FloorPlan User Forum

Hi Forum,

I'm have trouble when rendering my 3D Real View - whatever I try the Ceilings always come out as black.

I've tried Daylight on & Off
I've tried all different sorts of materials
With walls & Ceilings set to the same material 'Paint - white', the walls render fine but the ceilings are still black
With the White Paint surface material edited & changed to 'shiny' - the ceiling comes out black & shiny !!!
I've tried all the different levels of render quality

Any ideas would be much appreciated, Cheers  :)

Are you doing Basic or Advanced render? If Advanced, set the quality level to at least 3.

Is Hardware Acceleration off?

You can set the ceiling material to Emissive rather than Shiny but this should not really be necessary.

Allan

Quote from: weefer on January 30, 2008, 05:50:21 PM
Any ideas would be much appreciated, Cheers  :)

I had a problem before with blotchy ceiling....turned out I had multiple ceilings by accidentally inserting a ceiling more than once...see an earlier post with pictures for a tray ceiling ...poor renders
http://forum.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,89.0.html

If still having problems, suggest you post your .bld file so others can try and see if have same problem or see a way to fix it.

Hi,

Thanks for the advice  :)

I've finally had success by turning Daylight Off & rendering at quality 3 (see attached image)

Any ideas as to why the ceiling is still quite dark in comparison to the bright white walls at the furthest end of the kitchen area (they are the same material)
Attached is my .bld file

Cheers again for your time & advice

For whatever its worth.....I got the same results rendering your file on my PC (HA on)

This was a definite challenge. Never had a ceiling dark but have had severe rendering issues before so fixing this was a learning process. I learned a lot but its not consistent with what I knew before.

With renders so slow and render steps not completing (like 27/500) I guessed there was an object with weird polygons so deleted lots of stuff out of view....renders went faster but still dark ceiling.  You have some thick and mixed wall thicknesses....these can have rendering problems and may be worth studying on a simple one room render???

Removed and replaced ceiling; no better

Played with ceiling properties and found emissive, normally NEVER more than 5% did better but not great even at 80% !!!

Made reflectance 1%...much more and its too much

color bleed made some significance so ended at = 0

Sun "on" seems better but takes longer

Q finally set at 5 as I noticed that more rendering steps kept helping the ceiling

I can't explain why ceiling so dark except it gets no direct light, only reflection as compared to the white walls.  Maybe you need another light (make fixture all transparent so it is not seen) to brighten ceiling but seems like too many lights in kitchen area now as its quite bright.

Good luck. Attached pic for visual and .bld as modified.

Wow, thanks for investigating so thoroughly Doug.

Your version of the .bld file works great on my PC, although renders very slightly darker... (must be due to different graphics card or something)

You've inspired me to do more testing of my own - I've now created a basic box room project so I can rule out any newbie mistakes I may have made in my original project, as it was my first attempt in TFP !

I like the idea of a transparent uplight to lighten the ceiling.

Thanks again
Keith

another thought before you change anything ....

move camera to a new location so you only see the kitchen area ceiling to see if it is dark or light

and make another render from kitchen area back to the hall where original camera was looking from and again see if ceiling is dark

Well I decided to have a go at rendering this one and it was a real problem.  The first image, rendered with no change to anything came out completely white except for a deep grey ceiling and some small shadow areas.  I tried changing the lights and got the image to almost normal but still a pitch black ceiling. The fridge seemed to have a dramatic effect on the brightness of the image, but because the texture had been modified I could not see what it had been changed to, so I replaced it. No the overall light was about normal but still the black ceiling.  After much experimenting, changing lights etc etc. I ended up with images that were always totally black! (except for the window).

So back to square one - I downloaded a fresh copy, replaced the floor in this room, all the appliances in all rooms and all the lights, with the same ones from my catalog . I deleted the bench (Sketch-up?) and its support just in case. I did not touch the ceiling.  It was rendered at top quality (5) with the sun on and completed in 4 and a half minutes. The render below is the result.

In the old FloorPlan I found that some things would affect others. For example, in one model when I put glass in some cabinet doors, all the building windows lit up like lights.  When I discovered the effect the fridge seemed to have, I decided to replace everthing.  What the cultpet was I do not know and why it should make the ceiling black is also a mystery.

I can't say I am happy with the downlights as they should not throw light on the ceiling as they do but that is a separate issue.

Amazing to me as to how every persons lights (and scene) render differently for the same basic bld file.

It would seem that IMSI Design should provide a standard .bld test file with render setup instructions and a sample .bmp rendered reference file so every user could test their PC and see if their system can even produce a simple standard file render output or if their PC renders differently and should look for ways to correct/adjust to yield good renders.

I'll submit this as a suggestion.

Doug,

I don't think it is just different PCs rendering differently.  It renders differently on the same PC with minimal change!  In this model (as in the last image below) I just changed a light globe from 100W incandescent to 100W Halogen (same fitting) and got total blackness (except for the window) - it even turned off all the other 15 lights!  Why such inconsistency?

I experimented with lots of things but had to start again. The six images below are from the new start, showing the steps and dramatically different results.  HA off of course. In all cases (except the first) the render is Advanced Quality 5, no Brightness shift and Sun on. In each case I had to reboot the program to get the Advanced to reset.  As mentioned in the previous post I start again for a third time, replaced all the appliances and lights and it worked - ceiling normal!   Why???????

There are definitely some issues here. I know they are working on it, so the sooner a patch comes out the better when it comes to rendering.  So far I have not had any major projects to do but have one coming up this weekend so I am a little anxious as to how it will go.  Maybe we will get a patch before then!!!

Allan

Hi Allan & Doug,

Thanks so much for all your investigations & suggestions.

Allan - the renders in your last post look very familiar to me ... I got exactly the same results apart from the first one during the many test renders I tried.

I've been away for a few days & unfortunately my demo license has now expired, so my testing has halted (the wife is pleased to see me away from the PC!).  I'm now dithering whether to  dust off my walllet and purchase a full license - so I can carry on designing the rest of our house refurbishment!
It's a real shame the rendering has proved so troublesome as the software has really helped my wife & I decide on many options for our new kitchen/Diningroom.  The 3D view was just about OK to help with colour combinations and general layout (the material tool in 3d view was great for that), however a final realistic render would give us that warm feeling & extra confidence in the design choices we've made.  I did manage to get some OK renders using Doug's project & some items added back in - so thanks Doug  :)

I'll keep dithering & keep an eye on the website for a rendering patch ! Although some key decisions on our Lounge are looming & may force my wallet into action!

Best regards & thanks again

Keith

Keith,

I know how you feel, (the indecision I mean).  Apart from the other work I do, we have designed and build a couple of houses in recent years and putting our design thoughts into Floorplan certainly helped us make decisions and avoid what would have been problems.

We are in that situation again, either building or buying an established place.  Just putting our furniture into simple models of proposed places, straight away tells us whether they will fit, how it will look, will it be convenient. It certainly helps the decision process.

It is a shame there are some rendering issues.  I think the problem comes from the use of materials, or the shinyness or otherwise of these. We do get warnings at times saying that 'this material was not designed for this object' but still carry on using it and the results seem to be OK - but maybe not when the material interacts with the lighting used when rendering.  This was sort of demonstrated with your project.  When I put everthing back to the original materials by replacing them, it worked prefectly.  In effect Doug replaced at least some of the materials and this worked too.  I suspect it is not the materails/colours themselves but the surface shine/finish, that is causing the problem, but that is just speculation on my part. In previous versions of FloorPlan you could not apply a shine to a texture, only to a colour.

I know they are working on these things, so we will just have to be patient until a patch arrives.

All the best with your plans.

Allan

This is just about rendering in general.  I bought Turbofloorplan just to play around.  I'm running a Dell desktop 32 bit with 2 GB of RAM, nvidia GeForce 6150LE graphics card and, sadly, Vista.  After much frustration and contact with the tech people, I finally got TFP to run.  But nothing will render.  It returns only "unknown error."  Tech suggested downloading latest nvidia drivers.  Did that an nothing works.  I know the program doesn't cost a lot, but it seems pretty worthless if all I can design are boxy sketches.  I haven't seen that anyone has trouble with this program.  Is anyone running Vista, and if so, did you have the same problems?

Welcome to the forum!  Sorry to hear you are having problems.  Dispite a few rendering issues the program is fascinating to use and can render well - with the right settings!  See the images - they have been posted before some time ago but you may not have seen them.

First, I would suggest that you post your question about Vista as a new thread with a specific title mentioning Vista - it could easily get missed here.  I seem to recall others have commented they have Vista, so hopefully you may get a response. I don't have Vista so can't comment on it.

Did the Tech Support people mention about Hardware Acceleration? If you have that on (Settings/Program Settings/Graphics) then try with it off.  My PC will not do an Advanced render with it on, although I do not get that message - just nothing happens!  HA off it is fine.  It can cause all sorts of erratic results on some PCs.  It is very much PC related - some have no problem with it.

Allan

Hi All,

First post and I have some question, but first an idea. I have been playing with TFP for a day or so after using FP on and off for a long time. I did a did a render of my kitchen remodel and came across the same issue of the black ceilings, but I have found an interesting workaround (well at least last night it worked, this morning I'm not so sure!).

I found that after the first 20 steps or so of an advanced render, if the radiosity image comes up a bit odd, simply pause the radiosity render then restart. You will notice an immediate effect on the image. If you pause and restart again, the image will return to the previous render.

I render on HQ (5) as my ceilings does not get light until after about 400 steps. I also created a new bleach white an change the emissive setting to about 5%.

Chris