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Rendering with Autocad


zionshea

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I have a three floors building and I try to render it with a Camera. I managed to create a Camera and properly position the camera (as shown on the preview window) and when I render, I have few issues:

 

1. Where do I manage the camera (like managing "cut Planes" in "Display Manager").

 

2. The rendering ignores the position of the camera and shows the screen position instead.

 

3. The resolution is very very low - I tried using "Presentation" "Render Preset" and High "Output Size" - but still very low.

 

4. I entered the output file name - How do I make Autocad to save the image to the file on disk?

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Thanks for any help. -

I have one more issue:

 

5. The materials in the rendering image are very bright - although on the model 3D display the colors are OK.

 

Thanks

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Hi Zionshea, I think that rendering with ACAD can be done but it might just take some extra steps. I don't have the knowledge to answer your questions but maybe someone here will be able to. I will look at some youtube videos and do some web searches (you probably have already). Good luck.

 

Sean

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I have one more issue here:

 

6. when I create a camera and I set the view, after changing the camera's Perspective to off the camera view is totally changed and also the camera icon disappears.

 

Thanks for any help.

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I have a three floors building and I try to render it with a Camera. I managed to create a Camera and properly position the camera (as shown on the preview window) and when I render, I have few issues:

 

1. Where do I manage the camera (like managing "cut Planes" in "Display Manager").

>>>I am not sure what you mean by this.

 

2. The rendering ignores the position of the camera and shows the screen position instead.

>>> Go to the Views tab and click the Views pulldown. YOu should see a camera1 option. Select it an your viewport should now be the camera view. Give the Render command.

3. The resolution is very very low - I tried using "Presentation" "Render Preset" and High "Output Size" - but still very low.

>>> Give the RPREF command and change the Outputsize to a higher resolution.

4. I entered the output file name - How do I make Autocad to save the image to the file on disk?

>>> After rendering click File, Save in the Render screen

5. The materials in the rendering image are very bright - although on the model 3D display the colors are OK.

>>> Try reducing the intensity of the lights in you scene.

 

I hope this helps.

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Thanks a lot Irm - I will soon check your suggestions -

 

regarding question 2 - when I select one of my saved camera views - I cannot zoom in properly unless I close and reopen the file again. How can I stop the camera view and return back to normal behavior?

 

Can you or anyone else answer question-6? When I try to place a camera inside one of the rooms - the view is perspective in a non realistic way. I marked the perspective option to "no" and the camera view has totally changed and also the camera icon disappears.

 

Yet, I have one more issue

 

Question 7 - When I turn on the sun and also enable shading - rendering does not show the sun at all - no shades and no sunlight - only a small amount of light is displayed, looks like like the sun is placed under the model. I set the location to New York at the summer 11:00 O clock AM.

 

Thanks for your support.

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Thanks a lot Irm - I will soon check your suggestions -

 

regarding question 2 - when I select one of my saved camera views - I cannot zoom in properly unless I close and reopen the file again. How can I stop the camera view and return back to normal behavior?

 

>>> If you are looking at a camera view you cannot use normal windowing commands like zoom. To zoom you would need to move the camera (while you do this you a camera preview view will appear) and then after changing the location of the camera you will need to select the viewport that is showing the camera view and re-request the camera view (e.g., by double clicking the camera option in the views tab).

 

Can you or anyone else answer question-6? When I try to place a camera inside one of the rooms - the view is perspective in a non realistic way. I marked the perspective option to "no" and the camera view has totally changed and also the camera icon disappears.

 

>>> Be careful with placing a camera in a small room. If the camera is too close to its target the optics can "blow up". Cameras by definition are a perspective view. If you have perspective turned off you then have a parallel (axonometric) projection which is the default front, right, top,SE iso, etc. views. To see into a room you would need to do depth-clipping which can be done with the DVIEW command. This gets real messy real fast. I recommend removing a wall instead and position your camera accordingly.

 

Yet, I have one more issue

 

Question 7 - When I turn on the sun and also enable shading - rendering does not show the sun at all - no shades and no sunlight - only a small amount of light is displayed, looks like like the sun is placed under the model. I set the location to New York at the summer 11:00 O clock AM.

 

>>> First, be sure your model sits on the WCS XY plane. The sun system assumes the XY plane is the ground plane and the positive z axis points to the sky. When you turn on the sun you should get a message to turn off default lighting. Answer yes to this prompt. In the render tab change No shadows to Full shadows. With these setting you should get shadows but the the areas in shadow will be very dark like the back side of the moon. To get better results turn on the Final Gatherer by giving the render preference command rpref and set the Final Gather mode to On. Final Gather lights the scene by computing the light that bounces off nearby surfaces so it is good to have a background to your scene. FG takes longer to render so you may want to keep it off until you are ready for your final rendering.

 

 

If you want to post your drawing I will look at it. ~lrm

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Hi. Thanks. This thread is very informative regarding rendering questions.

I still have a problem regarding question no. 3. I have set the output size to the highest which is 1029 x 1000 but I got an image with a very low resolution and only 60kb in size. Did I miss to set other things? Thanks in advance.

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What setting do you have for the render quality?

 

I suggest creating a new drawing starting with a blank file for some experimentation. Create a cylinder that is approximately the size of your building. Place a box under it to represent the ground then experiment with some settings.

 

1. First turn on the Sun. Choose Turn off default lighting in the following:

Sunlight.png

 

2. Apply a material to the cylinder (e.g., yellow), and ground box (green).

 

3. Do a test rendering using a setting of Draft. You should get something like:

RenderDraft.JPG

 

4. Change the quality to Medium and the image quality should improve.

RenderMedium.JPG

 

5. Now try Presentation quality. You might not see much of a difference.

RenderPresentation.JPG

Note how black the shadows are.

 

6. Now set Final Gather Mode to On.

RenderMedFGOn.JPG

Note that the shadows are a little less dark.

 

7. Now add some walls to reflect the lighting and with Final Gather On the shadows should be less dark. Using the material browser make the walls a matte white.

RenderMedFGOnWall.JPG

 

After successfully completing this exercise try inserting your building into this file after deleting the cylinder.

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks a lot Irm for your educating and detailed answers.

 

I could not answer until now as I was very busy.

 

I followed very carefully after your advice and also created a 3D with my logo as the size of my building. I also used same materials of the original building (wood and bricks) as you see in attached files, the rendering is very dark and has no sun or shades and the bricks wall very bright - I could not send the dwg as it is too big.

 

Thanks for your help.

Lighting Image.jpg

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Have you turned on the Sun? The buttons in the ribbon should look like this:

SunRender.JPG

 

Your image implies a light very low in the sky (close to a rising or setting sun) and of high intensity. Check that if you are using sunlight that the time of day is close to Noon so that the sun is high in the sky.

 

Make sure there are no other lights in the model when you start by opening up the Lights in Model dialog box via the noted arrow.

 

It would help to have a copy of the file. Can you put it in Dropbox or some other cloud location I can access?

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I could not send the dwg as it is too big.
You should sign up for a free Dropbox account so you can link the file here so we can download it: https://db.tt/9cy4cTH0

 

The file limits set on this forum were set many moons ago when filesize weren't anywhere near what they are today and it's never been updated. All other forums I frequent have much larger filesize upload capacity limit, so using another service to upload and link to download is needed for this website.

 

I, too, would like to take a look at your file and provide some feedback. :)

 

-TZ

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Don't forget to download and install the Dropbox program for best results!!

https://www.dropbox.com/install

 

Thanks a lot all for your support.

 

I just created an account with Dropbox. This is the dwg file.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bap7tty46jmop8i/lighting.dwg?dl=0

 

Thanks, zionshea

Here is my result:

render_settings.jpg

 

I have attached some screenshots outlining in red the settings I have adjusted:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4989089/render_settings.zip

 

I know you used Mass Elements but I rendered in plain AutoCAD just for a quick turnaround. One thing is I couldn't get Sky to light up your original file so I Copy/Pasted into a blank file. I just didn't want to take time to find the issue.

 

In a nutshell, start with the Presentation render setting and adjust the few categories I outlined. Then turn Sky on and set it to Sky Background & Illumination for best results. Adjusting the shadow settings is key, which gives a gradual attenuation (falloff) of the shadow instead of the unrealistic hard shadow edge. Lighting Units will need to be set to 1 or 2 which enables photometric lighting, which you will be prompted to do so if you enable Sky. Hope this helps!

 

-TZ

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Thanks a lot Irm and TZ,

 

I manged to turn on the sky after I changed the view to perspective (PERSPECTIVE=1). Also set LIGHTINGUNITS=2.

After changing the settings based on your comments I managed to see some good shadows and light and also looks like the materials are better than before. Regarding materials, I still need to see in my original 3 stories building.

 

Somehow the sky shows as gray only... how can I add clouds? - as I remember, it is very simple with Revit.

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For the record, using the Sun and Sky lighting is just a "quick and dirty" way to add an abundant light to the entire view. Depending on your end goals, this is usually not ideal for most renderings that are meant to focus on abstract objects or having a creative feel. My tip was merely to get your rendered view up to par.

 

Rendering is all about lighting. You'll have to dig in pretty deep into photometry and the science that drives is, such as inverse square law and illumination. Rendering literally simulates real-world lighting which is the reason behind my suggestion. The environment makes a huge difference in rendering quality as well. If all you want is an abundant flooding of natural light and shadow then Sun and Sky should work just fine for you.

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I really appreciate your time and willing to help.

 

With your guide I managed finally to see my building in a wonderful sun light and correct shadows. For the benefit of those that will read this post I would like to point the three fixes that helped me to see the world in light...:

 

1. The reason for the complete darkness was because I used a timezone of Jerusalem and location of California in USA. I fixed the location to Cyprus and the light showed up.

2. Missing light in the sky was because the SKYSTATUS was set to 'Sky off'- I turned it to 'Sky background and illumination'. As said before this setting was possible only after I changed the view to perspective (PERSPECTIVE=1).

3. Main reason for too bright materials (the bricks were totally white) was the setting of the 'International Lighting Units' I changed it from 'Generic lighting Units' to 'International Lighting Units' (set LIGHTINGUNITS=2.) and materials looks better now.

 

Thanks a lot for you prompt responses.

 

I actually have some questions in the beginning of this post that remained without answers - i will check later again and ask them if still required.

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Are you looking for tips on managing the cameras?

It looks like you already have 4 cameras in you file, (zion1 - 4). I would delete these and do a zoom extents. then layout your screen with 4 view ports as follows:

 

Top -any view-

 

Front Right

 

Give the camera command and click the location of the camera in the Top view and drag to the location of the target.

 

You can now change the "any view" to the camera view by clicking the label of that viewport. Make this view active when you render. I would leave the destination for the render to "window" from which you can File, Save the image in a variety of formats (e.g., jpg). It is best to make the aspect ration of the camera viewport close to that of the aspect ratio of the rendered image.

 

Use 3D Move to move the camera location or its target location working in the best view.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello again,

 

Regarding the camera, I have one issue regarding the content and the size of the produced image. I am adjusting the output, using the position of the camera and the Camera Preview. YET when I render, in the produced image, the designed object (the building) occupies less than 50% of the image - I wanted the building to be most of the output image - in other words, I see too much of sky and earth. How can I adjust this better?

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