Author Topic: Autosave during render at intervals and Save as CXR from ArchiCAD dialog  (Read 5309 times)

2018-12-16, 22:05:56

spr0ckets

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Okay this is a two-part request, of issues that are partially related, and which admittedly might be fixed or somewhat sorted by the next Alpha build release.


The first is the ability to have the renderer autosave (either the cxr orimage file format) at pre-selected intervals or pass numbers (whichever option you choose to render by) for the renders that take really long time, and also to pre-empt any crashes or program freezes by ArchiCAD itself.
Since cxr files can be reloaded and the renders resumed, this would be an invaluable feature for those mornings you wake up and find that the computer crashed or froze when it had about 30 minutes let to go to complete the render and you've lost everything.
I believe Maxwell renderer had this feature and ability and it saved my bacon on more than a few occasions.

The second (which is the one I think might have been sorted), is the ability to save the final result as cxr from the ArchiCAD save as dialog when you render straight through the ArchiCAD render setting rather than Corona's VFB.
Currently the only way to render the image and keep the pre-selected image size and aspect ratio is through the ArchiCAD render dialog and not the VFB which either distorts the image for images that have ArchiCAD's 2-point perspective turned on or with which you have to stretch the window and "guess" the image size.

Naturally I would prefer to do the render straight from Corona's VFB since that gives me all the options and benefits of Corona with the interactive adjustmens of tone-mapping and whatnot and also saving out render elements as separate layers, Lightmix and most importantly saving as CXR which allows on to continue to edit the image in Corona's image editor.
But until the 2-point camera perspective issue and the image size issue is sorted, we have to render through ArchiCAD's dialog to keep the same image size, but that does't give you the option to save as CXR (Which I assume would them allow me to access the render element layers from Corona's image editor).

It's possible one or both of these issues have been sorted out already in which case disregard, but otherwise they would be greatly helpful - especially for a progressive renderer like Corona.

Oh, and one other thing:-

In 3ds Max it's possible to clone the VFB image into a 3ds Max image buffer and that's also useful in a lot of ways that people use the renders.
I'm not sure if this ability would be possible with Corona's VFB onto an ArchiCAD 'image tab' but that would also be useful particuarly if the VFB issues I mentioned above were fixed, but also in helping evaluate changes between different settings as we're working along.
This one might be more complicated  I admit, but if there's any possibility it would be greatly useful

2019-01-06, 09:57:50
Reply #1

Jan Špaček

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Hi, thank you for your suggestions! I apologize for the late reply, there was much work at the end of the year...

1. Autosaving CXR: I added this feature to our list. This is especially useful given how stable Corona for ARCHICAD is at the moment :-(

2. Saving CXR from PhotoRendering: I'm afraid this is technically infeasible. From the plugin, we cannot modify the PhotoRendering workflow once you hit the "Render" button. I also believe that we cannot open a new Image tab in ARCHICAD. However, both issues that you mention (two-point perspective and aspect ratio) will be fixed. We aim to completely replace the PhotoRendering workflow with the VFB.

Thank you again for your very valuable feedback!

2019-01-06, 10:47:00
Reply #2

spr0ckets

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Thanks for your response, Jan.
And no worries about the time it took. I know you guys are quite busy hard at work with the plugin and we appreciate all the effort you're putting to it.

I'm quite happy to rely on the VFB entirely and completely for my final renders if the aforementioned issues are sorted out. But this does beg another question.
Since you can clone the rendered image from the VFB to an ArchiCAD image tab (the way you can do in 3ds Max) would the possibility exist to do it within the VFB interface (i.e. just the flat image and not all the rendered elements or layers)?

If not, it's not a big problem or major concern like the other issues I mentioned.
The Autosave in particular would be really fantastic because ArchiCAD as you know has a fantastic autosave capability that allows you to recover the file from your last command before any crash (which doesn't happen often) so it would fit in nicely with that from the rendering workflow.

Once again thanks for the response and all the efforts.