V15 Indoor render to verify type and quantity of lights - feasable?

[dBminus]

Hi Allan,
I got similar times as you with the adv render and just terrain, or terrain & plants.  I went back and started with just the house first, basement and ground and dormer walls, footers, members, columns and decks and roof and HVAC (for chimney) to get a fairly complete rear view of the house.  Changed the background to the lake view (much better choice than the sad water fill paint I had choosen

I ran 4 adv renders Q4 2000 stps - all at 8:30am july 1, 11 at its gps location.  Attached are my results.  Very odd.  The house rendered well, floating on the water.  Adding just the terrain then slowed it down big time, even though the terrain by itself is good...  Then added the plants.  No big time difference... so just for grins, I removed the terrain and rendered the house with just the trees... and that seemed to work fast as well.   I don't get it.    I would agree, the terrain seems relatively simple to render, but throw the house in first, and its a different story...
Dave

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Dave,

Sorry but I can't explain why rendering the terrain by itself is quick and rendering the walls by themselves is quick but rendering both together is very slow. Certain things do affect others (as you know by the lighting) but.....?

Anyway - back to your model.  

First, there is a problem wall in the Barn and I think you suspected as much from a comment earlier and it causes a total failure of the render. Note the image for the wall in question - when you select it look for the wall that creates a long spike (as on the image) when you select it.

There are a few wall issues in the house itself, but nothing major and none affect the render.

I have rendered with each of the groups of elements off and none seem to make a difference by themselves so it does not appear that there is a major problem with any of them. Interstingly in none of the renders did the photoboard people appear - only the shadow! The images were nota good angle for the car - obviously the model has no floor in it!

I think the reason it is taking so long is the total number of polygons involved (153,000+) and the very high number of steps selected, 2000. I am not sure if there is some reason you have slected that number but it renders fine on just 200 (Quality 1) which takes 19 minutes with everything turned on including the barn. Level 3 (500 steps) takes 30 minutes but visually there is virtually no difference.  Compare them and you will notice the only difference is a few more lights on in the 200 step image so it fact it could be judged as better than the 500 step image that took somewhat longer.

After sucessfully proving that the model was OK (after the barn wall deletion) I tried rendering with 2000 steps but terminated it. It took 1hour 15 min for just 150 steps of the 2000. Incidentally, you can pause the radiosity phase at any point then click the Raytrace button to complete the image. The Terrain is added in the Raytrace pahase.

From my previous test, Interior renders need Quality 3 (500 steps) to be sure all the lights are on, but exterior renders are fine at much lower step levels and extra rendering times are pointless as there is no decernable improvement in quality.

Allan

[dBminus]

Hi Allan,

Thanks very much for spending all that time with the model.  How did you ever figure out what wall was broken in the barn?  Now that I know where it is, I can select it and delete it, but when I draw a new section in it misbehaves again.  I used to have doors on that wall but somewhere along the line I missed something up.  I'll go through and rebuild it.  I think the barn was one of the first things I started on and my skills were not as 'refined'.

I guess I used 2000 steps when I was doing the inside renders with lights.  I could always stop it early, as you mentioned.  With the house and terrain visible for the adv render, it sure does start off slow.  After 1000 steps, it seems to speed to the finish, but as you say, there isn't much benefit.

Us users really appreciate the time and explainations you give to our projects.  Thanks for running a great forum.

Dave

[dBminus]

Hi forum,
Been adding features to the model prior to the 'final render' and I may have created more issues wrt rendering.  After importing some custom light fixtures and fine tuning some features, when I open the render 3d realview, it's initial viewport is not like the interactive render view in the main program.  When I do a standard render, the sun angle and exposure looks broken.

I ran a few test cases, one with the complex model and just about everything on - where the basic render breaks, a 2nd case where most everything is off except the walls, roof and deck that are visible, along with the terrain and a forrest of trees.  The 3rd case has the same features turned on as case 2, but all the hidden features have been erased (that file is ~ 9mb, whereas the complex one is ~ 19mb).   Its interesting that the basic render appears to work correctly with case 2 and 3 (actually faster in case 3).  The adv render which seemed to work in all cases had similar times in case 2 and 3.  I'd use the adv render except the trees and some of the terrain look over exposed as mentioned in other posts.  Seeing how V16 has just been released, I wonder if its render engine has improved with the lighting issues....  I'll have to try it  Attached are my 3 cases fyi.
Dave

[dBminus]

Well, figured out that the basic render was 'broken' by having the interior lights on.  Apparently, they made the bright spot in the house that created shadows radiating out... making the fence post cast a shadow in the wrong direction.  Also, after a repair project, the basic render viewpoint matched the interactive render view...

Downloaded and installed a trial of V16 and imported my project into it.  I rendered the same view and it had the same bright spot in the basic render until I turned off the interior lights (should have had that off anyways...)   I attached the render views with lights off.  Looks like the basic and advanced render the same as V15 with this outside view.  Haven't tested the interior nighttime ones yet.  I did notice that V16 likes to show the white PVC rail as terrain grass though.   Selected it and the properties look OK (white PVC), but once the property box is closed, the interactive render momentarily goes to the PVC, then returns to terrain green...  Don't know what thats about yet.  V16 looks like it has some nice new features

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Dave,

I am working off a high resolution wide screen laptop but your images are too wide to fit on the screen. Any chance of reducing the size of your images? I can scroll sideways to see the image width and read the text but the sidways scroll bar is at the bottom of the image, so you have to scroll down the page to get to it then back up again to read the rest and then repeat the process to read the next line. Generally it is best to keep image width to 1000 pixels or under and then they will fit most users screens.

If you reduce the size of the images first, (any photo editing software will do - even the built-in Microsoft Paint) you should be able to go to your post, click Modify, untick each of the present images (to say you do not want to use them) and add the new ones in the usual way and it will just replace them with the smaller images. This will make it much easier to analyse what you have done and see what is happening.

As far as I know there have been no changes to the rendering engine in V16 (or at least they have not told us, so it must be very minor) so things should render the same way as V15. I am curious about the railing colour change, although this may be just a PC display issue due to the large model size. The model size it a bit of a worry as typically 5 MB is regarded as large. 19MB is unusual and you do not appear to have enough in the model to make that size. Have you imported anything from other programs (3DS SKP etc) or any photoboards, images etc?

Yes, lights on with Basic render will cause light from the inside to be cast outside, overpowering the sun! Pretty bright lights - I am sure the power companies and street light manufacturers would like to know how it can be done!!!

Allan

[dBminus]

Hi Allan,
I replaced the images with smaller pics per your instructions.

Large file size:  Well, you're right, since I sent you my project, I've added custom light fixtures, etc.  With the extrusions and features I put in the models, Tcad created a bunch of facets and when it was read into the element library, the number of vertices was much higher than the catalog models.  I tried doing the simplify verticies, but if I went below ~85% reduction, the program would hang (V15).  I've probably got some issues going on with the dxf imports.   Probably a topic for another thread...

Green fence:  I opened the file I sent you in V16 and noticed the following.  Fence in 3d interactive view initially renders white until I move the camera, then it repaints green.   If I turn off the terrain (all else on), it renders OK (white).  If I just turn on the fence and terrain (all else off), it renders green...  Don't know if this is somehow related to the earlier discussions about render times with/without terrain on in V15.  The fence continues to render white in V15, regardless of elements on/off... even works with the latest larger file (got to work on those custom lights, etc...)

Dave

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Dave,

The smaller images are MUCH better, real easy to see now without scrolling every which way!

DXF and other added files can cause the file size to increase dramatically and I suspect this could also be the problem with the green fence - it may be running out of memory and doesn't like it. Have you tried exporting them from TCad as 3DS? Usually that works better than DXF.

What is unusual about the lights?  Do they have to be so complex? If you want special shaped lights it may be better to do them in TFP itself so there wont be memory implications that you get with imported files.

Allan

[dBminus]

Hi Allan,
Glad the smaller images work.  Sorry about the big ones...

I tried exporting the models as 3ds out of tcad, but TFP didn't like them.  My tcad is 9.2 and pretty old.  That may be the problem.  DXF did work OK though.  It creates a lot of vertices in TFP.  I attached an example light.  The tcad model must export a lot of detail.  Haven't figured out how to simplify it yet.  Trying the simplify vertices in TFP works for small reductions in complexity, but when I try <85%, it hangs.  Don't know if that means I have issues in the dxf file or not.

Is this light fixture something I could create inside of TFP using lines and arcs?  Do I convert them to members of various profiles?

Regarding the green fence, I can certainly see being up against a memory constraint, but why would it work OK in V15, and not in V16?

As always, thanks for your help,
Dave

[dBminus]

Hi Allan,

WRT the green fence, I ran a little experiment.  Opened a new V16 file, added just grass terrain and a ranch style fence.  Interactive render looked fine.  Then I edited the fence properties and made a section white PVC material (like what I had in my big model).  That rendered green!   Tried painting it white, still rendered green.  Then I changed it to a wood material, and it rendered the wood material OK.   Then I edited an adjacent section to PVC and it rendered OK as PVC!   Thinking I was losing my mind, I re-edited the first fence back to PVC and then both edited sections rendered back to green!   You may want to try a fence and see if it behaves the same with you.  Of course, a white PVC fence could turn green after a few years of moss

I attached my green fence fyi...

Dave

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Dave,

You are not losing your mind!!   It seems to be a bug in the program that was not there in V15.  I have done tests with both and also with Envisioneer V6 and V7.

Envisioneer 6 and TFP 15 are both OK but Env 7 and TFP V16 both have the problem.  Thankfully the Paint colous work, so looks like you will have to paint the fence instead of covering it with PVC or Porcelain. Probably cheaper too! 

I have reported it so a patch will no doubt fix it in due course.

Allan

[Kajvin - Robert W]

Hi Allan and Dave!
If you us a white texture instead of a white paint the fence will be OK!  So it is a bug,  then you use paint it is not a texture it look like it is take from windows colours direct, not via a jpg- or bmp-image  of a white colour. P.V.C and even metal work as the paint is not a texture.

Hope you understand what I meant.  

Or whit other words TFP 16 and EV 7 use Windows colour palette for paint and it will not work because it is a RGB-colour without a texture, not a texture  you have to have a texture of paint. The a simply way a round this is use colour-texture from images.  

I have made one example image from left to right, texture, texture, yellow paint, texture  and yellow paint-texture.

/Robert

PS Allan! if I understand you right you have use paint on the wall in image with grass, that will work because the wall is a texture by it.
self, maybe I'm out on deep water her, but that i think it is. DS

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Robert,

The colours in most of the Paint section of the Catalogue ("Ben Moore...") are textures (BMP files) and the Paint I used ("Simply White") is a texture and it worked on my example. The only ones of the Paints that are not textures are the ones in the section just headed Paint (see image). The others (eg Paint - Historic Colours, Pain - Off White Colours etc) are all textures not Solid Colours. The Colours section of the Catalogue won't work also, as they just use Solid Colour (Windows RGB) also as do the Finishes -  PVC White and Porcelain, which also failed in my example. The sections of wall on the image were finised with the same colours/textures as an example of what the fence segment should be. So you are right - use any actual texture and it will work and MOST of the Paint section colours are textures, so they are fine.

I know you understand this but for those who don't the image below should help you identify which are colours and which are textures.

However, they all worked in previous versions, so it has been reported as a bug.

Allan

[Kajvin - Robert W]

Hi Allan! If you take a digital photo of real p.v.c then you get structures and colour at same time.  

V16 only
I have look at the Tapered columns the work fine, you  have dx1 and dy1 at bottom and dx2 and dy2 at the top dx2 and dy2 must be less than 1/2 of dx1 and dy1

than example dx1,dy1= 200 mm then the max dx2,dy2 is < 100 mm not = 100mm that give you a square dart point up.
If yo will have a bigger top then bottom the set dx2,dy2 negative number from -0 and -2000 mm, it look like 2000 is max. This can be fun tool to work with. dx1,dy1 are max 5000  dx2,dy2 is max 2000 is width on columns. If dx1=5000 dx2 can be between 0 and 2000, h can be max c.

Try this select tapered Circle Hollow dy1=5000 dy2= 2000 c=2000 h=1999 and t1=4 Have fun
/Robert

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Robert,

Another option with colours, is simple to go to a Photo Editing program, select a blank image (usually File / New) and set the size to 128 x 128 pixels. Then just choose the colour you want from the colour selection tool and 'Fill' the image with the folour. Save it as a BMP or JPG and you have the colour you wanted but in the form of a texture.

Yes the tapered columns provide some interesting possibilities. I can see a number of uses for them in making other objects.

Allan