Messages

46

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Quick question - your thoughts on ArchiCAD integration

« on: 2018-08-17, 05:44:31 »

As a longtime user of Archicad I would jump at the possibility of working with a quality rendered such as Corona.  I recently made a significant investment in working with Cinema4D which was very discouraging.  After investing significant time and money, Cinema proved to be very unreliable (the team render function would constantly disconnect, so we would be rendering with maybe 3 computers (if lucky) out of 10 all the time.

Also, when trying to render images in at least 4K pixel size (we needed to have images for full-size letter paper prints @300 dpi for magazine printing) the computers in the team render would constantly (apparently) run out of RAM and simply hang completely.

For many years we have worked with Artlantis with good results and with the recent addition of the Team Render function has given us the ability to generate large amounts of large images very efficiently, but definitely looking for something that can give us higher image quality than what Artlantis can provide. 

My one concern would be that if this would be a plugin from within Archicad, then how would adding trees, heavy foliage, bushes, etc., work?  Entourage is half of the story behind a great rendering, and this sort of things should not be added within a BIM model which already has so much more complexity and information and should not be overloaded with heavy poligons of this type of elements?

Does this force us into 3DStudio to be able to handle this sort of thing?

I don't believe this would be necessary, assuming the plugin or addon were done right.

You could and can already do this sort thing with Maxwell render's ArchiCAD plugin which allows you to add proxy objects in the ArchiCAD environment by using simple geometry (cubes and planes) which reference the proxy files loading the trees and entourage and whatnot only at rendertime.
Even the interactive renderer which works concurrent with the ArchiCAD program open loads the proxies just fine and you work normally in ArchiCAD without suffering any polycount issues.

They also had a scatter function which allowed you to create forests all withing the ArchiCAD interface without hogging all your memory and polycount.

And I could do this years ago which is when I last used ArchiCAD with that plugin (i've since moved on from Maxwell since, despite the beautiful light quality of their renders and simple interface,  it's unbearably slow (especially for interiors) and also a memory hog itself.). So I can only imagine what you can do now with an improved plugin and/or a better render engine algorithm like Corona has.

Even an interface for creating and editing materials is possible (like Maxwell had) which allows you to create or load materials with Corona-specific properties.

47

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Quick question - your thoughts on ArchiCAD integration

« on: 2018-06-20, 02:06:18 »

I hope it's not too late to put in my two cents in this question.
I basically registered and searched this topic just to give my opinion on this issue.
As you might guess I'm an ArchiCAD user and wanted to chime in support of any effort to bring in ArchiCAD integration.

 I saw the video with the short demonstration showing a bit of the demo/alpha version you guys were working on, although I must point out that that probably wasn't the best venue from which to get feedback from possible ArchiCAD users . To be frank, neither is this one since not a lot of ArchiCAD users would come this way.

ArchiCAD has had a few third-party renderers created plugins and bridges for it (e.g. Maxwell, Octane render, Twinmotion) so the API should be straight forward for most people seeking to create a bridge. I believe ArchiCAD users would readily, enthusiastically (and quickly) adopt it since the main roadblock now to more archiCAD users using or knowing about Corona is the fact that you can only access it only through 3DS Max. And the current internal renderer while serviceable is not great or nearly in the same league as Corona (or VRay for that matter) nor is it even developed or maintained by Graphisoft themselves - which often leads to issues.

In any case, I strongly believe A Corona ArchiCAD bridge would find much faster adoption among ArchiCAD users than it would with say Revit (where they have a VRay integration already)

I posted a couple of images of renders I was able to do in Corona (from ArchiCAD developed models and projects) in a thread discussing this very issue and which is what brought my attention to this possibility in the first place at this ArchiCAD user discussion thread:

https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=61404

If you need any useful feedback I would suggest asking users at the ArchiCAD user forum (the link  above with my images), from which you could also get feedback (and possibly API assitance and help) from developers as well who occasionally stop by to address questions.