Hi
This is my first demo or sample post. Hope its OK to do here.
Link to animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5az6hHVIVM
Have supplied link only as not sure if this forum supports link embedding YouTube directly, view in 720p for better quality.
The link to YouTube is a video animation, exterior view only as I need to fix some things with the interior extras, the TFP model is fine, just the resolution of many of the standard furniture assets need higher poly and my system it struggling with TFP single house model as it is. Model is fully made in TurboFloorPlan (started many a time ago and put aside for other things) and the animation using Lumion. That's the other reason for no internal as Lumion v1 was mainly exterior but new release now supports interior and heaps of lighting, so might try again if get time.
I do like all the parametric features of TFP and such an economic price I'm not sure if there's a need to go up to its big brother or not.
It required export using 3ds and vrml. I found I had lots of material issues with faces inverted or no UV or normals wrong way for realtime 3d to use, so needed to find a process and spend some time cleaning up in SketchUp etc. Still trying to sort out some of the scaling issues such as 3ds is generic unit only. Some of the VRML meshes had better material mapping.
It would be good (previously suggested this) for TFP to have a standards based exporter such as Collada and/or FBX. Conncectivity is the only way for software to go and a 3ds exporter from 1992 or there-abouts does not really help IMHO.
Anyway your thoughts and comments. I must complete some still image renders as soon as can.
Hi Freezz,
I think you have done a wonderful job with your model and animation. The model obviously has a lot of detail and a lot of time has obviously gone into it. It will be nice when we can see the inside too!!
You asked for "thoughts and comments" so here are a few thoughts on your remarks:
Quote from: freezz on December 20, 2011, 08:32:57 PM
Have supplied link only as not sure if this forum supports link embedding YouTube directly, view in 720p for better quality.
This may be the best way to go, as the forum only has a 4MB limit. I have no idea what the size of your YouTube file is but would imagine it is more than that. What file type is used? That may be an issue also although we may be able to add the file type if the size is within the limits.
Quote from: freezz on December 20, 2011, 08:32:57 PM
Model is fully made in TurboFloorPlan (started many a time ago and put aside for other things) and the animation using Lumion. That's the other reason for no internal as Lumion v1 was mainly exterior but new release now supports interior and heaps of lighting, so might try again if get time.
Did you try using TFP's own animation? It is easy as it uses the TFP lighting and textures automatically and does a great job. I did the building rotations and all the other animations in this flash program with TFP: www.synergy.net.au/renovator (http://www.synergy.net.au/renovator). It was initially done at high resolution so the rendering times were long processes but no issues with lighting, textures etc as it was 'in house'.
Quote from: freezz on December 20, 2011, 08:32:57 PM
I do like all the parametric features of TFP and such an economic price I'm not sure if there's a need to go up to its big brother or not.
There is no need to go up the the 'big brother' if you are only interested in the 3D model as Envisioneer is identical in this part of the program. The only difference in Envisioneer is that it has a Worksheets component that allows you to layout plans, elevations, sections etc to provide professional plan printing.
Quote from: freezz on December 20, 2011, 08:32:57 PM
It required export using 3ds and vrml. I found I had lots of material issues with faces inverted or no UV or normals wrong way for realtime 3d to use, so needed to find a process and spend some time cleaning up in SketchUp etc. Still trying to sort out some of the scaling issues such as 3ds is generic unit only. Some of the VRML meshes had better material mapping.
As mentioned before, if you create the movie within TFP you will not have lighting and texture problems. I am not sure how you would go after that however to add such things as water and people movement. TFP will allow you add sounds along the way as you go by (birds, water etc) and you can string the movies together so you can add other sequences in, but there is no way to make single objects move. I have not tried this, but I understand that a 3DS opened in SketchUP and then saved, will lock the textures and make them move easily editable also. Someone may be able to confirm this. I know Doug has worked a lot with movies so he will probably have some good suggestions for you.
Quote from: freezz on December 20, 2011, 08:32:57 PM
I must complete some still image renders as soon as can.
Yes you must!! It would be great to see some!
Great work! Keep it up! - and keep showing us what you are doing.
Allan
Thanks Allan for feedback etc.
QuoteDid you try using TFP's own animation?
Yes, a number of times, but I think I need a much faster PC. I have a reasonably good GPU, and CPU is Quad-core with 4GB, but render times for TFP were sooooo long. I played with the render quality settings to speed things up, if its (as someone else mentioned in the Gallery) a small animation say up to 20 seconds it can be coped with but longer than that I would start pulling my hair out. From memoery that person took 24 hours to do 23 seconds, doesn't mention how large the frames were. Mind you offsetting that is for this project exporting to another program and the headaches I had with the 3ds files etc. I used SketchUp that did a lot of cleaning but as mentioned there were still surface with wrong normals etc, so ended up re-applying materials in SkUP etc.
From my tests of the rendering I think it can give reasonably good quality final output, and of course as you mentioned once lights its all taken care of, but I have also used Max.
The video format is mp4 at 720p (approx 224mb) and YouTube will accept that and then render a 360p for initial quicker play time online, so I am OK with the forum not directly supporting and just having a link is OK, much better for YT to serve/stream it anyway.
By the way, interesting Flash animation, nice house render and you included interior. Presume you rendered as single frames/stills and then they were imported and Flash handled the forward and back play motion of the frames.
I had fun in TFP with the roof, wouldn't make easy clean flat angle surfaces but that was in TFP 15, and I think the new tool for roofs or improved surface tool makes it a breeze to do that type of roof now, haven't tried out yet on a new building.
The rendering in TFP takes only a short time really, as it renders the whole model first. Then it proceends to move the camera around the plotted route taking still images. If the still image size is large, then each frame will take a long time (a few minutes each) and depending on the frame rate that could then add up to a while of course. You can access this rendered model when you do still images also, then all you have to do is Modify the camera positions so it only does the Raytrace sequence not the whole model. This saves considerable time if you need to take lots of still images of the model.
My building rotation was a movie not stills and Flash changed the direction of course. In the initial render it produced 180 frames for the single rotation (about 3 hours in total from memory). This proved to be far too many and was reduced to 45 for the Flash production. That would have reduced the time to just 45 minutes. The initial image size was also far too large and could possibly have been halved also, so a total movie recording time could have been just 20 min or so. Initially I was interested in quality rather than time so I did not worry about that at the time.
A number of the other animations were also movies but a few were done with single images joined together. The most tricky part was locating the cameras for the secondary animations so they aligned exactly with the rotation images, otherwise the image would jump when the secondary animation started. Good fun doing it though, came out reasonably well and nice to get paid for what you like doing!! ;D
I did not even consider exporting it as a 3DS, VRML etc as I knew there would be a huge amount of time involved with textures etc. I figured that if the movie would take a while to render then start it before going to bed! I think the user who's animation took 23hrs must have had a very slow PC or had the resolution/frame rate too high.
I don't understand why you had a problem with the roof - it looks like a very straifght forward 'flat' roof(s). What was the problem you had? Essentially all the edges are set to Gable except the ones that slope the same way which are set to the degree of slope - it should have been quite easy. It would also be easier to put the two roofs on different locations. By the way, there is no difference that I am aware of, in the roof tools between V15 and V16.
Allan
Hi Frezz,
Thanks for the info on Lumion. I tested my Hi Rise and found I couldn't resize it as a 3DS export from TFPlan. I could resize but it was limited and way too big. That slowed down Lumion, so all I did was generate a 'photo' / rendering , although the F4 high quality mode allowed me to represent the model almost with the same quality as the photo render.
I am extremly impressed with the RealTime rendering and the final output.
So I tested again, this time importing the 3ds file to Sketchup and then exporting as a Collida (?) file which resized easily. I then played with the glass texture setting which I again impressed by the simple application to all common surfaces at once.
I have a dual core with 4 gig Ram and a lower graphics card than recommended. For this reason the program is limited to only those with high end machines or the frustration of slow going.
But this is certainly a exciting glimpse into the future of cad rendering and animation.
thanks,
Jack
Hi
Apols for not getting back sooner.
Allan thanks for feedback. Your project for the Flash is interestng, especially where things are heading online, although now Adobe are sending different singles about the future of Flash, it's a pain to know what to invest in in time and resources.
Anyway, digress slightly. I am only a newby and part-time learner for TFP, it was the roof part for lounge/dining/kitchen, the back house part over bedrooms was a breeze. I did try again following your suggestions the other day for a weee while and did manage to make some progress and finally got the right edges/sides set in the roof definition so it sloped corrrectly, but need more practise.
I am going to have a go rendering in TFP again and do some trial/tests and log the times using one of the sample buildings included with TFP then post to the forum and see how that compares to others using the program.
Jack, thanks for comments. Yeah it's a problem with exported 3ds in that the units are generic units only. I did much same as you, pass my models through SketchUp to rescale and also tried using Deep Explorer but SkUp was easiest and nicely does Collada (now that they have improved the exporter just before Xmas), then into Lumion and got the correct scaling (finally).
Re high end machines, yes there is certainly a minimum and of course the more GPU grunt you have the better off, so I guess its a matter of budget and paying a few $'s to get a new grpahics card which will immediately be offset by big time savings in renderings and/ or quality etc in Lumion or other apps. Lumion is geared for using standard desktop PC graphics rather than the specialised Quadro's for CAD so its a lot cheaper buy in cost. I upgraded from a GTX9800 to a GTX560 for only $350 and it makes a difference, and the GTX580 can almost halve the rendering time for some stuff.
As mentioned that demo of the TFP house was with Lumion v1 and they have recently released v2 with lighting and other new bits. Makes a big difference in interiors of course so will try and go back to the model and do some interiors if get time.