It may be a question of getting a suitable smooth curved surface to apply the image to - if you have one from your other projects as a 3DS or whatever, I would not mind giving it a go.
Photoboards each side for interior shots is very easy, outside views a little harder, but it can still work quite well with correct positioning.
Allan
It looks like i'm going to have to position them just right. i want the whole property background in while I'm positioning trees and stuff, because i want to see what it looks like and block out all the houses and other unsightly objects and see just the top of the mountains.
Thank you for your help Allan!
-Christian
Hi Christian,
There is no reason why you cannot take a series of photos, 8 for example and place them around the model to form an octagonal shape. If you push the images into each other you can match the adjacent images to make them continuous. You can intersect the images (with Collision off) so the joins can be almost invisible. As long as the sunlight is directly on them the joins may not show at all.
If you want to produce some nice images later ,you may have to move some to get the angle you want and avoid the shadows they may cast. Use the Layout tools (2D so won't show) to mark the positions of the images, so you can easily repostion them for rendering a view from another angle. Alternatively you could put each image on a different location so you can easily turn them on an off at will with the view filter. Positioning them in the first place would be harder though if they were on different locations. You could put them all on the ground floor location initially, then Duplicate them to the separate locations (right click), then delete the ground floor ones.
Allan
Sound interesting, I am going to try this as soon as it clears up outside. So it might not be until late afternoon tomorrow. Your help is greatly appreciated Allen.
-Christian
You are most likely correct...I forgot....I was getting a faceted sink once and imported a .3ds smooth sink with few or very many faces and the results were always the same....faceted reflections. TFP has no means to "smooth" a vertex model surface....which is very unfortunate and a simple addition to the code. Virtually all 3D programs have multiple controlled smoothing algorithms...TFP should too; at least have one simple one. I'll add it to the suggested improvements.
I did find that the built-in basic geometric shapes...including the sphere are math models and not faceted so they reflect with smooth results. I once faked a convex mirror by using a large sphere and hiding most of the sphere behind the wall....of course removing it for render views of that wall so the fake sphere would not be seen from behind.
Quote from: Allan Chesney on March 25, 2010, 10:03:48 AM
Hi Doug,
Unfortunately I have not been ableto get this to work in TFP. Because the curves are really a series of straight surfaces, the image seems to break up in to strips of the image repeating the leading section each time. If you were to split the image into separate strips and size them to fit the straight sections of the curve it may work but would take a lot of experimenting and I suspect the joins would still show. It may be a question of getting a suitable smooth curved surface to apply the image to - if you have one from your other projects as a 3DS or whatever, I would not mind giving it a go.
Photoboards each side for interior shots is very easy, outside views a little harder, but it can still work quite well with correct positioning.
Allan