Edge lines

I thought it should have its own thread since its a question on its own different of the other 2 i've asked.

I was wondering if you were going to get out an update on your edge line fonction giving us a choise of colors when rendering our model with edge lines on.

What i'm experiencing on my renders is having a great image but the black of edges lines having just a tad too much of an impact on the final result.

I know just getting a bigger size does help but since we don't actually have the dpi option (or didn't see it anyway) I actually have to make the render 5 times bigger just so closer edge lines don't make a larger line on the result and then convert it on a smaller size with higher dpi.

Its just an ides I had thinking up on the last week or so.

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 11, 2011 at 10:31am

There are two edge line functions.

Edge Lines on the Special Options tab adds the edge lines as geometry in the model. This make it harder to get the size right but has the advantage that the Edge lines appear in reflections. Because they are actual geometry the edges closer to the camera will be wider and the ones further away will be narrower.

Edge Lines on the Foreground tab superimposes the Edge lines from SketchUp on top of the rendering. These look just like they looked in SketchUp - but do not reflect. They will pick up the color of the SketchUp edge lines. Unfortunately this seems to be broken right now (Some of the post processing functions got messed up when we added image filters) We will fix it, post another new version, and show a color sample in the thread.

This image had Sketchy Edges placed on top using the Foreground feature in IRender nXt

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 11, 2011 at 10:38am

Great, thats actually all I needed, I'll try it when my last rendering finishes, should have any more questions!

Awesome explanations as usual.

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 11, 2011 at 11:46am

Any ETA on this new version, actually went ahead without reading about the not working yet part. So I was suprised when it didn't work for once, should have read all the way down!

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on March 12, 2011 at 3:30pm

The latest version posted, KC11, has the fix for using the Foreground edge lines.

http://www.renderplus.com/php/download_links.php

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 14, 2011 at 9:37am

Actually worked really well and as I wanted it to be but I got confronted with 2 minor problems. Image is there for reference.

1. Lines aren't straight. Does it means I need to render at a higher resolution?

2. At mid first floor, there is around 1 foot of building where there is no edge lines. Is it a bug when calculating before rendering and won't be there next time?

Attachments:

save01.png, 1.2 MB

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on March 14, 2011 at 11:19am

1, Yes. The lines are just single pixels, so lines that are close to being horizontal or vertical can't really be straight when they shift over to the next pixel. Using a smoothing filter might help.

2. I can't duplicate what you're getting here. Can you perhaps send us the model?

Simon Loisel-Goudreau said:

Actually worked really well and as I wanted it to be but I got confronted with 2 minor problems. Image is there for reference.

1. Lines aren't straight. Does it means I need to render at a higher resolution?

2. At mid first floor, there is around 1 foot of building where there is no edge lines. Is it a bug when calculating before rendering and won't be there next time?

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 14, 2011 at 12:02pm

A 2-point perspective would make the vertical lines straight (vertical)

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 17, 2011 at 12:45pm

The 2 point perspective resolved the sketchy edge lines problem but I still didn't get an answer for the missing edge lines. I've sent the model a couple days back but still... nothing.

Here is a new rendering made this morning, problems seems to be on all models. It doesn't seems to be location wise but maybe a camera problem I can't seem to figure out.

Attached 2 images with different view point.

Its a minor issue but the city we are promoting the project think its a major problem. And since i'm the only one here working with 3D modeling, I usually get the blame.

Attachments:

save02.jpg, 90 KB
save03.jpg, 97 KB

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on March 17, 2011 at 2:10pm

Sorry, I was waiting to hear from you. I had thought I had sent you a message after I rendered your model.

The edge lines came in fine for me here.

One thing...for the "Use Edge lines for foreground" to work, you have to be rendering in the exact same resolution as the SketchUp Window, since that's the image size we use to make the foregound image. Otherwise the foreground image might be shrunk and some lines might disappear, or the lines won't match the rendered geometry.

Could you check and see if that is the case.

The foreground image we use is saved to the disk when we do the rendering.

Could you look in the Statistics for the rendering and get the path to the edge line image, and take a look at it, to make sure that the lines are there in the image?

You can see the statistics by bring up the About box in the rendering window and clicking on Statistics. You should see a line like this near the bottom:

snxt_foreground_image:C:\Users...\nXt_batch\nXtBatch_Images\Foreground_edges.png

Please open that image in Paint and see if the edge lines are missing in that file also, and let me know what you see. Also look at the statistics and see if the rendering is the same as the dimensions of the foreground image.

Also near the top of the statistics: Resolution: 1036 x 794

Simon Loisel-Goudreau said:

The 2 point perspective resolved the sketchy edge lines problem but I still didn't get an answer for the missing edge lines. I've sent the model a couple days back but still... nothing.

Here is a new rendering made this morning, problems seems to be on all models. It doesn't seems to be location wise but maybe a camera problem I can't seem to figure out.

Attached 2 images with different view point.

Its a minor issue but the city we are promoting the project think its a major problem. And since i'm the only one here working with 3D modeling, I usually get the blame.

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 22, 2011 at 11:46am

Using the sketchup size seems to solve the problem but having to render at 1614x892 get me to my other point. We are doing big posters with the render on it (about 4000x3000) and we can't afford to just expand the original 1614x892 to maximize it and loosing the resolution on it.

Point is, I have to keep an around 300-450dpi resolution and its already a tad lower than that at 1614x892.

Any tips?

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on March 22, 2011 at 1:25pm

Did you look at the images sizes that I mentioned in my previous post to see if they were the same when you render to the larger size, the size of the rendered image and the size of the Foreground_edges.pngimage? If they were even off by one pixel it could account for the edges being stripped during a resizing of the png image.

Also, did you look at the Foreground_edges.png file which gets created in an image editor (also when you are rendering to the larger size) to see if the missing edges were also missing in that image?

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on March 22, 2011 at 1:38pm

I'll make another try on a big rendering tonight, I'll make sure I get a copy of the statistics to make sure I don't forget anything.

Honestly, I actually didn't try looking at the foreground image. I don't know why I didn't but seems like I forgot that part. I'll try to do everything you say, Hope I won't forget anything.

I'll re-post tomorrow with results.