Revit 2018 - Problems with rending image

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on September 25, 2018 at 1:27pm

For the model with problematic interior rendering effort, I attempted a rendering of a cut-away view of the targeted area.  The view was an axiometric image, no perspective. The view uses the section box in Revit.  The view was zoomed into the small area of the building that remained after the cut-away was implemented. In the rendering, the impact of the cut-away and the zoom-in was ignored. The rendered view was of the entirety of the exterior of the model.  

If I correctly recall, I believe that earlier versions of Accurender rendered the image in place and honored the attributes of the view created in Revit.  Is there a way to handle this type of image?

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on September 25, 2018 at 1:36pm

Is is possible to send me a model with a view and section cut like this?

I can try it here and see what I get.

You can use this link to send us a model:

https://renderplus.com/wp2/uploads/

Thanks,

Rich

Jerry W. Childers said:

For the model with problematic interior rendering effort, I attempted a rendering of a cut-away view of the targeted area.  The view was an axiometric image, no perspective. The view uses the section box in Revit.  The view was zoomed into the small area of the building that remained after the cut-away was implemented. In the rendering, the impact of the cut-away and the zoom-in was ignored. The rendered view was of the entirety of the exterior of the model.  

If I correctly recall, I believe that earlier versions of Accurender rendered the image in place and honored the attributes of the view created in Revit.  Is there a way to handle this type of image?

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Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on September 25, 2018 at 1:46pm

I tried to render exterior orthographic projections for the model of the building with no results.

First case, I tried to render an "Elevation View". A partial image was displayed as a narrow ribbon along the top of the image.

Second case,  I tried to render a elevation using the rotation feature for viewing the 3D model. The result was a black image.

Am I missing something? 

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on September 25, 2018 at 3:01pm

It's hard for me to tell.

If you could send me a sample model and a screen shot of what you are seeing, I could try to duplicate it.

Jerry W. Childers said:

I tried to render exterior orthographic projections for the model of the building with no results.

First case, I tried to render an "Elevation View". A partial image was displayed as a narrow ribbon along the top of the image.

Second case,  I tried to render a elevation using the rotation feature for viewing the 3D model. The result was a black image.

Am I missing something? 

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on November 7, 2018 at 4:22pm

We posted a new version of nXtRender for Revit on our downloads page:

http://renderplus.com/wp2/download/

which now uses the Revit Section Box for clipping the view in the rendering.

Please try that when you get a chance. 

Please note that we do not close any walls or floors what are clipped in the rendered view. I do not see a way to get those faces from the model.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on November 13, 2018 at 11:58am

I see what you mean. Thanks for the effort.

I have having other issues: The program does not seem to work the way previous versions have worked.

The following issues are true for whether or not the Section Box is used on the model.

1. I cannot get HDRi skies to display.  In addition, the HDRI selection button turns off when initiating render. Selecting HDRi under the Sky tab does not seem to work.

2. I see no way to adjust the direction of the sun.

3. I cannot seem to get shadows and shade to function.

When using the Section box, the Sun does not light interior wall faces. The surfaces are black even with ambient light set to high and the Light Balance slider is set to 1 (More SKY/Ambient).

When using the Section box, the ground plane is not displayed.

All in all, the results are not usable. This is very disappointing. I have been an Accurender customer since the earliest release.

Please experiment rendering the model that I sent. Perhaps you could advise if there are secretes on how to get the expected results.

Respectfully,

Jerry

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on November 14, 2018 at 4:16pm

I tested the things you mentioned and posted a new version on our downloads page, with fixes to make the Sun and Sky work better. Please download and try this latest version:

http://renderplus.com/wp2/download/

 

To set the Sun position in Revit, you will need to use the Revit Sun Settings dialog:

 

I fixed this to work better to get the same Sun Position that is shown in Revit. The "Relative to View" option still needs some work to figure out what they are doing with the Sun Altitude when you use that "Relative" mode.

We used to have a dialog in AccuRender for Revit that would let you set the Sun Azimuth and Altitude manually, to override the Revit Sun Settings. We stopped including that starting with Revit 2014, assuming that users just wanted to use the Revit settings, but we will put that dialog back into AccuRender for Revit. That should make setting the sun position a little easier.

I fixed the Options/Sky tab, so that you could adjust the Sun and Sky intensities and Cloudiness to balance the Sun and Sky again.

 In order to see an HDRi sky behind a rendering you will need to be in a perspective view:

An Ortho view, with the ground plane enabled, cannot show a horizon, so no background is possible, unless you use a perspective view..

We do not currently have a way to show the full ground plane in a section box. The ground plane gets clipped by the Section Box along with the geometry.

Here's the sectioned view when I render it:

I am not seeing the black walls that you referred to. But I don't see shadows in the Revit view either.  

Jerry W. Childers said:

I see what you mean. Thanks for the effort.

I have having other issues: The program does not seem to work the way previous versions have worked.

The following issues are true for whether or not the Section Box is used on the model.

1. I cannot get HDRi skies to display.  In addition, the HDRI selection button turns off when initiating render. Selecting HDRi under the Sky tab does not seem to work.

2. I see no way to adjust the direction of the sun.

3. I cannot seem to get shadows and shade to function.

When using the Section box, the Sun does not light interior wall faces. The surfaces are black even with ambient light set to high and the Light Balance slider is set to 1 (More SKY/Ambient).

When using the Section box, the ground plane is not displayed.

All in all, the results are not usable. This is very disappointing. I have been an Accurender customer since the earliest release.

Please experiment rendering the model that I sent. Perhaps you could advise if there are secretes on how to get the expected results.

Respectfully,

Jerry

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on December 28, 2018 at 12:01pm

We posted a new version of nXtRender for Revit which is doing a much better of of extracting the geometry and materials in Revit 2018 and Revit 2019.

Here is your test model rendered with the new version posted on our downloads page:

https://renderplus.com/wp2/download/

And we are no longer clipping the ground plane.

Please try that new version when you get a chance.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on January 2, 2019 at 5:08pm

I like the results. Thanks. It also appears the output layer for materials designations seems to work with my current model. I should be able to load the following (image, lighting, materials and distance) for use for the Piranesi software. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on January 2, 2019 at 5:16pm

I am currently having problems with materials being correctly scaled for the rendering.

Examples include horizontal siding and modular brick work.

I cannot get the horizontal lines for siding be display any closer than 12" apart.

Normal brickwork displays as jumbo bricks, about the size of typical CMU. 

Stone paving shows as too small.

The control for units of measure CM vs inches does not seem to work as expected.

The display box with the ability to select scale does not seem to cooperate with the dimensions declared for x & y values.  Setting the values for x & y does not seem to be intuitive based on the results that I am getting.

Thanks,

Jerry Childers

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on January 2, 2019 at 5:33pm

If you can send me a model to test these things, I would appreciate it. Along with any more detailed steps to reproduce it, such as whether you're setting the sizes in Revit, or using the nXt material tile sizes.

Jerry W. Childers said:

I am currently having problems with materials being correctly scaled for the rendering.

Examples include horizontal siding and modular brick work.

I cannot get the horizontal lines for siding be display any closer than 12" apart.

Normal brickwork displays as jumbo bricks, about the size of typical CMU. 

Stone paving shows as too small.

The control for units of measure CM vs inches does not seem to work as expected.

The display box with the ability to select scale does not seem to cooperate with the dimensions declared for x & y values.  Setting the values for x & y does not seem to be intuitive based on the results that I am getting.

Thanks,

Jerry Childers

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Permalink Reply by Jerry W. Childers on January 3, 2019 at 8:51pm

I think my problem is that I do not know how the definition of materials in Revit affect the materials in AR nXt for Revit.

I started my model in Revit (2018) using a few simple materials for simple illustrations.  I used both the shaded model method and the "realistic" method in Revit. The materials and methods were a good start but not good enough. (units of measure are feet in Revit)

I switched to AR nXt. I think that I noticed that some of the material definitions may have been imported from the Revit file. I tried to create more accurate materials for horizontal siding, common brick work and field stone. I tried to experiment with the variables for the X & Y variables for the procedural patterns and for image passed patterns. I tried experimenting with the variables used for the display (sphere, cube, etc.) and the display cube.

I sent the previous email out of frustration. I  had been able to achieve reasonable results using the built-in rendering engine within Revit.

After receiving your response, I started this reply. In an effort to be clear regarding the variables that were in play, I made an attempt to experiment with the lined image pattern that I created for 4" horizontal siding. I experimented with a fresh start. I used the cube for visual testing of the pattern. Previously, I had been operating on the assumption that scale factor was related to the units for the x & y values. I decided that this process would not work and I tried using the scale factor for the cube to represent 8 feet (Revit's units). I then adjusted the X and Y values in order to get 24 repeats of the 4" exposure for the siding. HURRAY!.  It worked. In addition, the stone pattern that I had defined for use for the Revit rendering engine must have been transferred "adopted" by the nXt rendering engine. This worked. I think that I better understand the basics regarding the scale factor and the X & Y values used to define the patterns for materials.

Although I am happy that the field stone pattern that I developed for the Revit rendering, I do not understand what made the difference and allowed that material definition to be accessible to the AR nXt rendering engine.

I would appreciate your input so that I have a better understanding so that I can achieve predictable results.

By the way, AR nXt is much faster than the Revit rendering engine and I like the results much better.

Thanks for keeping this wonderful rendering engine operating for the world of Revit users, especially me.

Best of luck for the coming year.

Jerry Childers, Architect 

 

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